Report: Officer Shoots Self While Cleaning Gun in Federal Courtroom

[AtheistCrusader]

30. Depends.

Some 90 million gun owners in this country, so 'hearing it a lot' is actually not statistically meaningful, it's incredibly rare.

But 'accidental' (negligent) discharges when cleaning it break down into a couple categories, one of them more likely for police officers, as they are prone to using a particular type of pistol, either Glock or Springfield, of a certain type; Dual Action or Dual Action Only (Glock calls it theirs 'Safe Action', but meh, it's categorically a Dual Action Only system).

1. Actual accident.
2. Some other idiocy (watch this!) that leads to a discharge of the weapon, and then a 'cleaning it' cover story.
3. Suicide or suicide attempt. Suicide often abrogates life insurance, and sometimes people will lay out a can of break free, a dirty rag, and then shoot themselves in the head, as an 'accident', so they get their suicide, and their family still gets the insurance. Sad, but it happens.


The reason I called out those types of service weapons, is that in the process of disassembling a Dual Action Only pistol, often part of the process is pulling back the slide, and then the trigger. So you have to be genuinely sure the damn thing is unloaded, and you haven't absent-mindedly put the mag back in it, accidentally (again, negligently) chambering a round, before pulling the trigger, and having the gun work as advertised.

It's a design philosophy issue that has produced some problems for negligent or very inexperienced users. (which is then a training issue/supervision issue)