Implausible. The vast majority of firearms would not fire if dropped even onto a hard surface from a large height. Despite the complete media fiction that guns “just go off” all the time, that’s not true at all. They’re extremely well engineered devices.
Agreed. And any knowledgable user would never have a shotgun with a round chambered unless ready to shoot it.
I cannot think of any firearm cleaning situation which should involve live ammunition being in the gun. Besides the obvious safety issues, it’s a bit hard to clean the bore (or the action, for that matter) when there’s a cartridge in it, after all.
Firearms that are used need to be disassembled and cleaned at regular intervals to get rid of powder residue and then re-lubricated. Otherwise they will jam.
You want to clean a firearm after shooting it. Deposits left in the barrel after shooting can cause pitting. And the oils and acids you leave just by handling one can, over time, degrade the finish of a firearm. So it’s a good idea to wipe one down with a silicon impregnated cloth.
And I can’t imagine anyone cleaning (as opposed to simple wiping one down) a pump action shotgun without pumping it until shells stop coming out. And even then, I’d point it in a safe direction and squeeze the trigger to make sure. That would go for a lever action too.
And to shoot oneself in the chest with a shotgun? The minimum legal length for a shotgun barrel is 18 inches. The trigger is at the far end of the action from the muzzle. Unless you used your toe to pull the trigger, it’s not going to happen. And there are ways to clean a shotgun that don’t require contortions like that.
I haven’t seen a post so filled with hatred and ignorance in a long time. What kind of person does it take to be fine with someone dying, then claim he’s an irresponsible gun nut (you could not possibly know this) and then say “how many more to go?” implying you’re wishing death on thousands of more people?
As for ignorance the fact that you think what you described would happen shows you are so ignorant about guns you should probably refrain from even typing the word on a public forum.
Generally they’re easy to maintain if you aren’t shooting them, guns that you don’t shoot regularly don’t need regular cleaning. Guns that you shoot regularly, a common adage is to clean it every time you’re done firing it just to avoid any buildup and get rid of the oils your hand leaves on the metal. But that’s not strictly necessary, it’s just a good rule to keep you in the habit of it so you don’t ruin your expensive firearm.
Guns can go a long time without firing, but it’s telling that for a long time a huge part of training to fire a gun in the military was just learning how to disassemble it and clean it, and that you were constantly told to do this anytime you had the time to do so. Guns were designed to go awhile between cleaning but it could be the difference between life in death if your gun jams in a battle. In civilian life it can just be an annoyance or it could destroy your gun in a worst case scenario.
Guns aren’t as high maintenance as some things though. Genuine carbon steel swords need to be oiled regularly or they will oxidize, even if you aren’t actually cutting anything with them. Anytime you touch the blade you’ll want to clean and re-oil as well as the oils on your hand can degrade the blade itself.
Definitely not the case, especially with someone who puts a tank in his yard.
THIS! A shotgun or most rifles for that matter would be pretty difficult to accidentally shoot yourself in the chest. The foot, the leg? Yeah, that wouldn’t be too hard if you weren’t following safety rules, but a shot to the chest would require some effort. The length of the barrel combined with the long reach to the trigger makes an accidental chest shooting unlikely. I’m going with suicide. You don’t want to burden your family with the shame of suicide and/or you want them to receive insurance. Plus you want to make sure you do the job, so you choose a weapon that will almost ensure your death. 1: Set some gun oil and cleaning pads out to set the scene that you are cleaning the weapon. 2: Try to discharge the weapon and somehow make it look like an accident. 3: Profit?!?
In the end it’s very tragic and sadly the death combined with his being a certified instructor works the anti-gun zealots into a mouth foaming “See guns are so dangerous, we need to ban them! They even kill professionals” rant. I’m going to go with suicide. And instead of putting so much effort into trying to ban firearms from us, lets work together to get mental help for those among us that need it.
Wow, I didn’t see this post during my first read of the thread. Aren’t you just a bundle of joy and rainbows. Well, I guess the old adage is true, “there is no hate like liberal hate”.
First, stop watching movies. Guns rarely if ever discharge by dropping them. As mentioned by ** SenorBeef** firearms are incredibly engineered pieces of equipment. They are specifically designed to only discharge when the trigger is pulled. Do accidental discharges ever occur because if a malfunction? Sure, but they are incredibly rare with a modern firearm.
Secondly, you are so anti-gun that a death, even one that is reported as a tragic accident is “fine by me (you)”? That’s like someone commenting on the Kennedy assassination by saying “Another liberal down, fine by me”. Something tells me you would have s problem with that statement, yet it’s no different from yours.
I really couldn’t care less about your political views, but I do find your joy in the death of a fellow human being disgusting. I think ** Martin Hyde** did a fantastic job in summing up my thoughts, so I’ll echo his post to sum up my thoughts on your comment:
“As for ignorance the fact that you think what you described would happen shows you are so ignorant about guns you should probably refrain from even typing the word on a public forum.”
I have zero experiene of guns, so I’m going by what the obviously knowledgeable people here have said.
It seems that there is some doubt that this person shot themselves accidentally, although it’s not impossible I guess.
If it was a suicide is it not a quite unusual method though? It sounds like he had quite an arsenal of weapons, could he not have effected an easier suicide with a handgun, and one which could more plausibly be taken for a mistake while cleaning, especially if his objective was to fake a suicide for insurance purposes?
Lastly, given the doubts in this thread, why does is seem the police have ruled out foul play? (Although of course the police have far more information than we do based solely on a short article)
Don’t take offence, but being serious, I’ve come across many Americans who genuinlly believe themselves to experts with weapons, and many more who think that they’re very competent with weapons.
And the overwhelmingly majority of them that I’ve met, I wouldn’t trust with a water pistol, let alone a lethal weapon.
Going to a range once a week and standing still firing at short range, having owned weapons for “X” amount of years, having all of your friends being into guns, knowing muzzle velocities, having been in the services and reading Guns and Ammo DOESN’T make you even safe to own firearms, let alone safe to use them.
And that includes some members of U.S armed forces.
And having seen Militias exercising, my first thought was these people should be permamently disarmed,( They reminded me of children playing with matches) my second thought was I wonder how many people are these idiots are putting at risk every day of their lives.
Mostly family members, neighbours and friends.
We call people like this “Clowns with Guns”, CWGs for short.
And before you get all hurt and upset, my friends/colleagues in the U.S. forces agree with me on this.
So, sad to say, I think that it’s quite likely that it was an accident caused by incompetence and the man honestly believed himself to be knowledgeable about weapons.
You bring up a good point about the pistol being easier to use for your own demise. My thought is that he wanted no chance of surviving so he chose a weapon, in this case a shotgun, that would almost insure his death. Contrary to popular belief, being shot with a handgun doesn’t automatically mean death. I read an article recently (I don’t 4ever where out I would link it) by a ER doctor. He asserted that unless a major organ or artery was hit that most handgun injuries are survivable with prompt medical attention. If you’re going to end it all with a handgun, most likely you are going to shot yourself either in the head, which if going to be hard to make it look like an accident, or in the heart. The chest shot with a handgun could certainly be made to look like an accident, but trying to precisely hit your heart is going to be tough without holding the weapon to your chest. Holding it directly to your chest wouldn’t follow the whole accident theory. However, with a shotgun you don’t have to have contact to ensure massive damage. I really think that a handgun, with the intent of ensuring your death while making it look like an accident, would leave to much to chance.
Meh…
Occasionally our various elective pursuits bump us off.
Carelessness; random accidents; isolated lapse of judgment…
The guy who loves his pit bulls gets eaten up. The woman who takes in stray tigers has her head nipped. The fellow who teaches motorcycle safety forgets his helmet. The parachute instructer folds his backup incorrectly…
What these various things are not, necessarily, is a lesson in how wrong it was to have that pursuit, and they are not even necessarily evidence that any particular dead individual was incompetent in general (although I do enjoy the hilarity of some of the more spectacular judgment failures if I’m willing to set aside the human tragedy of them).
A long career in the Emergency Department has taught me how much only luck separates me from the capricious fickle finger of fate.
I’d expand, but I’m texting this while driving–just this once, because it’s so important.
I apologize for the spelling errors in my above post, I didn’t preview before I hit post and auto-correct combined with Swype has screwed me again. That and the five minute edit window!
Eh. He was a human being. I’m sorry he killed himself, accidentally or otherwise. And I have sympathy for his family. “Gun nut” is a loaded term in these forums, which I agree can be insulting to responsible gun owners. But considering he had blasting caps and IEDs in his house, which were a clear and immediate danger to his neighbors, I’d say calling him irresponsible is an accurate description to say the least, whether or not guns were also involved. I would question whether he strictly observed firearms safety in the evidence of his also possessing illegal explosives.
I saw a show about the guy that just had a face transplant due to a shotgun accident (Richard Norris). And he wasn’t even cleaning it when it fell and blew his face off. I don’t see why an accidental blast to someone’s chest would be any more implausible.
Allow me to correct my previous post - the shot gun that resulted in the injuries to Richard Norris didn’t even fall. Here is the story.
Well, you can be an expert in the use of weapons and practice poor gun safety, I’ve definitely seen that before. But you don’t have to be an expert to be a safe gun owner, gun safety is actually very simple. Some people deliberately choose not to abide by gun safety best practices, they are literally very simple and it’s highly unlikely any serious gun owner is unaware of them, but some choose not to care. That makes them stupid.
But it doesn’t require great expertise to handle firearms safely.
I read the article a bit closer and saw that stuff too. I’m not sure how much of it is actually illegal (believe it or not explosives that you build yourself aren’t necessarily de facto illegal, despite what the article is saying it’s possible none of his arsenal was illegal but I don’t know all the details), and the statement about blasting caps was a bit much. They said “they could go off at any time and kill everyone in the house”, well if that were true then every soldier who ever worked in a place that stored ordinance could be killed at “any time.” Which technically is true, but practically speaking any serious accident is extremely rare. Blasting caps do not just detonate out of nowhere, they would be basically the worst invention for their purpose ever if they did that. He may have had them stored dangerously or not, we don’t know that. But just having them isn’t necessarily illegal or dangerous.
This guy may have been a gun nut, or he may have just been a collector of guns and ordinance. I can’t say that I know enough about the man to say, and I won’t. It’s not a big deal or anything, I guess I just don’t like the implication that anyone who owns a lot of guns is a “nut.” You can be a sane collector of firearms and ordinance. I note that he owned a tank as well, in my experience people that own tanks tend to not be the real crazy types. Mainly because a tank is a true collector’s piece. The real crazy militia/gun nut types wouldn’t want to own a tank that is mostly inoperable because they’re really expensive and are mostly just for show and parades and stuff. But again, I don’t know the guy.
I certainly know that it’s extremely ugly to be happy someone you never met and who prior to that moment, as far as we know, had never done anything to hurt another soul, died. And then to wish “more like him” died.
Well, guns do go off sometimes. But it’s exceptionally unlikely to happen. Richard Norris had his face blown off right after so I’m not sure his memory of the incident is perfect, I know how people who are bad with guns handle them. It’s very easy he could have actually touched the trigger or pulled the trigger while moving the gun and caused it to discharge and he may not have noticed if he wasn’t familiar with how to properly move and handle a firearm.