I haven’t read any of the links. But if this is true, it makes A LOT of sense. All the guy has to do is miss one step in the cleaning process and he will have an accident with his Glock. To clean a Glock. First make sure it’s unloaded. If you skip that… step two is pull the trigger. To take the slide off, you need to pull that trigger. So maybe he went straight to step two. How he managed to land that round in the head is another question.
BTW, I dont know about Australian Military insurance rules, but there is no suicide clause in the US Military. The only reason to lie and say a suicide was an accident is to help the family(?) or fudge the numbers that might show morale is down.
By “A LOT” of sense. I mean “more” sense 
. So maybe he went straight to step two. How he managed to land that round in the head is another question.
maybe he was looking down the barrel to make sure he hadn’t left one in the chamber…
I suppose this never happens with revolvers…
parenthetically, nothing brings guys together, no matter how diverse their political bent, like firearms…
The AUSTEYR is the Standard Assault Rifle of the Australian Armed Forces- the first news reports said he’d shot himself with “A Gun”, and without further information it seemed a reasonable assumption that “A Gun” would be either the standard issue rifle (the AUSTEYR), a handgun (The Browning Hi-Power is the official handgun of the Australian Armed Forces, but apparently a lot of soldiers have acquired Glock 17s and Sig P226s), or since the guy was a sniper, it was possible it might have been a Remington 700 (one of the Australian Army’s Sniper Rifles- at least, that’s what the Defence Reserve guys I’ve met say).
I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on what sort of gun the radio said it was- “Glock” has basically become an Australian Media catch-all term for “Any semi-automatic handgun”. I’ve even heard a local radio station refer to a “Police Issue Glock Revolver”, which made me wonder- albeit momentarily- if Glock had decided to modernise the old Webley-Fosbury design, before realising it was just the newsreader not having a clue what she was talking about
If it was, a Glock, then that increases the likelihood of an accidental discharge, but as someone else said, there’s a big leap from accidentally firing a Glock whilst stripping it, and accidentally firing a Glock at your head whilst stripping it…
I’ve always assumed “shot self whilst cleaning firearm” is a euphemism for “killed self out of despair and stress, but we’re pretending not because we love him and want his family to get the insurance.”
To clean the SA80/L85A2, the drill is always to perform a full NSP without firing off the action, because if you do, you’ve got to fiddle around with the firing mechanism to get it back together.
In the course of a full NSP, any rounds should be ejected from the rifle. If you’re lazy and dont perform them properly, then you shouldn’t be handling the weapon in the first place.
I dont see how there’s any way you could shoot yourself with the British Army assault rifle whilst cleaning it, so if I hear that term used then I assume it really means “Someone was fucking around and shot themselves/someone else.” without reflecting quite so negatively on the army.
Both the AUSTEYR and the A2 are bullpup rifles and are short, but I dont see physically how anyone could shoot themselves in the head without meaning to do it.
I think we all agree it’s just a phrase!
You cannot strip a GLOCK with a round in the chamber. It’s absolutely impossible. The trigger has to be back, so any round remaining would by necessity have to be discharged.
I suppose the person could have been looking down the barrel when he pulled the trigger in violation of every priciple of gun safety, but I really want to assume that he wasn’t that stupid.
Well you shouldn’t assume that is the case when it’s said regarding a soldier in your country’s military. Because the family will get their 400,000 dollars regardless of cause of death!! Maybe they want his family to feel better… but honestly, would you feel better thinking your son was an idiot, or would you rather him be just very depressed in a foreign land and stressed from the sights and sounds of combat.
I think I’d rather hear the latter. The latter I could understand. I’d be pissed to know my son was such an idiot that he accidentally shot himself in the head!
As opposed, of course, to shooting himself in the head with a rock…
I love news stories like this - just enough information to be silly. Either he “shot himself in the head” or “he shot himself with his Glock pistol”. Saying “with a gun” is just plain useless.
Clearing the chamber with the barrel pointed at your head? :dubious: Is this some sort of new extreme danger sport? I guess his big toe slipped and hit the trigger as he tried to manipulate the action. And while I find that image rather amusing, though preposterous, I find it even less likely someone would deliberately reach down with his hand from a reversed position without moving the rifle to the side (so it would no longer be aligned with his brain - a small target assuredly) to see what he was doing.
Some people fire the supposedly empty weapon before or during the cleaning process.
In self-loading pistols, it is possible to have a round chambered, so that dropping the magazine doesn’t unload the weapon. Then if the weapon is fired, the hidden round is fired.
In long arms, the breech is usually closed at the onset, and again, people sometimes fire the “empty” weapon.
So apparently we have two fictitious lines of Glock: the plastic Glock, and the Glock revolver.
No-one’s disputing that. What I (and others) raise our eyebrows at is firing a supposedly empty weapon at your head during the cleaning process.
Try making a “pistol” with your thumb and forefinger, and then pretend to take the slide off the “pistol”. Try pointing at your head as you do it.
There’s no time during this process when you can possibly have your “pistol” pointing at your head without being conspicuosly aware of this fact…
Careless people are generally careless as to the direction of the barrel during cleaning. I agree that an “accidental head shot” is hihgly unlikely during cleaning.
And indeed yesterday’s paper said a Browning pistol. I give up.
…and you can’t field strip a Browning without retracting the slide the whole way aft, meaning that any round would be ejected.
This sounds more and more like it wasn’t an accident. Not that others haven’t drawn that same conclusion already.
It’s confusing, isn’t it?
OK, a helpful guide to Australian Media Definitions of Firearms:
Glock- Any semi-automatic pistol
Police Issue- Some Police force, somewhere in the world, has issued that type of gun to someone since WWII
Military- Used by any military at all since the invention of gunpowder in the 14th century
Assault Rifle- Any self-loading rifle
High Powered- Any firearm bigger than a .22 or an Air Rifle
AK-47 any (genuine) Assault Rifle
Arsenal- More than one gun
As a firearms owner, this sort of crap frustrates and irritates me, but the Media don’t care, so short of buying my own Newspaper, there’s not a lot we can do…
And to add insult to terrible injury, the wrong body was sent home to Australia.
If this wasn’t such a tragedy, it would be bloody funny.
Oh dear. :smack:
Gaston Glock has got to be gritting his teeth over the irony. He has total name recognition to the point that GLOCK is the de facto name for any handgun in Australia, thus having the market cornered simply by word of mouth, yet he’s not allowed to sell his products there.
Is it possible to have a dream and a nightmare at the same time?