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PSA Don't be an idiot like me.

MattMan81

MattMan81

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2020
Messages
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The Mitten
I made a super huge mistake to night. A few actually. Lucky no one was injured.
After shooting at my deer. Which i posted about previously. I hung my AR up on the hook behind me. I was pretty sure I flipped the safety back on. But either I didn't complete the action all the way, or I didn't do it in the adrenaline rush. I lower my pack, and take my gun back off the hook, and go to un load it. Drop the magazine out and then rack out the next bullet that was loaded in. Well.. apparently i did not click the safety on. My finger slipped when pushing the magazine release and I pulled the trigger. The barrel was pointed out and not down at the ground. Lucky it was pointed towards the row of trees on the other side of the field, which had more trees behind it. If I would have pointed it more one way or the other, it could have been headed for one of the houses down there. I made multiple mistakes. I got very lucky. Please make sure your safety is on and pointed in a safe direction when you un load. Lucky my kids were not with me. I was thinking about that deer and after watching it run off my mind was racing. I lost some focus on what I was doing. After 28 years of hunting with a fire arm, I never did anything like this. This was my first season with an AR frame. Im gonna definitely re evaluate the whole thing. I may be only putting one round in at a time going forward. It scared the crap out of me. I went thru hunter safety with my daughter this summer. So it was all fresh in my mind. But I still had an oops..

Please please be careful. Don't be like me.
 
MattMan81 said:
I made a super huge mistake to night. A few actually. Lucky no one was injured.
After shooting at my deer. Which i posted about previously. I hung my AR up on the hook behind me. I was pretty sure I flipped the safety back on. But either I didn't complete the action all the way, or I didn't do it in the adrenaline rush. I lower my pack, and take my gun back off the hook, and go to un load it. Drop the magazine out and then rack out the next bullet that was loaded in. Well.. apparently i did not click the safety on. My finger slipped when pushing the magazine release and I pulled the trigger. The barrel was pointed out and not down at the ground. Lucky it was pointed towards the row of trees on the other side of the field, which had more trees behind it. If I would have pointed it more one way or the other, it could have been headed for one of the houses down there. I made multiple mistakes. I got very lucky. Please make sure your safety is on and pointed in a safe direction when you un load. Lucky my kids were not with me. I was thinking about that deer and after watching it run off my mind was racing. I lost some focus on what I was doing. After 28 years of hunting with a fire arm, I never did anything like this. This was my first season with an AR frame. Im gonna definitely re evaluate the whole thing. I may be only putting one round in at a time going forward. It scared the crap out of me. I went thru hunter safety with my daughter this summer. So it was all fresh in my mind. But I still had an oops..

Please please be careful. Don't be like me.
Click to expand...

takes a real man to admit mistakes

i had a Remington 700 that had a faulty trigger. google it. rifle went off went you flipped off the safety. gut shot a doe. scared crap outta me also. stays with you a long time.
 
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As said above I’m glad you held yourself accountable and very glad no one was hurt. Throwing safety on and off isn’t even a thought for me anymore, multiple combat tours and being a firearms instructor for a while and having gun safety literally beat into me as a child has made guns safest in my hands. I always fear way too many people with guns have no idea what safety actually looks like, I see it more with my dads aged people. There are 4 rules of gun safety and nothing can ever go wrong if all 3 are followed if something goes wrong 1 of the 4 were broken. Period. I ask gun owners all the time what they are and rarely get an answer to which I say if you don’t know and live by the 4 rules you should be nowhere near a firearm. It is a tool and it MUST be treated correctly above all else ALWAYS. I’m glad no one was hurt including yourself. For info I will now state the 4 rules that every single person with a firearm should literally live by. 1.) Treat every firearm as if it were loaded. 2.) Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy. 3.) keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. And 4.) be sure of your target and what is behind/beyond it. Notice, safety on or not if the 4 rules are followed nothing bad will happen regardless. And I’m dead serious if you own a firearm and don’t know these rules better than your own kids names then you should be nowhere near a firearm. I know it’s harsh but so is killing someone for being ignorant. There’s a reason why even with all the PC stuff going on I can still put my hands on people of any rank and gender while running a live fire range in the military bc it’s that serious.
 
The_Fit_Ness_Monster said:
As said above I’m glad you held yourself accountable and very glad no one was hurt. Throwing safety on and off isn’t even a thought for me anymore, multiple combat tours and being a firearms instructor for a while and having gun safety literally beat into me as a child has made guns safest in my hands. I always fear way too many people with guns have no idea what safety actually looks like, I see it more with my dads aged people. There are 4 rules of gun safety and nothing can ever go wrong if all 3 are followed if something goes wrong 1 of the 4 were broken. Period. I ask gun owners all the time what they are and rarely get an answer to which I say if you don’t know and live by the 4 rules you should be nowhere near a firearm. It is a tool and it MUST be treated correctly above all else ALWAYS. I’m glad no one was hurt including yourself. For info I will now state the 4 rules that every single person with a firearm should literally live by. 1.) Treat every firearm as if it were loaded. 2.) Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy. 3.) keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. And 4.) be sure of your target and what is behind/beyond it. Notice, safety on or not if the 4 rules are followed nothing bad will happen regardless. And I’m dead serious if you own a firearm and don’t know these rules better than your own kids names then you should be nowhere near a firearm. I know it’s harsh but so is killing someone for being ignorant. There’s a reason why even with all the PC stuff going on I can still put my hands on people of any rank and gender while running a live fire range in the military bc it’s that serious.
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Good post! I’m also a hunter safety instructor and have been at it awhile now. Although operating the safety is very important, like you said, more important is keeping that muzzle pointed in the right direction at all times. We always tell our students, act like your gun has no safety because it is a mechanical device and can fail. Never, and I repeat never rely on a gun safety. Never substitute the safety for safe gun handling practices. We tell all of our students before and at the end of the class…. If there is nothing else you remember, remember to Keep the MUZZLE POINTED in a safe direction at all times. Everything else is secondary to that simple action.
 
woodsdog2 said:
Good post! I’m also a hunter safety instructor and have been at it awhile now. Although operating the safety is very important, like you said, more important is keeping that muzzle pointed in the right direction at all times. We always tell our students, act like your gun has no safety because it is a mechanical device and can fail. Never, and I repeat never rely on a gun safety. Never substitute the safety for safe gun handling practices. We tell all of our students before and at the end of the class…. If there is nothing else you remember, remember to Keep the MUZZLE POINTED in a safe direction at all times. Everything else is secondary to that simple action.
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That’s a breath of fresh air to hear. And couldn’t be more correct. Keep up the good fight, gun owners already have enough trouble as it is, no need for us to go screwing it up for ourselves. I’ll never forget 11 years old squirrel hunting with my 20guage and I accidentally flagged my dad, he swiftly grabbed the barrel and butt stroked me, bloody nose and sobbing I was punished the rest of the weekend while everyone else hunted, and I watched the barrels of various guns I’ve carried throughout the years like a hawk and now it’s just 2nd nature. My kids don’t get their first BB gun until they can recite the 4 rules and I even hold them accountable with nerf guns, DONT EVER POINT GUNS AT PEOPLE, until they get older and understand and can think through situations that dictate lethal force that’s what they know and hear often.
 
woodsdog2 said:
Good post! I’m also a hunter safety instructor and have been at it awhile now. Although operating the safety is very important, like you said, more important is keeping that muzzle pointed in the right direction at all times. We always tell our students, act like your gun has no safety because it is a mechanical device and can fail. Never, and I repeat never rely on a gun safety. Never substitute the safety for safe gun handling practices. We tell all of our students before and at the end of the class…. If there is nothing else you remember, remember to Keep the MUZZLE POINTED in a safe direction at all times. Everything else is secondary to that simple action.
Click to expand...
What's ironic. Was after I made sure it was safe and empty. The first thing that popped into my mind, was my daughter's hunter safe class, where the guy handed the other the gun that had a bad safety and blank in it. It was to show the safety can fail and it went off when he took it from the other guy.
 
Will Harris said:
takes a real man to admit mistakes

i had a Remington 700 that had a faulty trigger. google it. rifle went off went you flipped off the safety. gut shot a doe. scared crap outta me also. stays with you a long time.
Click to expand...
My dad had a guide gun in 350 rem mag that had the recall on it. Blew a hole in the cab of his 01 f-350 and the percussion blew out the dome light bulb one opening morning. I was 4 or 5 years old at the time
 
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Done something close several years ago. I shot a doe. Walked out to the truck for the cart. When I got to the truck I sat my gun in the seat. Got all my stuff ready, then grabbed the gun to head back in because you never know. When I did the trigger caught on something and shot through the passenger side door in to the tree beside the truck.
I didn’t even remember loading it in the tree. I thought the gun was unloaded the whole time I carried it out of the woods. Man that could have been a life altering day for me, my family, some else and their family it’s really quite scary what could have happened!
Thank goodness that it all ended well and Learn and move on as I did.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
My thumb slipped off the hammer of a marlin 336 and I had a negligent discharge. My kid had just shot a doe and it scared the daylights out of both of us. I’ve owned three Remington 700’s and did have one that would discharge when the safety was taken off. A good cleaning with carb cleaner fixed it and I never had any issues after that.
 
Ckwilli said:
I’ve owned three Remington 700’s and did have one that would discharge when the safety was taken off. A good cleaning with carb cleaner fixed it and I never had any issues after that.
Click to expand...

After a good cleaning, dad could never replicate his, but he still snagged a timney trigger for it.
 
Thanks for sharing. I got a bunch of crap for setting my (bolt action, nothing chambered and with the magazine and bolt both removed) rifle down sideways (so barrel was pointed in the direction of other shooters) at the range a year or so ago. Rightfully so, it was stupid and they couldn't see from where they were that it was unloaded/didn't have the bolt installed, I was the range jerk that day. complacency is not a good thing, and I hope to not repeat that sort of mistake again. Accidents happen, glad nobody was hurt, and thanks for sharing the reminder.
 
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just learn from it.....i know by now that i have to be careful after i've shot an animal....i know that historically it's when i've done stuff like climb down only to realize my carabiner was not locked on my lineman's etc....i tell myself "this is when you want to be dumb, so take your time....and don't be dumb!"
 
Ckwilli said:
My thumb slipped off the hammer of a marlin 336 and I had a negligent discharge. My kid had just shot a doe and it scared the daylights out of both of us. I’ve owned three Remington 700’s and did have one that would discharge when the safety was taken off. A good cleaning with carb cleaner fixed it and I never had any issues after that.
Click to expand...

be thankful that you haven't had this.


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I had a scary experience a couple years ago that was mitigated due to following Fitness_Hunter's 4 rules from above. We were living in the UK and one of the things I could hunt was rabbits/hares. I had a couple hundred acres I could shoot on and I would stalk the hedgerows with a small rifle. At the time, I had a Savage 17 HMR. I had tweaked the trigger with shims and polish to get it light and crisp. I guess it was just a little too light. I was laid up in a field with some hares around. About 100 yards out there was a small draw in the field and a rise behind it. The hare came through on the middle of the rise so I lined it up in the scope, flipped the safety forward, and the gun fired on its own. Talk about a scary one. Fortunately, since I was on something I wanted to shoot with a safe backdrop behind it, there was no harm done (except to the hare's head. Lots of harm there). Obviously I tightened up that trigger a bit more.
 
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