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.
I remember reading the manual for a new powertool and it said something like this:
Baffled me.
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.
I have absolutely no doubt he pulled the trigger when he fell. Only certain types of mechanisms can stop the gun from firing when you pull the trigger, and there’s reasons to not want that mechanism on your gun.
Have you ever heard of a revolver? Most of those do not, and are one of the oldest designs still in use.
A gun like that needs the firing pin removed and put in a museum.
LOL that’s ridiculous. Revolvers are still great firearms, quite useful for target shooting, hunting, and self defense. A good one can last generations, as they are simple and reliable.
And they are unsafe for the owner and environment.
Don’t buy those guns idiots
Also, if you’re an idiot, don’t buy any gun! You may think “I’ll do what I want, I’ll be fine!” This guy probably did, too…
I have a couple without external safeties. The idea is to carry them in a fitted holster that covers the trigger. Kydex holsters are like $25 or $30 for any given model, it’s a no-brainer.
Also, they have internal safeties to prevent firing when dropped. Also, they have long and hard trigger pulls.
You need to pass this wisdom on to thousands and thousands of police and military forces across the planet. Because Glock.
Do you expect Lemmy to disagree with the implication that cops are fundamentally idiots?
LOL, not a Glock fan, but the special forces guys dropped by camp this weekend and I got to shoot one. What can I say? I worked flawlessly, but I had to ask what it was when it was handed to me. Didn’t look like the typical black Glock.
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.
Watch Active Self Protection and you will find piles examples where a quick draw is necessary with no time to rack the slide.
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.
Yeah, no shit. And having a safety makes it near impossible to pull the trigger. I don’t think anyone here doesn’t understand the concept of a safety mechanism.
There’s loads of people who have no idea how guns work. It’s somewhat specialized knowledge.
This too. You’d be bafflef how many people think the shell casing is part of the bullet that’s fired. Like little rockets lol.
It’s literally that xkcd geologist cartoon, where they think the average person knows the chemical formula for feltzbar and quartz. Everyone vastly overestimates the average person’s knowledge level for areas they themselves already understand.