The Most Common Types of Negligent Discharge

[Music] without Imran's today's please bear gunfire you hear in the background although fair warning just about all I'm going to do today is talk and what I'm talking about are the most common types of and most common causes of negligent discharges now this has to be prefaced with three things first the recognition of the obvious double entendre of the term negligent discharge so everybody get your jokes out of the way ha ha ha secondly I have to point out that I do not have any statistics in front of me I'm just going off what I have observed on the range or in the field over the years and if I did have statistics in front of me I would consider them virtually useless because when someone has a negligent discharge they very frequently lie about the conditions under which it occurred a weight more double entendre he said discharge third we have to ask the question what's the difference between an accidental discharge and a negligent discharge well different people would define it differently the way I'm going to define it here today it's that an accidental discharge is when your firearm goes off and you didn't want it to a negligent discharge is when your firearm goes off when you didn't want it to because of something you did wrong let me see if I can illustrate that point now here's a Colt government model and the way some 1911 platforms are constructed when you put your magazine in and then pull your slide back to chamber around and then you let that slide go forward there is a chance albeit a slight one but a chance that that gun will just go off now if that happens when you had it pointed in a safe direction at a time in a place where it was ok for the gun to go off then you haven't done anything wrong that was an accidental discharge what makes it a negligent discharge is when you put your magazine in pull your slide back and you have negligently left your finger in the trigger guard and then you let that go and it chambers around and sometimes that inertia will pull the gun forward onto your finger and it goes off that's a negligent discharge because you negligently had your finger where it shouldn't be so now that we've seen the difference let's get started on what I would consider to be the most types and causes of negligent discharges when a negligent discharge occurs it's sometimes because one thing went wrong but far more often there were several factors involved several things that had to be in place before the negligent discharge occurred this Colt government model can help me illustrate that point let's take a close-up look at a very common factor in negligent discharges is failure to properly engage a manual safety the way 19:11 platforms are intended to be carried is you'll put a magazine in put a round in the chamber now the hammer is cocked and the safety is disengaged you then engage the safety and put the pistol in the proper holster but when you have a negligent discharge it's often a combination of factors working together that caused that discharge for example if I fail to engage my safety that handgun is not going to go off unless I add the failure of putting my finger on the trigger when I shouldn't have and we see the failure of the safety and the failure of the finger result in a negligent discharge so commonly we have multiple factors working together to result in a negligent discharge another factor that's common in negligent discharges is failure to properly manipulate and exposed hammer on a gun like the 1911 you put in the magazine of ammunition put a round in the chamber hammer is cocked safety is disengaged you then engage the safety and put it in the proper holster some people do not feel comfortable about having a [ __ ] Tata loader in their holster so they will disengage the safety and then lower the hammer to the half cocked position now when I do that I make that look fairly easy that's the result of a great deal of practice but what I'm doing is I have to when the hammer is cocked push it down to disengage the grip safety pull the trigger and hold it until I let the hammer forward just a little bit then take my finger off the trigger and lower the hammer to half [ __ ] failure to do this in the right sequence in the right way can result in my thumbs slipping off the hammer and the firearm discharging negligently failure to properly manipulate an exposed hammer is a big factor in negligent discharges so how do we correct problems with manual safety and trigger finger management first diligent training making sure you know when your safety is disengaged and when it's engaged in training yourself to have a straight trigger finger now as far as managing the lowering of the hammer again diligent training but there's other safety factors you can put in place when I want to lower this hammer I can take the thumb with my non-firing hand and put it in the way so that as I'm lowering the hammer if the thumb of my firing hand falls off of the hammer the thumb of mine on firing hand will keep the gun from discharging now recently if you were contacted me and if I understand correctly what he wrote what he was doing was using the thumb of his non firing hand putting it in the way of the hammer and then just pulling the trigger allowing the hammer to fall onto his non firing thumb until his thumb slipped out of the way the gun went off and he had a negligent discharge putting something blocking the hammer should be in addition to lowering the hammer with your thumb with your firing hand not instead of I mentioned carrying the 1911 in the proper holster in this case that's not only one that holds the handgun securely but one that prevents the manual safety from becoming disengaged and that brings me to my next point a major causative factor in negligent discharges is carrying handgun in the wrong holster I could go on about holsters all day but in the interest of brevity I'm just going to use this one to illustrate my point this is a hunter holster that come in a wide variety to accommodate a wide variety of handguns they're about standing quality and they have a feature that I really like this is made to slide onto your belt but if you carry a lot of equipment on your belt instead of having to take all that equipment off so you can slide this on you unsnap this and you can just put this over the belt you can also use that to take it off the belt and it's a very useful feature however some of the older ones that are made to carry revolvers have the retention strap over the trigger guard instead of over the hammer and what can happen is that when you're going through thick brush or just when you get out of the car and this brushes against the bottom of your steering wheel you end up with a cocked revolver in your holster and that is not something you want then when you add to that the other causative factor of putting your finger on the trigger when you shouldn't you end up with a negligent discharge now if you have one of these old design holsters it's a couple of things you can do first you can quit using it or second you can detach this and then reattach it up here so it will go over the hammer I have not modified this one because in this configuration it allows me to illustrate my point and because I typically use it to carry my Smith & Wesson model 638 with the shrouded hammer I don't need anything over the hammer and with the retention strap over the trigger guard it's in the perfect position to allow me to get the revolver into action quickly now there's another type of negligent discharge I want to demonstrate and this is one particular to revolvers so today with more people carrying autoloaders you don't see it as often it's also something that occurs far more often in the field than it does on the range and when I demonstrate this you might think that this is something that would rarely if ever occur but I'm telling you I have seen this occur several times and the particulars and the details of how it happens can vary but basically it's something like this you're in the field and you're planking pop cans or you're doing handgun hunting and oh there goes a rabbit nope didn't get him where'd he go oh he stopped I'm gonna [ __ ] the hammer for a more precise out he ran again you already know what's coming oh there he stopped oh he ran again there he goes wait a minute I didn't think I was empty I don't know I didn't think I shot six but I got a couple of clicks it's obviously empty yeah I mean I pulled the trick whoa how did that happen I it already clicked a couple of times I mean I thought it was empty all I did was pull the trigger now before you send me any nasty grams we're on a live fire range and people monitor what's going on but what happened was when I cocked the hammer and then didn't fire and lowered it I rotated that live round out of firing position and so even though I got a couple of clicks and it seemed like the revolver was empty it wasn't this also occurs when someone partially loads a revolver and then they forget which direction the cylinder rotates and they think they're rotating a live round out of firing position when they're rotating it into firing position and for as quirky as this seems I have seen it occur several times what this also illustrates is that one of the causes of a negligent discharge is a negligent discharge someone will have a negligent discharge and it rattles them and then while they're rattled they'll negligently pull the trigger again that can occur with revolvers but that type of negligent discharge occurs far more often with Auto loaders and speaking of Auto loaders let me show you another type of negligent discharge now I want to demonstrate something that is a very common occurrence in negligent discharges this will also demonstrate that chain of events that typically occurs before your negligent discharge occurs and what I'm talking about is you have an auto loaded firearm you put a magazine in that fire put a round in the chamber now you intended to in the chamber you know there's a round in the chamber you're fine and then comes the time when you unload the fire and you take your magazine out and you forget to take the round out of the chamber so you forgot to take the round out of the chamber and then you neglected to check the chamber ensuring that the firearm was clear and then you pulled the trigger when you shouldn't have and you end up with a negligent discharge and this shows us that chain of events now another thing that's very common is you load your autoloading firearm you know that it's loaded you intended for it to be loaded and then when it comes time to unload you remember to take the round out of the chamber but you get the sequence in the wrong order so should take the round out of the chamber inadvertently just chamber another round then take the magazine out then declare your firearm to be empty when you've gotten the sequence out of order neglected to check the chamber and make sure the firearm was empty and pulled the trigger when you shouldn't have and you get another negligent discharge now I wouldn't say in every single negligent discharge but I would say in the overwhelming majority of them one of the factors is having your finger in the trigger guard when you shouldn't have second only to that the major causative factor in negligent discharges is when you have a round in the chamber when you thought that the chamber was empty and whether it's an autoloading pistol autoloading rifle pump shotgun lever action rifle whatever thinking your chamber is empty when there's actually a round in the chamber is one of the biggest factors in negligent discharges now let me show you another way that you end up with a round in the chamber when you thought it was empty now let me see if I can illustrate some of the ways that you can get around in the chamber when you didn't really intend to when I was in the military there were many occasions when we were not authorized to have loaded firearms but we had magazines in a mag there were also times when we were authorized to have a magazine in the rifle but not around in the chamber now let me tell you an anecdote we leave the bivouac area and we go get on the truck to go out to our guard post and at the time we had m4 is not a once but the point remains the same when everybody gets on the truck they put a magazine in the rifle no round in the chamber when we come back from our guard shift we have to be unloaded to go into the bivouac area and it's my job to make sure everybody's rifle is unloaded so everyone takes out their magazine and then shows me they have an empty chamber except one of the troops walks up to me please as charging handle to the rear shows me as chambers empty and then chambers around because he neglected to take his magazine out and we had to correct the situation this can also happen with handguns authorized to have a magazine in not authorised to have around in the chamber pull the slide back make sure there's no round in the chamber and then chamber around this really doesn't happen all that often with an m9 or a 92fs because with its wide-open system when you pull the slide back you can very easily see the rounds in there but it can happen with other types of firearms pump shotguns are notorious for someone pulling the slide back seeing the Chamber's empty and then not looking while they chamber alive round this also brings me to the point of loaded chamber indicator 'he's right now there's a round in this chamber and the loaded chamber indicator is indicating that there is and when I want a round in the chamber I will trust that loaded chamber indicator to tell me that there is but when it's time to have the handgun unloaded I do not trust that indicator which is right now indicating an empty chamber to be correct I will always visually and physically inspect that chamber so the takeaways from all of this well when you have a negligent discharge not always but most of the time there are several factors in play and today we went over what I consider to be in the most common ones improper management of the mechanical safety improper management exposed hammer failing to understand cylinder rotation using the wrong holster and the two big ones having around in the chamber when you thought the chamber was empty and having your finger on the trigger when you shouldn't have so if you have any stories you'd like to share about negligent discharges I'd like to hear about them and as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the negligent discharges video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

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Keywords: paul harrell, paul harrell handgun, paul harrell pistol, paul harrell rifle, paul harrell negligent discharge, most common negligent discharges, most common types of negligent discharge, negligent discharge, accidental discharge, firearm negligent discharge

Id: 1DcsW2JfaQ8

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020

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