Debunking Things: Do Guns Just “Go Off”?
The phrase “I was just cleaning it and it went off” has become almost as cliche as “hey, ya’ll, watch this”. Still, it seems there are a strangely large number of “accidents” that occur while cleaning a gun. The explanation is always “it just went off”. Like the gun was just sitting on the table and BLAM!….there’s now a hole in the television. Call me skeptical but does this actually happen? Well, we’re going to take a look in today’s episode of Noobvember Gun Mythbust….sorry…hold on a sec…I’m getting a text from my lawyer….
Ok, so I can’t use the term “Mythb[REDACTED]er” because of copyright laws and such. So…uh..We’re going to take a look in today’s episode of Noobvember Gun Myth….uhm..smashers!
Every single instruction manual for guns starts its field stripping section with some variation of the phrase “ensure gun is unloaded”. I can think of about a dozen pistol right off the top of my head that require you pull the trigger in order to take the gun apart. How many “it just went off’s” do you think came from just that action alone?
If you look at every “cleaning and gun went off story”, they can be debunked with a single question: Why were they cleaning a loaded gun? I would be willing to bet that, if you were to get them in a private, off the record conversation, the majority of them would admit that they weren’t actually cleaning the gun at the time. More than likely they were playing with it and didn’t follow the basic safety rules for whatever reason. Barring that, there are only two ways a gun could go off during the cleaning process:
- the aforementioned “didn’t check for empty” before they started
- mechanical failure of the gun when all was said and done and they were reloading it.
You have to keep in mind that for #2, the probability of that happening is incredibly minuscule. In my previous discussion on ammunition failures I’ve shown that a small percentage of a large number can still be large number. Taking into account the number of guns out there (270+ million) and the list of things that would have to fail in order for the average gun to fire when chambering a round, the probability is almost incalculably small. I spoke with a local gunsmith and asked him this exact question: “how many guns have you come across that were being repaired because they fired while chambering a round?” His answer? One. In 35 years it was one gun. That gun was an open bolt, antique, class III weapon (a STEN, specifically). Keep in mind, open bolt designs are particularly funky. Guns sold to the average Joe, however, fire from a closed bolt. The differences are important but the details of why will have to wait for another article. Suffice to say, most open bolt guns are machine guns and sub-machine guns and they’re notorious for going off when chambering a round. For your normal, everyday weapon it is just unfathomably rare. Not impossible, mind you, but rare enough where it simply cannot account for even a significant number of the accidents that happen while cleaning. The more likely scenario was the person had their finger on the trigger while chambering the round.
What about dropped guns? This is yet another case where Hollywood hasn’t done much to help here. In looking at your average movie, you’d think a gun would go off if you set it on the table hard enough. At some point in history, this may have been a bit more common. Modern guns, however, are built and designed in ways that prevent them from firing when dropped. Even the simple revolver has disconnects that will prevent a strike to the hammer from causing it to fire. Glocks are a great example of drop safety designs as well. They have a safety on the trigger to make sure it doesn’t move unless a finger is on it and they have a big chunk of steel that keeps the firing pin from coming anywhere near the primer of a round. I’ve seen demonstrations ever where someone as chambered a round into a Glock then used the gun as a hammer to drive a bunch of nails through wood. That is FAR more force than you will ever put on the gun when dropping it.
The final scenario is when someone is carrying concealed and the gun “goes off” when getting out of a car or what have you. There was a story recently where someone was carrying at a wedding and his gun fired when someone hugged him. Once again, these aren’t “just went off” situations. I’ve spent a great deal of time looking into it and in every article and report I’ve read, it came down to either cheap/improper holsters or they were fiddling with their guns or both.
A poor holster can snag the trigger or not even cover the trigger at all. Lack of retention can also come into play causing other issues as well. New carriers also have this inexplicable tendency to play with their guns a lot. I’m not talking taking it out and spinning it around on their finger like some old western movie. More like constantly adjusting it or checking that it’s still there, those kinds of things. Combine that tendency with a bad holster and you’ve got a negligent discharge waiting to happen.
The fact of the matter is, guns don’t just go off. Pretty much every negligent discharge is purely down to user error. I say this not to throw people under the bus, mind you. Understanding our own role in making sure a gun only goes bang when we want is important. By continuing this “it just went off” line, it shifts the line of thinking away from “how can I make sure this doesn’t fire in the first place”. Understanding that if a gun fires, whether intentional or unintentional, it is because of your doing will make you safer in the long run.
In the meantime, the myth that guns just go off? That myth is bus[REDACTED].
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