Accidents and near misses

[Porcupine]

Just curious to hear any firearms related accidents (whether negligent e.g. forgot to unload or truly accidental e.g. slamfires, exploding barrels etc) or near misses people have experienced or witnessed. I know there is another topic on here about the exploding .410 one user experienced. Any others?

The only experience I can relate is when I was trying out a friend's rifle and it fired when I closed the bolt on it. Result of a floating firing pin. Thankfully it was pointed in a safe direction so some soiled underwear was the only casualty. I will tell you two incidents a friend of mine regaled me with too. When he was a boy in the 60s he had a 20 gauge Browning. One day he tripped and the muzzle got stuck in the dirt. Not knowing the proper thing to do, he cleared the bore simply by firing a round. Luckily the barrel stayed intact so no harm was done. On another occasion he had the unfortunate habit of playing with the safety catch which ended in near-disaster. The gun had a cross-bolt safety that he would flick from safe to fire and then back to safe, and then to check that the gun was on safe he would give the trigger a little tug (kids, right?). Walking through the woods one day he managed to get out of rhythm and ended up pulling the trigger with the safety off. His brother was walking with him and had he been a yard further on he'd now be shorter by a head :lol:

[Chuck]

I cleared a pump action .22 rf on a range FIVE times...pointed it down range, pulled the trigger and got a BANG. The newbie who had been shooting it had done the same racking in front of me (correctly) about 6 times before handing me the rifle to check clear....just goes to show..

[Porcupine]

I cleared a pump action .22 rf on a range FIVE times...pointed it down range, pulled the trigger and got a BANG. The newbie who had been shooting it had done the same racking in front of me (correctly) about 6 times before handing me the rifle to check clear....just goes to show..

Interesting. Did a magazine get put (or left) in it somehow or did the racking fail to eject a round that was in the chamber the entire time?

[Andy632]

I shot a Fore-sight protector off my M14 when I first used it with a scope fitted!!!

[Chuck]

porcupine, it was tubular magazine type lever action...

[karen]

Lots and lots and lots! We were regaled with a whole load when I did my RCO Assessors course.

However there was one back in 1984/85 where some Darwin Award nominee managed to kill himself by looking down the barrel of a loaded firearm whilst banging it on the ground!

Love

Karen

[Scotsgun]

Got peppered with shot when a kid and on a pheasant shoot. The shoot had ended and we were standing in the farm yard, on a large concrete yard. An old boy took his gun out of the slip (not allowed) and whilst showing his mate his new gun, managed to close the gun with a shell inside and shoot it. We think the shot bounced off the concrete but it felt like someone slapped me across the back of the legs and i ended up on my arse.
Once confirmed OK, my father wrestled the shotgun from him and smashed it off the ground repeatedly until the stock was in bits.

There were a couple in the Army that i'll never forget. Like the numpty cleaning the browning pistol who managed to shoot the desk he was sitting at. I and another mate were sitting right by him.

The scarriest has to be when on the LAW practice range where the warhead was replaced with a steel tip. One LAW failed to fire so was turfed into the ditch to be disposed of afterwards. When cleaning the range at the end, someone picked it up and it somehow went off, sending the warhead right by us. More than a few pants were soiled!

[Dougan]

At Bisley a few months ago, there was a wierd 'bang' - as everyone looked round, this guys' suppressor was bouncing 50 yds down the range...not sure what happened, but you could see that even his mates were trying not to laugh :lol:

[kennyc]

also at Bisley a couple of months ago, we were on the 300 yrd line when a ricochet went past us close enough that I could hear it whilst firing even through my ear defenders! caused a few raised eyebrows and some worried looks at the 600 yrd line

[ovenpaa]

We were out shooting clays many years ago, Christel had a Mossberg pump action and took a shot, phut.... and the vari-choke assembly ended up ten feet in front of us. Ooops.