Gunshot Gone Wild: Accidental Discharge Results in Damage to Two Homes

[SecularMotion]

A Bethlehem man was cleaning his pistol inside his Herald Drive home on Jan. 3 when things suddenly went wrong.

According to the Barrow County Sheriff's Office incident report, an "unknown chambered round discharged" as the man was cleaning the firearm.

After ricocheting off the kitchen table, the round passed through a window frame, traveled across two yards and then struck another house.

"Looking through the hole in the siding, I could see that the round traveled across the garage and struck the drywall on the left side of the garage door going into the residence," the deputy wrote. "It may have traveled farther, but entry into the residence ... was not made."

http://barrow.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/gunshot-gone-wild-accidental-discharge-results-in-damage-to-two-homes

[ileus]

1. Still 34 years of no AD/NDs here.

Stay safe and carry on my friends.

[Straw Man]

2. "Unknown chambered round"?

Trying to clean a firearm without clearing it first is like backing your car out of the driveway without looking. Does it happen? Yes. It it criminally stupid? Absolutely.

[Eleanors38]

3. Why, yes my old .357 Ruger revolver DOES chamber 7. Imagine. nt

[Jenoch]

4. I don't always believe the

"my gun went off when I was cleaning it" line. It sounds better than "my gun went off when I was irresponsibly goofing around with it."

I know a man who actually was cleaning a handgun while watching TV. He set the gun on a coffee table and briefly left the room. He was watching Gunsmoke. He picked up his unloaded pistol and shot the bad guy on TV. Of course he blew his picture tube to bits. His three year old son had reloaded his revolver. That man learned his lesson however and went on to teach Minnesota DNR Gun Safety training for 34 years.

[spin]

5. If the gun leaves your hands, always assume it figured out how to load itself. ...

That's my approach.

A friend stopped by one time for a conversation and I had just finished cleaning a handgun which was on the table in front of me.

He asked me several questions about the handgun and the conversation went on to different subjects for a while. Then he would think of a new question to ask a out shooting. This happened several times.

When he left, he laughed and said, "In the hour we have been talking, you checked that revolver five times to see if it was loaded.

I replied, "Damn right."

[Jenoch]

6. It angers me the numbers of people

killed or wounded because there was a round in the chamber of a semi-auto handgun. It is such an easy thing to prevent.

Edit to add:

I also don't understand the 'gun went off when I was cleaning it' thing because to me, shooting a gun and cleaning a gun are two distinct activities. I don't have any ammunition lying around.

[spin]

7. Often that it due to the fact that many people feel that if you drop the magazine ...

the weapon is unloaded. Or they may believe that a pistol has a magazine safety and will not fire unless a magazine is inserted. Some pistols have this safety feature but many do not.

I do agree that with training it is easy to check if a pistol is loaded.

[Bazinga]

8. I really don't understand why this can't be taught in schools.

A single, one-hour lesson in a high school health class could prevent a lot of this stupidity. I think my high school health class spent an entire week showing pictures of disease-ridden genitalia in an attempt to communicate the risks of unprotected sex, why can't we spend an hour educating about the most basic aspects of firearms safety?

[NYC_SKP]

10. Why? Because Ignorance is not the exclusive domain of Teabaggers, especially on the matter of guns.

right?

[ManiacJoe]

9. This is the correct answer 99% of the time:

I don't always believe the "my gun went off when I was cleaning it" line. It sounds better than "my gun went off when I was irresponsibly goofing around with it."