There's Always a Lesson to be Learned...

Evyl Robot posts about his brother's unintentional discharge.

Go take a read. There's pictures and everything. There's a few things I'd like to point out about this, in no particular order.

• Evyl Robot refers to it as an "accidental" discharge, but we tend to refer to them as "negligent" discharges. This is not in any way, shape, or form meant to disparage ER or his brother, but to make the distinction between a mechanical failure on the part of the firearm (like with certain combloc guns where the decocker actually fires the weapon) and operator error. We all make mistakes - I've posted about my own negligent discharge, so I'm certainly not immune - but there is a significant difference between the two.


• For those who claim that buckshot/shotgun rounds won't overpenetrate, go look at how far some of those pellets traveled. Through a door, sheetrock, plywood, siding, and finally coming to rest against more plywood - after bouncing off a stereo, mirror, etc. It's a basic fact of physics - any projectile that you would employ because of the damage it would do to a goblin is going to do damage to anything else that gets in the way.


• This demonstrates, crystal-clear, the importance of the four rules. While Evyl's brother broke Rule 1 (treat all guns as if they were loaded), he obeyed Rules 3 & 4 (don't point the gun at anything you don't want destroyed and be sure of your target and what's beyond it). As a result, the only damage can be repaired with spackle and wood putty. No one got hurt (although I'll bet their ears ring for a few days!), which is the reason the rules are so important.

Thanks, Evyl (and your non-blogging brother) for sharing this story with us. It's always tough to say, hey, I screwed up - but when there's something to be learned by the experience, it's so much better to share. Your brother's excellent gun handling - keeping the gun pointed in a safe direction, etc. - kept this as a very minor issue rather than a tragedy, and seeing the damage wrought by that one round should be a big wake-up call to all of us who rely on a scattergun for home defense (such as your humble host).

Is gun. Is dangerous.

That is all.