A man taking his trash to an apartment dumpster was shot and killed after he slipped while walking and the gun he was carrying went off accidentally, according to San Antonio police.
A man taking his trash to an apartment dumpster was shot and killed after he slipped while walking and the gun he was carrying went off accidentally, according to San Antonio police.
Some guns, shockingly, don’t have a safety.
What? And those are legal in the US? It’s worse than I thought.
Well first of all there is more than one kind of “safety.” There are guns that don’t have a switch on the side that says “go bang” and “don’t go bang.” Glocks, for example.
A Glock pistol doesn’t have a manual safety. It has a drop safety, which is a little tab that prevents the firing pin from going forward that is moved out of the way by the pull of the trigger. That way there’s no way you can drop, hit or shake the gun to make it go off without actually pulling the trigger. If you look at the trigger of a Glock, it looks like there’s two; like there’s a second trigger that sticks out of the first one. You see this on power tools too, it’s a little lever that prevents the trigger from being pulled unless you first push that out of the way. That makes it a lot less likely to fire if you brush the trigger against something; you have to put your finger in the trigger guard, push the trigger safety down out of the way, and then pull the trigger.
Also, the way a Glock works, you can’t load a round into the chamber without cocking the action, and you can’t decock the action without pulling the trigger and firing the gun. (assuming no ammunition malfunctions here) When the gun is cocked, the trigger snaps forward, when the gun isn’t cocked, the trigger stays back. It is common practice when carrying a Glock to carry it with a full magazine, an empty chamber and the action uncocked. With no cartridge in the chamber and the action uncocked, trying to pull the trigger won’t do anything because it’s already “back”. You’d need to pull the slide back to cock the gun and chamber a round, then it’ll go bang. If you’ve fired a couple rounds, and the chamber is loaded and the gun is cocked, the way you return it to the carry state is to remove the magazine, pull back the slide to eject the round in the chamber, point the gun in a safe direction and pull the trigger to dry fire the gun.
On the more primitive side, you have single-action revolvers. A single-action only revolver means the trigger ONLY does the job of releasing the hammer so it can fire the cartridge. If the hammer is forward, it has to be pulled back with the user’s thumb or other hand to cock the action and rotate the cylinder to the next chamber. There’s no need for a lever on the side of the gun because you already need to fiddle with a lever on the back of the gun. If the gun has been recently fired, the hammer will be resting on a spent cartridge. I have heard some say it is good practice to carry such a gun with the hammer resting on an empty chamber, which is basically the same idea as the Glock above; you’re loaded with one fewer round than the absolute maximum but carrying in a way where there’s no bullet aligned with the barrel and ready to go.
Regardless how many types of “safety” for a gun exist, this one obviously didn’t have the one it shuld have had.
Just not having his finger on the trigger probably would have saved his life.
S&W SD9 is one of those. Designed for first time home protection. The trigger has two steps to fire, preventing it from going off if dropped.
I remember reading the manual for a new powertool and it said something like this:
Baffled me.
Am I missing something or are there just no gun owners here. This is incredibly disingenuous, and even dangerous, “advice”.
A loaded gun with a round in the chamber should fire when the trigger is pulled, every single time. They should not fire when the trigger is not pulled.
Following any one of the three safety rules prevents 100% of “accidents”. There are no real gun accidents besides catastrophic mechanical failure (which does happen, but usually with shit ammo and shit guns or poorly maintained guns).
Depending on traditional safeties encourages poor gun handling habits and adds precious time to fire when milliseconds count. “Safety-less” pistols will not fire unless the trigger is pulled, period.
Safty-less pistol owner here. Glock-19 Gen3. Even though the gun is resistant to firing unless the trigger is pulled (ie dropping it) it won’t go off. That being said, I never carry with a round chambered because of this. It takes a half a second extra to chamber the round, I’d rather take that than carry a loaded round pointed at my spine or crotch all day.
Yeah, this idea that you are going to just be on the street and need to quickdraw a weapon like ten paces at dawn style is the biggest fucking delusion on top of a mountain of delusions in the gun community.
How to fire a gun without touching the trigger
Modern designed production firearms have internal safeties that prevent the firing pin from moving forward if the trigger isn’t pulled.
That video is on single action revolvers which have been out of vogue for over a century.
Skip to 1:40
https://youtu.be/V2RDitgCaD0?si=
For all the gun owners in the thread, GarandThumb recently did a video (youtube gun guy) where he drop tested several handguns and a couple of them actually did go off. As many of you are saying, firearms shouldn’t go off without the trigger being pulled and that’s for sure the case a large majority of the time.
Frustratingly the article doesn’t mention anything about the make, model or condition of the firearm here. It’s totally possible it went off just from being dropped.
1911 and 2011 are not drop safe as they do not mitigate the firing pin carrying forward and striking the primer when the gun is dropped. Known issue for a long time with the design of the 1911 and was addressed in the manual of arms. The failure is when the crown of the barrel strikes first. It was deemed acceptable for use as the round was most likely to be discharged when the barrel was pointed at the ground.
Most firearms designed after 1940 are drop safe. The exceptions are the ones that follow the flawed design of the 1911
The sidearm that replaced the 1911 in military service the Beretta 92 was, some say, primarily selected as it was hammer fired and drop safe so as to stay as close to the then current manual of arms and sidearm doctrine.