21 gun salute

[mingum]

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/m21gun.html

Has anybody ever been shot in a 21 gun (or other number of gun) salute?

[chukhung]

In case you didn’t know by now: Nigeria is a place where you can get killed in surprising ways.

I refer you to a study entitled “Civilian abdominal gunshot wounds in Lagos” by A. A. Adesanya, I. R. Afolabi and J. T. Da Rocha-Afodu, Department of Surgery, Lagos University Teaching Hospital and College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Nigeria, published in the The Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in August, 1998. An online copy of this study is available at http://www.rcsed.ac.uk/journal/old/4340004.htm.

In the 30 years after 1960, civilian gunshot wounds of the abdomen were very uncommon in our region, with less than five cases per year seen at many teaching hospitals. Most were due to inadvertent gunshots that occurred during the gun salute of burial ceremonies and when hunters mistook others for game.