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Old November 25, 2012, 12:04 PM   #51
MarkCO
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An example of difficulty in having records of an accidental shooting unsealed.
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2012/01/...uah_shoot.html

another example
http://www.kpax.com/news/remington-l...y-vs-security/
Dude, really! Are you kidding??? One was an inquest, the other a settlement. NEITHER was a verdict and those records were not used in a court proceeding. Get a grip on reality.
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Old November 25, 2012, 12:19 PM   #52
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Accedental discharges are 90% a head space problem (the shooters not the weapon). If you violate the safety rules, unintended discharges occur.
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Old November 25, 2012, 12:41 PM   #53
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Dude, really! Are you kidding??? One was an inquest, the other a settlement. NEITHER was a verdict and those records were not used in a court proceeding. Get a grip on reality.
I'd written
Quote:
Its not uncommon for lawsuits involving liability when no criminal charges are brought to end up with records sealed and non disclosure statements signed as a stipulation of the settlement.
If a verdict of guilty is brought in on a charge of murder then its obviously not going to be treated the same as a case of accidental death.
If the Coroner concludes the death was an accident then there may or may not be further proceedings such as a lawsuit.

We are afterall speaking of accidents, not murders disguised as accidents, though in the first link the DA seems to believe otherwise.

And as I said, go down to your local hospital and ask for copies of any patients medical records and see how far you get.
Go ask for the autopsy report of an accident victim when you aren't next of kin.
Go ask a Forensic scientists for unfetered access to his files, on scene photos, result of balistics tests etc. If he lets you rummage through his stuff tell us what you find.

Accidents are accidents, criminal assaults are criminal assaults.
For that matter even criminal records can be sealed and not available to the public.

Your argument seems to be that every gunowner has x-ray eyes and would know for a fact whether his hammer does or does not have a hairline crack in the half cock and/or a chip of steel wedged in the full cock notch at any one time.
I have an old top break here some where that had just those conditions, its dissasembled in a bin because parts aren't available to fix it.

Its assumed that unless a gun is pointed at someone they are 100% safe from being struck by a bullet. Yet several cases in recent years have involved bullets tearing through walls , floors, or ceilings, and striking people who were nowhere in sight. Bullets can glance off tile or stone, or even thick window glass and end up in places no where near the bore line.
One fellow I knew had an AD while he had his revolver pointed at an old sofa. The bullet hit a coil spring and the now Y shaped bullet came back out the hole it went in and struck him in the face. It only bruised and cut his cheek below the eye. He never reported it, I guess I'm the only one he ever told about it, and only then because I asked where he found that Y shaped bullet.

Sears wear down , chip , or are bent, and seldom are these defects obvious or even detectable unless the handgun is stripped down completely.

If every revolver was in factory fresh condition, there'd still be the occasional AD due to outside influences. A pistol might never be pointed at a person, but bullets have a way of going their own way if not directed.

Follow all the rules and you greatly decrease the possibility of an accident, but there are unforseeable circumstances.

Last edited by Rainbow Demon; November 25, 2012 at 01:15 PM.
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Old November 25, 2012, 01:08 PM   #54
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I AM a forensic scientist, so I already know what is in my files.
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Old November 25, 2012, 01:17 PM   #55
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I AM a forensic scientist, so I already know what is in my files.
And yet somehow you've never run across a single action revolver that had gone off due to a worn sear.


Your argument seems to follow the same tack as the Wolf huggers who used to claim no wolf had ever attacked a human being.
Or those who claimed there was no record of a cannibal eating a missionary ( no bull someone actually tried to claim that).
That it is impossible for a cap&ball revolver to cycle like a full auto.
Or the myth that no Enfield ever ka-boomed unless when using handloads.

I found evidence that disproved all those claims, not just apocyphal stories. I had to search the records of the Canadian house of commons and British parliament for some of that evidence that had been read into the official government records.
For the full auto cap&Ball I found a journal of gunshot wounds kept by a frontier surgeon, he had witnessed the phenomena himself. I'd seen this happen before so I knew it could happen, I just had to find an official reliable source, that medical journal did the trick.

Should I chose to invest the time I'm fairly certain I can find records of Single Action AD incidents involving injury or death that are no longer sealed. (If I can dig up that surgeon's journal again there should be cases there) It will take awhile, and I don't think I'll start on it today.

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Old November 25, 2012, 02:27 PM   #56
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Really, Rainbow, get some help. Claiming I said something I did not won't cut it. Done with your pettiness.

I hope the OP gained some benefit from the overwhelming majority of the people whose feet are on solid ground.
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Old November 25, 2012, 06:36 PM   #57
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MarkCo, you can win the contest if you can prove this statement
Quote:
Quote:
All this speculation and personal opinons and yet nobody has posted any documentation.

Because it does not exist.
You can not prove a negative by simply saying you have never found such documentation.
That you believe what you claim is not in question, that your logic is flawed should be obvious.

A Forensic scientist who has never even heard of a cocked single action revolver discharging without a finger on the trigger must be very rare. If you have come across such an incident, why not tell us about it.

Also just how often do you let people come in off the street and riffle through your records?

PS
the original question
Quote:
What I want to know is are there documented cases of people shooting someone accidentally while using a SA gun because of the short pull? I don't care if it is Leo's or civilians or military. Thank You
A huge portion of the U S Military's personel and medical records were lost during an ill advised attempt to digitalize it all back in the 70's. People have been digging for paper hard copy of these files ever since.
I was told some files I'd asked for still existed, in a freaking cave in West Virginia. Probably sitting in a box on the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant , right next to the jar containing Hitler's brain.

Britian lost almost all its pre and most post WW1 military personel files to fire bombing during WW2.
Another great housecleaning at the Ministry of Defense destroyed almost all official documents pertaining to development of the Enfield rifle. Lord Cottesloe called this a "slaughter". Records had to be reconstructed from scattered copies in the personal papers of retired officers.

The County where my mom was born lost every single record in a courthouse fire in the 1940's. Some was retrievable from microfilm, but most of the county birth records had to be reconstructed from newspaper birth announcements and/or family bible entries, replacement birth certificates required signatures of two witness not related to the subject.

To believe that all records and court documents can be found by a simple data base search is a bit naive.

You can not prove something does not exist simply because you haven't found it.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Last edited by Rainbow Demon; November 25, 2012 at 06:48 PM.
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Old November 25, 2012, 07:51 PM   #58
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My gunsmith tells me it's the faulty loose nut behind the trigger. Is he right?
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Old November 26, 2012, 03:25 AM   #59
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My gunsmith tells me it's the faulty loose nut behind the trigger. Is he right?
More often than not.

Undue wear to vital parts can be caused by poor guncare, or environmental conditions, but it can also be due to a manufacturing defect such as poor heat treatment. I've seen a lot of poor heat treatment in the Cap & Ball replica revolvers and older pocket or house pistols.

Just today I was examing a 1922 FN/Browning I've owned for many years but seldom fired.
Externally all metal surfaces look to be in near new condition. Theres no blurring of any of the markings so its never been refinished. All parts easily inspected in a basic field striping show no wear at all.
Despite its apparent excellent condition when I used the safety lever in its slide latch function something odd occurred.
I latched the slide back and then watched as the latch ever so slowly disengaged itself. I tried this several times and it did it each time like clockwork.
The mating surfaces are visible and to the eye show no wear and look to be at the proper angle.
I then checked the function of the safety and found that while it took a noticable amount of force to engage, it took very little force to disengage. Not quite floppy but far to easy.
So as it stands I figure its a matter of whatever form of detent this safety uses.
I'm a bit leery of disassembling the lock completely, till I find a tutorial on this model.
Like as not it will require a replacement part that will be very hard to find in new condition.

Since repairing a Savage with spread frame rails that would fire when the safety was disengaged without any contact with the trigger I now no this can and almost certainly has happened.
If a firearm discharges without the trigger being pressed then its due to a defect in the firearm.
If the person holding it has negligently pointed it at a person then he would be at fault if they are injured, but the injury would not have occured had that firearm not been defective.
A firearm might be pointed in what would appear to be a safe direction, yet the bullet may still end up going in an unintended direction.
In the case of a SKS that slamfired and went full auto, the rifle was not pointed at anyone, yet the last several rounds of that unintended full auto burst destroyed a man's head.
Some AD's involving defective Glocks have injured persons not in the same room with the pistol. One SKS slamfire killed a man sleeping on another floor of the house.
A firearm never designed for full auto bursts can jump out of one's hands if it cut loose unexpectedly. The person holding it at the time would not be responsible for loosing control of the weapon due to such an unpredictable occurance. The fault would lay with the condition of the firearm or ammunition.

Last edited by Rainbow Demon; November 26, 2012 at 03:41 AM.
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Old November 26, 2012, 07:23 AM   #60
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Its not uncommon for lawsuits involving liability when no criminal charges are brought to end up with records sealed and non disclosure statements signed as a stipulation of the settlement.
Sure, like with the REM 700 lawsuits, but there were still several done before Remington starting settling and in the process doing so under the conditions of the suit being sealed. With more than 100 years of 1911 single action and longer for revolvers, I don't think sealed lawsuits is the problem for the lack of information.
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Old November 26, 2012, 12:59 PM   #61
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There is a lot of information available on unintended discharges. The only obstacle here is the specific nature of the question from the op.

The NYPD annually publishes information on unintended discharges. Problem is they do not use single action handguns. Even then the shots fired were the result of poor gun handling, mistakes, etc. and not the fault of the design of the gun.

Here is a link to that information...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloa...eport_2011.pdf

However it is clear, over time, that some designs may be more apt to have certain types of "accidents". To quote from the 2011 NYPD report...

Quote:
Three of the 13 firearms discharged during purely unintentional incidents were weapons that were not the officers’ regular service or off-duty firearms—two were perpetrator’s weap-ons, and one was an ESU Glock 19 equipped with an under-the-barrel flashlight.
More notably, six of the remaining ten firearms were also manufactured by Glock (three model 19s and three model 26s). In fact, with regard to officers experiencing unintentional dis-charges while loading or unloading their own firearms, 75 percent of such incidents involved Glocks. Their overrepresentation in this category has been seen consistently over the past five years: since 2007, there have been 31 incidents in which officers unintentionally discharged their own firearms during loading/unloading, and 22 of those incidents—71 percent—have involved Glocks. This most likely stems from the fact that a person disassembling a Glock must depress the trigger to do so.
This factual information does not make the Glock a poor design. It does show that when a gun is issued to large numbers of people and you keep track of what "accidents" occur and how, that it can help you pinpoint the areas that need improvement and that is usually in training.

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Old November 26, 2012, 01:10 PM   #62
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Massad F Ayoob...

I'd PM Massad Ayoob for details or legal cases where a SA handgun was used in a court case.
Ayoob, www.massadayoobgroup.com , is a highly respected legal expert, instructor & sworn LE officer. He also competes in pistol matches & understands how firearms work.
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Old November 26, 2012, 02:42 PM   #63
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The cases Ayoob has written on were mentioned earlier in this thread.

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Old November 26, 2012, 03:40 PM   #64
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Heres the supreme court decision on one such case.
The pistol was a double action revolver rather than single action, but the defendent cocked the hammer in single action mode.
http://ny.findacase.com/research/wfr...0165.NY.htm/qx

Pointing the gun at a man advancing on the defendent with a weapon while shouting death threats was no problem, that was clearly self defense.
They convicted him because he had cocked the pistol and a near miss from a passing car startled him causing his finger to twitch on the trigger.

As for "he should not have put his finger on the trigger. The man who was shot was advancing shouting death threats and brandishing a weapon, "there is no calm reflection in the face of an upraised knife".

PS
That link is of course not a document. Its a reproduction of a document.
The text tells of certain testimony, but does not give any documentation to prove anything said about the revolver and only recounts testimony rather than acting as a transcript.
It does not include an autopsy report, nor is any forensic evidence or crime scene photographs included.

Had these records been sealed they would not be found on the internet.

Last edited by Rainbow Demon; November 26, 2012 at 04:23 PM.
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Old November 26, 2012, 03:59 PM   #65
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To me that would be the last consideration when choosing a firearm. I have put tens of thousands of rounds trough firearms of all sorts and have never had or seen a misfire using modern ammo.
That was true for me too ... until last week. Was at the range with the Boy Scouts nad one of the boys had a mis-fire. He raised his hand and asked what he should do. He was shooting my Smith 5906. I told him it's a DA/SA gun (as we had covered briefly before the outing). I told him just pull the trigger again. It went BANG on the second strike. Yea I always figured too that that's a nice sales feature but one you'll never need ... not anymore! If that was a round you really needed to have count, then a second strike from the DA/SA would have saved the day.
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Old November 26, 2012, 04:16 PM   #66
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Just search 'officer shoots self in leg holstering' or 'officer shoots self in leg' and dozens of news reports will show up. Most are with Glocks which are labeled as DAO but as stated previously, these are actually closer to SA than they are to DA trigger pulls.

I was looking for the one story in particular where an officer shot himself in the leg when the inside string of his jacket (the one that secures the liner to the main coat) slipped over the trigger and pulled it discharging his Glock. Couldn't find that one but I thought this story was a pretty good example. I'll stick to my DA/SA triggers thank you.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1725682/posts
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Old November 26, 2012, 04:46 PM   #67
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The trigger disconect safety of the S&W 59 is a good idea.
The magazine disconnect gets bad press for combat use, but for a home defense or CCW its an excellent option.
At the end of the day you can simply remove the magazine and leave a round chambered, which in the long run is safer than clearing the chamber every evening, then chambering a round the next day, no worries about bullets being pushed into the case by repeated chamberings.
To clear the chamber of my FN you can't retract the slide while the safety is engaged, and must grip the pistol firmly enough that the grip safety is disengaged in order to retract the slide. Same goes for the 1911.
The recoil spring of the FN is strong, and the slide small, several times when clearing the chamber the live round fell back into the chamber rather than ejecting. It takes a rapid movement of the slide to eject an unfired round and clear the ejection port. Often as not I have to let the extracted round fall out the magazine well.

For complete safety I'd not leave a round chambered in the S&W, but when no one other than myself can access the magazine the chambered round makes it much easier to make the pistol ready to repel home invaders if awakened. No fumbling about, just slide the magazine home and flick off the firing pin blocking and locking safety.
Which reminds me. My S&W 59 has the safety that both blocks and locks the firing pin. I've read that some earlier production 59 pistols have the block but not the lock. Its possible that mine was retrofitted at some point.

Also theres a thin opening visible with slide closed, through this opening you can see a thin slice of the case head of a chambered round. Not quite as good as a loaded chamber indicator, but better than nothing.
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Old November 26, 2012, 05:12 PM   #68
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The 1911 cannot be safely carried with a round in the chamber hammer on it I dont care if its inertia driven or not. Its meant to be carried Condition 1 or Condition 3. And as for AD its the users fault doesnt matter if its SA or DA.
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Old November 26, 2012, 06:33 PM   #69
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The 1911 cannot be safely carried with a round in the chamber hammer on it I dont care if its inertia driven or not.
Drop tests indicate differently, but then again there may be extreme circumstances not covered by drop tests, perhaps some may carry while working as a high steel rigger or rodeo bull rider.
In anycase drop tests indicate that a 1911 with hammer down is no more likely to go off than the same pistol cocked and locked.
Quote:
Its meant to be carried Condition 1 or Condition 3.
We were discussing the designer's intention (no thumb safety on the 1910 prototype) and instruction manuals, the army intended for cocked and locked carry if combat was imminent, and only then in the issue flap holster.
Of course any time after the gun has been drawn and cocked or cocked and fired, the thumb safety is very valuable if you then have to move about or are subject to unexpected blows or startling events such as gunfire or explosions, etc.
I have read an account of a 1911 carried cocked and locked in a thumb break holster being disabled by a hard knock on the cocked hammer. It did not go off, but then again it could not be fired at all until after a very expensive stay at a gunsmith shop.

Quote:

And as for AD its the users fault doesnt matter if its SA or DA.
If the pistol is in A-1 working condition thats usually true.
If the pistol has a worn out sear or other mechanical defect due to substandard materials or heat treatment, then it may well be the fault of the manufacturer.
There have been recalls of Colt manufactured 1911 pistols due to poorly heat treated safety levers, with the warning that these can cause an accidental discharge.
Firing pins don't grow longer with use, so if the floating pin is long enough to contact a primer with hammer down, its the manufacturers fault.
If a primer ignites with only a very light ding or vibration of a safety strap snap being applied, then its the cartridge manufacturers fault, and it could just as easily have gone off when chambering a round.
The Remington Rand is one of the best WW2 era clones of the 1911, but the early production pistols don't pass the parts interchangability tests. Some of these require careful handfitting of replacement parts to ensure safe operation.

But really its all a matter of what you feel comfortable with.

I don't feel comfortable in carrying cocked and locked because I've run across an autoloader that could go off the moment the safety was disengaged without a finger on the trigger. Not a 1911, but it affected how I feel about autoloaders.

PS
At least twice I've had .22 rifles go off when the safety was disengaged, not handguns, but these also effect how I feel about trusting the safeties of cocked firearms.

and a PPS
Only reason I came back so soon was I just found that on my FN 1922 the thumb safety and the magazine safety only operate if the grip safety works.
If the upper engagement surface of the grip safety is broken or worn down then neithter the thumb safety nor the magazine safety will prevent the pistol from being fired.
Figured other FN 1910 or 1922 owners should be told of this.

Last edited by Rainbow Demon; November 26, 2012 at 06:44 PM.
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Old November 26, 2012, 09:10 PM   #70
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Actually it can. My older Springfield had no hammer safety and to my knowledge only very early 1911s have this safety and series 70 and 80 and beyond in colt have one. So yes if the spring holding the firing pin back is weak it can cause a light primer strike making it fire which is a very bad idea. As for the 1910 prototype ive never researched on it and have no clue what features it has or if it operates differently than its m1911 counterpart. Its only more prone to go off if you dont follow the manual or you decide unsafe practices on handling the gun.
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Old November 27, 2012, 07:20 AM   #71
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Actually it can. My older Springfield had no hammer safety and to my knowledge only very early 1911s have this safety and series 70 and 80 and beyond in colt have one.
Not sure what you mean by "hammer safety". Do you mean a firing pin lock?
Quote:
So yes if the spring holding the firing pin back is weak it can cause a light primer strike making it fire which is a very bad idea.
If the spring were light enough to allow the pin to indent the primer if dropped with hammer down it would be even more likely to indent the primer if carried cocked and locked.
With hammer down the spring would be in preload condition.
With hammer back and no preload on the spring the pin would accumulate inertia in its travel.

In either case if a spring were so weak as to allow the pin to indent a primer if dropped then it would do the same when the slide was released when loading a round, or cause doubling or full auto bursts.

Ammunition intended for autoloading weapons are supposed to have stout primer cups. If a primer is ignited by a very light ding or vibration then its a defective primer, and it would have fired whether hammer was down or back and locked.
Defective primers of that sort have caused rounds to go off in the cylinder of a revolver when recoil of a round fired bounced the unfired cases against a recoil shield that had dings and tool marks.

After all the recalls of Federal ammunition I no longer trust their centerfire ammunition of any caliber, and certainly not for an autoloader.

PS
You occasionally hear of slamfires of SKS rifles that aren't fitted with a firing pin return spring.
I nearly had one myself.
Luckily the ammo I was using was Russian milspec ammo with stout primer cup and it was relatively insensitive.
When I single loaded a round with muzzle down then ejected the round unfired, I found the primer deeply indented. Had this been a commercial sporting rifle primer it would have almost certainly gone off.
Theres no scenario I can imagine where dropping an SKS (short of it falling from the roof of a three story building) could generate the velocity of the firing pin capable of denting any non defective primer that deeply.
The speed of the bolt slamming forwards on the other hand is much greater than speed of the rifle in any sort of foreseeable drop of a rifle.

The resistence of stripping a round from the magazine slows the bolt enough that such indentations are less likely, but slamfires have happened regardless.

Last edited by Rainbow Demon; November 27, 2012 at 07:32 AM.
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