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Odinvalknir wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:16 pm

AndyC wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 11:29 am

imkopaka wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 9:39 am

Odinvalknir wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:24 pm Someone told me once, there are no ACCIDENTAL discharges. Only negligent ones. Point being when dealing with a tool such as a firearm, you shouldn't allow any accidents. I feel that's true. In the chemical plants our safety culture says ALL accidents are preventable, both with proper training and planning.

That's a common mindset. I disagree. While 99% of unintentional discharges are negligent, there are some that are truly accidental. Striker-fired handguns in particular have occasionally suffered from manufacturing defects that resulted in a shot going off when it shouldn't have. True accidental discharges are rare, but they happen.

I'll give you an example. I worked at an indoor range when I was young and an old codger came in with a Baby Browning .25 - he came out after shooting a while, saying he was having an issue with it.

I went in and had a look - the pistol was laying on its side and pointing downrange so I picked it up (keeping it pointed downrange, finger off the trigger) and used the heel mag-release to get the mag out to clear the pistol - whereupon it fired. The old coot went bananas but I didn't care about his erroneous opinion, my finger was nowhere near the trigger. I suspect the slight jarring of the pistol while trying to get the mag out was enough to allow the (very primitive) sear on the firing-pin to slip off and fire the pistol.

My negligence? Nope - just wear and tear combined with a poor design.

I guess what those people really mean is that almost always a claim of an AD can actually be traced back to negligence of some kind - but I don't usually bother to argue over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I would say that was STILL caused by negligence. Maybe not yours, but definitely someone's. Same with the issues that plauged the p320 when it first released. None of that constitutes 'accidental' to me. There should be ABSOLUTELY ZERO room for any kind of accidents when dealing with a deadly weapon. Yes humans make mistakes, but those mistakes can usually be mitigated by proper handling and training. Hell even knowledge of how to clear jams, and issues.

Negligence by definition requires the actor to have known better, taken shortcuts, or failed to do basic due diligence. I don't think we can hold engineering issues, machining issues, poor design from inexperienced designers, or part failure to the same standard as an operator following five basic weapon safety rules. Do those issues create some kind of responsibility or even liability for the manufacturer? Sure. But that's different from negligence IMO. Additionally, we are talking about the discharge here. Root cause analysis usually comes a little later; initially people are focused on the person controlling (or failing to control) the gun when it went off. It is either intentional (gun and shooter both operated correctly), negligent (gun operated correctly, shooter did not), or accidental (shooter operated correctly, gun did not).

Odinvalknir wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:24 pm Someone told me once, there are no ACCIDENTAL discharges. Only negligent ones. Point being when dealing with a tool such as a firearm, you shouldn't allow any accidents. I feel that's true. In the chemical plants our safety culture says ALL accidents are preventable, both with proper training and planning.

That's a common mindset. I disagree. While 99% of unintentional discharges are negligent, there are some that are truly accidental. Striker-fired handguns in particular have occasionally suffered from manufacturing defects that resulted in a shot going off when it shouldn't have. True accidental discharges are rare, but they happen. I once saw a video of somebody whose weapon was already holstered and secured and it just went off for no reason because the seer failed and shot him in the leg. Sig Sauer had the issue with the light triggers a few years back that caused several accidental discharges. Machine guns (or other guns if you're abusing the heck out of them) can have cook-offs - I've seen it happen in person. I dislike when people say there is no such thing as an accidental discharge because it puts the preconception in your mind that it is always the fault of the shooter - so firmly, in fact, that when an accidental discharge actually does occur, the victim doesn't get a chance to explain himself and is immediately held up as an example of failure. I think we owe the gun community a smidge more fairness than that.