I have very little knowledge of firearms, so I apologise if this is a dumb question.
Recently, a friend of mine was playing around with a starting revolver, and was unpleasantly surprised to discover that it was loaded. Luckily, she fired the gun at arm’s length, aimed at the floor. Moments before, she had nearly shot herself in the temple. So, with a blocked barrel and a blank cartridge, would she have been injured, killed, or just gone a bit deaf from the bang?
yes people have been injured from starter guns at close range. i don’t recall deaths from stater guns but there have been deaths from prop guns. just memory, no search.
treat every gun (including starter and prop guns) as if they were loaded.
Jon-Erik Hexum was the actor who killed himself accidentally by pointing a prop gun at his temple and pulling the trigger. Jon-Erik Hexum - Wikipedia
Starter pistols vary. Some exhaust from radial vents on the top of the barrel so that they eject nothing axially.
Years ago a friend had some blanks for an 8mm mouser. These had soft wood (likely pine) “bullets” to help them feed from the magazine. As a test, we found that nothing penetrated a piece of cardboard at about 2 feet…thus we deemed them safe for firing a new year’s eve salute. These would have been far more powerful than starter rounds.
A lot of starter guns now used are just cap guns that use those liitle plastic encased charges. There is no real barrel. There are probably dangerous starter guns that could cause serious injury though.
Prop guns may be more dangerous. They tend to be real guns that are supposed to be disabled or loaded with blanks. But blanks can kill from the discharge at close range, and mix-ups occur also, as in the case of Brandon Lee.
The gun looked very similar to this one. At the time, my friend had no idea it was a starter gun, and she thought she had fired a bullet.
Man, that’s a small cat!
“Looks like” can turn out to be very dangerous words with these. I have seen newer ones where it is almost impossible for someone to hurt themselves, slightly older ones where chances are you are going to get hurt if you are close to the muzzle. And I’ve seen a few older ones that were basically cheaply made .22 rimfires with little to stop you from chambering a live round of short and killing yourself. Never treat any firearm lightly or handle one without at least some basic training or an expert/professional on hand.
Blanks are blanks - without projectile. The wooden ones are, or should be considered, bullets and treated as such. They (wooden bullets) were mostly a target shooting device used to get around the various articles of the Versailles Treaty. Another thing like that was the Mauser KKW which was basically a full sized Mauser chambered for .22LR and made as a single shot. GIs in WW II had enough respect for the wooden Mauser rounds that the story they circulated and believed was that they were issued as a sort of “capture round” to be shot at GIs as a less than lethal means of taking prisoners for questioning. That doesn’t seem to be the case - no where have I ever seen a cite for a soldier captured by being shot by a wooden bullet. However there are some accounts from Wermacht troops that they used the wooden rounds around barracks and camps to kill rats. I guess how lethal any given one is depends on the exact grain and type of the wood.
How dangerous? ALWAYS presume that a pistol is deadly. NEVER point it at your head. There are 4 simple rules:
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
Is there anything else to talk about? Pointing a gun of any sort at your own head is absolutely, unconscionably stupid.
Thanks, Airman Doors, USAF, for laying it out so clearly. I’ve never held a gun in my life and wouldn’t really know what to do if I did. This is truly helpful.
But in my gun-ignorance, I can’t understand your second rule. What’s a muzzle, and what does it mean for the muzzle to cover something?
Thanks,
E.
NEVER! DO! THAT! AGAIN!
If you don’t know what it is or if it’s loaded to begin with you shouldn’t play with it!
Not trying to be a peener here, but that was truly a bonehead move and I don’t want to see anyone get hurt.
Muzzle is the opening where the bullet comes out, and ‘covering’ something means aiming at it.
A better version of that rule:
RULE II: NEVER AIM THE GUN AT ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOOT
Thanks for the explanation.
I think it might be better understood as
RULE II: NEVER point the gun at ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
Aimed or not the barrel of the gun is always pointed at something. If you are aiming the gun or just handling it makes no difference, if the gun is fired the bullet/projectile goes somewhere.
When you are handed or pick up a gun (and don’t intend on being ready to shoot something right away) it is good to check that it is unloaded. Do that every time no matter what you thing the status of the gun is. When handling a gun, loaded or not (and don’t intend on shooting something right away), keeping it pointed up or down is the safest.
Do that every time no matter what you thing the status of the gun is.
that should be
Do that every time no matter what you think the status of the gun is.
Extremely dangerous if you run into a cop. This incident happened in my neighborhood.
I had a starter pistol like that when I was growing up. She could have fired that thing pointed right at her temple and other than a loud ringing in her ears, would have been fine. It’s basically a quality cap gun.
That in now way diminishes the advice, to treat any gun as a deadly weapon. Your friend was stupid but lucky.
I learned that the base firearm safety rule was to always treat a firearm as loaded unless you have PERSONALLY verified that it is not with your own physical inspection (i.e. don’t trust anyone’s word on it), though I see that it is probably better to aways treat it as loaded, since you might THINK you know how to check the gun, but you might miss an already chambered bullet or something if you aren’t familiar with the gun.
I’d always learned, “Always treat a firearm as loaded even if you have PERSONALLY verified that it is not with your own physical inspection.”
I had a roommate who had been given a squirrel rifle. It was a .22 with no magazine. He announced that he would always keep a round in the chamber, that way there would be no question. I told him no - that he keep the chamber empty and the action open, but we would treat it as if it were loaded. That way there would be no questions.
Unforgiveably stupid, yes, I completely agree. Even more so because she didn’t know it was a starter gun, and she had no reason to assume it wasn’t loaded with live ammunition. I’ve no idea what possessed her to point it at her head, or pull the trigger in a room full of people, but I don’t think she’ll do it again.
Really, although I realise it’s a bit of an academic point, I’m just wondering how close we actually came to mopping her brain off the floor.
