Can a gun spontaneously fire?
There is a news story out this week, (The end of April, 2019) about a school resource officer's weapon discharging while in his holster.
In my experience as a gun owner and hunter, it's hard for me to imagine a situation where a gun spontaneously discharges. I know that slam-fire and drops can cause a discharge, but I'm talking about a holstered firearm or an otherwise resting one.
Does anyone have any information or statistics about how this happens? (In the general sense, not the specific case I mentioned. That's off topic here)
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/22042. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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No, a gun will not spontaneously discharge It's an object that won't do anything without external input. A better term for this is negligent discharge because the human was negligent and messed up and cause the gun to go off.
There are all sorts of ways of causing a negligent discharge,
- Assuming the gun is unloaded and pulling the trigger.
- Assuming the safety is on and/or works and pulling the trigger.
- Some guns are not drop safe, dropping them will cause the hammer to hit the primer.
- Dropping the gun, going to catch it and pulling the trigger in the process.
- Catching the trigger on your pants when reholstering.
- Pulling the gun towards you by the barrel and the trigger catches on something.
- Unholstering a gun and pulling the trigger while doing so.
- Improper holster that doesn't cover the trigger and then an external object pulling it.
- Keeping your finger on the trigger when you are not ready to shoot and then tensing.
- Grabbing the gun out of a case and you pull the trigger while doing so.
- Cooking off, if a gun gets hot enough it will cause the ammo to go off, can happen in housefires (which is why you don't want to store ammo and a gun in the same safe).
- Slamfires where the action loads another round and fires it off, seen most often in old SKS rifles and in the S&W 15-22 before they fixed it.
All of the above are why it's important to observe the gun safety rules.
- Always treat every firearm as though it is loaded.
- Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.
- Keep your finger outside the trigger guard until ready to shoot.
- Always be sure of your target and what is in front of it and behind it.
I am having a hard time finding non biased sources on how many per year, but the one source I did find shows them on the downward trend and a small fraction of gun incidents.
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Yes, at least you should consider it to.
Rules (not exhaustive at all) that I was taught to obey at all times (and afaik that's generally a mantra of the "weapons-community" around here):
- Every weapon is to be considered charged at all times.
- Never point your weapon at anything unless you want to shoot at it.
For these rules to make any sense, shit (e.g. unplanned discharge) must be able to happen, which is also postulated by Murphy. Discharging while resting qualifies as (dangerous) shit, so you should consider it possible to happen.
That's also the reason why weapons are always deponated facing in a direction, where shooting would do least damage, why your rifle should always point to the ground while carrying, ...
This answer is based on the limited weapons experience of +-21 weeks of obligatory military service and heavily biased towards erring on the safe side, and in addition only targets the title question, not so much the body, but I believe it still has some merit. For a detailed answer, refer e.g. to the one by Charlie. Lets see if it survives the QA process :)
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About the only way I could imagine a firearm discharging on its own accord would be some kind of failure in the primer/powder that caused a spontaneous combustion. Perhaps some kind of large electric current perhaps or getting too hot.
While Charlie has listed many negligent discharge (ND) causes, I would actually classify this one as an accidental discharge (AD) since from what is known as this point a human was not handling the firearm at the time of discharge, which would point to a mechanical failure. Since it apparently went off when the deputy leaned against a wall (I assume on his strong side), either the holster failed, somehow activating the trigger, or the sear slipped, some internal part broke, etc. allowing the firing pin to hit the primer. I find either one extremely unlikely since there are multiple safety features built in to striker-fired firearms so it will be interesting to see what they determine as the root cause. It would be nice to see video as well to verify he hadn't recently "adjusted" anything.
As an anecdote to add on to imsodin's answer, you never trust the safety and always follow the safety rules. Local gun shop had an AD from a customer bolt-action rifle that was brought in loaded (unknowingly of course :/ ) . It was on safety, but turns out that model was on recall for the safety. When employee disengaged the safety to check the chamber to verify its supposed "unloaded" status, the .270 fired.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/22049. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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