I heard a term about ten years back, and it stuck with me. “Negligent Discharge.” An “Accidental Discharge” is when the fucking weapon breaks spontaneously and fires with no human intervention. Everything else is negligent.
You’re right, UncleBill, negligent discharge is the correct term for most of what people call “accidental” shootings.
Now would be a good time to list the four Rules. There are other rules which may apply in more specific cases but everyone agrees these are the primary ones.
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All guns are always loaded (if you really can’t stand this phrasing, you could say “never treat any gun as if it were unloaded except immediately after you personally have checked and double checked it”)
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Never point a gun at anything you don’t want to risk destroying
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Never put your finger (or anything else) on the trigger or in the trigger guard until your sights are on a target you are about to shoot.
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Know what you are shooting at and what is behind it. Never shoot unless you can clearly identify your target and have a good backstop.
These rules are different than many other kinds of safety rules. For practical reasons you do have to break them at times, but the risk involved is greatly reduced when you are consciously and sometimes even painfully aware that you are doing so, and because the Rules are redundant, that is, you would generally have to break more than one at a time for someone to be accidentally shot.
Even if it were possible to rewrite the Rules to attempt to list all the possible exceptions, that wouldn’t be a good idea because it would tend to remove that sense of “I’m breaking the Rules so I have to be even more careful than usual.”
I suppose for someone who has not experienced it, it may be hard to understand the mindset that I’m describing - where you could carry a rifle with the magazine removed and the bolt locked into a room of gunowners and get unanimously yelled at for letting the muzzle sweep across any of them, while at the same time some of those folks are wearing pistols and thus, depending on their posture and how they carry, pointing loaded and cocked pistols at each other.
These same folks may have just come from a gunshow where they inevitably got accidently ‘painted’ by numerous muzzles since there really isn’t any safe direction to point them (although to actually AIM a gun at another, or put one’s finger on the trigger when the gun is not pointed in a relatively safe direction such as up, is still not done). In this case, the only thing to do is to do our best to actively ensure that the guns are unloaded, whether this is done by putting a cable tie through the mechanism or by the constant vigilance of both the dealer and the customers. (Anti-gun people have been caught surreptitiously loading guns at gunshows, presumably in the hope that someone would then have a negligent discharge). People are not even allowed to carry concealed pistols at any gunshow I’ve been to, to avoid any temptation to draw one’s pistol to show it to someone or try an accessory.
Interestingly enough, I’ve seen the rules followed religiously by the same idiots who don’t think twice about driving drunk. Shows how strong the gun culture is in parts of our country at least.
Very simply put, Eonwe, a firearm is such a dangerous item that it is never okay to consider it unloaded, even if you have personally verified that there are no rounds in it.
So many negligent firearms injuries happen because someone was certain the gun was unloaded. If you check to make sure the gun is unloaded and then point it at something you would not be willing to destroy, it sets up a kind of "it’s okay to point an unloaded gun at someone/something? mindset.
What happens if you set your gun on the counter and then leave the room to go to the bathroom. Your friend (who has your standing permission to handle your weapon) sees it and notices that you bought a new magazine for it. He slips the mag into the pistol and racks a round in. He then ejects the magazine and forgets to empty the chamber.
You walk back in and, because not two minutes ago verified the gun was empty, pick it up, point it at him and pull the trigger. The gun goes off and he dies, even though you knew the gun was empty.
The reason that you never, ever, under any circumstances point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy, put your finger on a trigger unless you are certain of your target and what is behind it, and never consider any gun to be unloaded is because the risk of acting otherwise, and the consequences for incorrect certainty, are too high to ever be acceptable.
At that particular moment, perhaps, and indeed that’s what people do in order to dry-fire (practice shooting with no ammo) their guns for practice. And its not as unusual as it should be for them to then put a smoking hole in their television (the usual target for dry-firing 
), especially when they’re ‘done’ dryfiring, pop the loaded magazine back in the gun… and carelessly take one more shot… so many people have another rule that all ammo gets put away, in another room even, while dry-firing.
Well, if that were to equate, the family would be lobbying for AIDS to be banned in Amercia under the guise of protecting children (except for police), and have a picture of a baby about to inject itself in the eye with a needle of HIV, and Kalashnikov would have to start another pit thread!
Eonwe, Just a few comments…
the reason that “every gun is loaded” is because, “what if you’re wrong?” It’s not something small like “I thought I flushed” or “I thought the transmission was in neutral when I let the clutch out”… if one of those happens, you offend someone, or stall a car… it’s not the same as possibly maming or killing a fellow human being. The only time you should ever consider even thinking about pointing a gun at someone, is if you know it’s in a non-fireable state (non-fireable isn’t unloaded… it’s “no firing pin”, “lead plug in the barrel”, etc), and even then it’s not a good idea, just ask the guy that shot Brandon Lee (even though no one really knows which actor pulled the fatal trigger).
Well, there is one other time to point a gun at someone… when you want them dead.
We’re talking about a situation where a lapse of judgement or bad info might lead to the death of someone… hence, it’s just easier to assume every gun is loaded, well, it’s atleast easier than the consequences… If I went through all your tests to make sure (no mag, no round, etc) I might consider letting it sweep me, but I’d still never intentionally point it at myself or anyone else (not the least of the reasons is, it’s damn disconcerting to look down that rifled barrel… I know this only from cleaning a barrel that was seperated from its stock)
as for your drinking and driving comment… ummmm, no. bad idea to have even one drink and then drive… my wife and I always choose which of us is driving… if the resturant has good mixed drinks, I’m drinking diet-coke and driving us home (she likes her margaritas), if they have a good beer selection, she’s drinking ginger ale and driving… it’s never a good idea to trust yourself to make a decision like that after a drink… it’s safer to just have a simple rule you follow, and not risk fucking up… the consequences are too great.
The greater the consequences, the stricter you have to be… that is exactly why it’s very difficult to fire off an ICBM. The greater the consequences, the stricter you have to be.
Nice try, Tars. The MMM isn’t trying to ban neglegent homicide, are they? They’re trying to eradicate it. Their means of going about it may or may not be appropriate or popular, but that’s their goal.
Similarly, this hypothetical family isn’t trying to ban AIDS, they’re working to eradicate it through whatever means they saw fit. (If they went the same route as the MMM, they’d be trying to ban unprotected pre-marital sex.)
My analogy: MMM is to negligent homicide, as the hypothetical family is to AIDS.
Your analogy (from what I can tell): MMM is to handguns, as the hypothetical family is to AIDS.
Anyway, my original point was that you’re damning the MMM for something that seems a little unreasonable, when there are apparently so many other reasons they should be damned.
Happy