have you ever had an accident?

Ugh, wasn't me but one time I bought my Dad a nice new 10/22 that he had been wanting for a while. He then went out and bought the ####tiest little tasco scope he could find to put on it. Then he wanted to sight it in. I was sober and he was not. (he wasn't bombed but our laws being the way they are, you shouldn't risk a driving even after you've had 1 or 2. Losing you license sucks.) So I said sure, i'll drive. We got into my truck and headed out into the bush just behind town.

So we get out of the truck, and he proceeds to load the gun. He then shoulders the rifle, leans on the side of my truck pointing the rifle over the box so he can shoot targets he had set up on the other side. I warn him: "Pop, with the way that barrel is aimed it looks like you're gonna shoot my truck." "No ####in' way!" He replies. "I can see through the scope just fine and there's nothing in the way of the rifle!" Then he lets one off and there is a giant "thunk" sound. "You stupid ####! I told you you were gonna shoot the truck!" I screamed. All I got in return was a sheepish look in. "Unload that ####ing thing! We're going home and you can come out tomorrow and shoot the #### out of your own truck if you want! My'ns reached it's limit for tonight!" I was a little steamed. The truck was less than a year old at the time.

There wasn't much damage. It hit a reinforced portion on the back inside of the box near the brake light housing. Just a good dent really. But from then on I decided I'm not going to shoot with anyone who may be even slightly under the influence. A no brainer for most of you I'm sure but having been raised in the "good ol' boy" tradition I never really gave it a second thought until then.

Tl;dr: Impaired father shot my truck. Not impressed. Don't drink and shoot kids.
 
I was stupid enough at 13 years old to attempt (with success) to hit the primer of a 12g shell with a .177 cal pellet at about 20-25 feet. The shell was cut so we could remove the wad and shot from it, leaving the full charge of powder in the shell...it came straight back blowing my thumbnail off and whatever else, struck me in the forehead at the hairline, of course, drawing blood. Never tried that shyt again.
 
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stuff i thought i had buried in my memory are coming back in floods after reading some of these.

4 of us out shooting gophers one afternoon when we where.... 14 (?) in around.
we where walking through the field in a line talking and shooting, one fella took a shot at what he thought was a head poking up, was a rock, all we heard was this "wooooooppPPPP" then buddy on the end yells and drops.
hit him in the arm, not a dead on hit but a really deep grazing wound.
lots of blood.

i can recall walking down the main street of the small town where i grew up and came across the younger brother of one of my friends, he was popping what i thought where those little snap cap things, those little miniature tea bags that you throw and they fire off when they hit, well it wasn't, he was actually throwing 22 shells at the asphalt and the odd one was popping off. they were not really doing much, i think they where 22 shorts now that i think about it more.

so, i worked on a farm in my teens.
one day we where bored and this was back when paint ball was just coming out.
we of course didn't have paint ball guns.
so we did the next best thing.
popped the lead off 22 shells and shoved them into candles or soap, whatever we could find to seal the ends of them.
that bloody HURTS!

but recently i did get hit in the face by a ricochet out shooting last fall.
i was being lazy and didn't go to the range, instead i stopped about half way at a local old sandpit and was popping off some rounds.
i was just shooting some garbage that was laying around, i went and set some beer cans and water bottles on a old tire that was there..... ya, not smart.
i don't know what came back and got me but something came back and hit me just above my eye.
i assume i hit the tire and it bounced back, i assume this because whatever it was came screaming back and it hurt.
left a nice cut as well.
only a couple mm wide but like any head wound it dumped a bunch of blood.

ok, enough of those, ill give ya a funny one.
buddy of mine had one of those airsoft guns.
this one was from the states, its a full sized 1911 all metal.
its actually a lot nicer then a lot of my real 1911's if you can believe that.
anyway, he owed me some money and he was leaving town so he tossed me the pistol so square up.
about a month later we where out back enjoying a nice relaxing summer evening BBQ with the kids, i came in the house to get something and i stumbled upon that damn airsoft.
so i loaded the mag with that propane or green gas or whatever it is and took it out back, thought id try it out.
bloody loud!
the kids and me thought it was fun.
i wondered out-loud how much they would hurt because they where really chucking those little plastic balls!
my wife being the loving nurturing person she is offered to shoot me in the butt if i wanted.
well it was probably the beer talking but i thought what the heck, people actually go out and play games with these on the weekends so they cant hurt that much, right?
so i hand her the pistol and turn around and was taking my first step away and i thought to myself.... i wonder how far i should go because that thing really pushes those pellets out, 10 feet..... 20 maybe?
well i hadn't even taken 1 step when my wife jams the barrel into my butt cheek and pulled the trigger.
i shot off like a rocket!
that thing bloody HURT!
i had a welt the size of a golf ball!
thing turned 50 shades of purple and black over the next week too boot.
i found out later that those things can actually break skin and go in and you have to go to the hospital to get them removed.
 
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I got my first air rifle for Christmas when I was 10. I begged and pleaded and Christmas morning, there it was. I was just bursting, then came the rules; only under adult supervision, never in the house, only at gramps' farm or in the long basement at dads work. Yeah, yeah, I promise, I swear!!!! I run upstairs and pump the F**K out of that thing and blast an old white Airfix Ju52 model on the floor to pieces! the pellet then bounces straight into the window and puts a nice hole in it with a couple good cracks thrown in. If it had been a hard surface maybe straight back into me, i dunno. Now im about to puke, the beating WILL be severe!!! Thank god for Gienow windows. I take it out and hide it behind my headboard for a couple months and then get caught during spring cleaning! Oh the pain, the pain, I still remember it, ouch! Served me right though.
 
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I was 15 and had just got my license and my first year deer hunting.I had borrowed my dad's old 30-30. I got out of my cousins truck and we started out into the field, started loading the rifle and levered one into the chamber and KA-BOOM. For some reason the hammer didn't catch a half a second after action closed it let go. Thankfully I had it pointed at the ground out in front of me but it scared the s*"t out of both of us. That gun had never done it before. Funny part was less than 5 minutes later a doe came out looking around to see what was all the noise was about and I got my first deer.
 
Drillbit said:
Before we knew what safety glasses were, probably before they were even invented, pellet gun wars were THE best form of entertainment for us as kids.

Nobody lost an eye......but sure could have.
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We did the same... but someone did loose an eye... we had the "no shots above the waist rule," but a pellet ricocheted and hit a friend in the eye and he subsequently lost the eye... and I had the misfortune of being the 10 year old perpetrator... most shameful event of my shooting life... and has made me a staunch proponent of rigid firearm safety.
 
got a .22lr that the rim explode on me... blow my face with powder and small lead fragment.. wearing no glasses atm it's was 25 years ago... only small frag of lead in my face, ... eyes was ok... it'was a close call. I always wearing security glasses since that time...
 
wayupnorth, I just read your last incident to my wife out loud. We both laughed so hard I had to put down my coffee for fear of spilling it. Thanks for the story! She promised to help me any time I want to perform a similar experiment.

Like most of us, I've had several incidents. The one I remember most vividly happened in 1973. I was out at a friend's farm shooting groundhogs with .22mags, and after a time he and I found ourselves looking down a steep bank at a pond, the surface of which was alive with water striders and whirligig beetles. We sniped at them for a while...not as dangerous as it may sound, since the angle was close to straight down, no ricochets or skips. Eventually, however, my friend said something along the lines of "Look out! It's coming right for us!" :) I turned, to find him standing maybe 6 feet away, aiming down at the muddy ground directly between us at some dangerous killer insect. As I opened my mouth to say something, he fired, and an explosive spray of mud hit me in the face. My eyes stung, and worst of all I had just been inhaling to shout and had apparently sucked some flying mud or debris into my throat. We both thought I had been shot as I stood there, eyes clamped shut, choking, hands at my throat. My buddy threw his gun onto the ground...a H&R semiauto, loaded, cocked and off-safe...and grabbed me and forced me to lay down. I wasn't arguing! As I lay there coughing and blinking, tears streaming and nose running, I eventually started to realize what had actually happened, and that I was OK. I blinked up at my buddy, who was kneeling over me, looking at my face from about 12 inches away with the most comical expression of abject terror I have ever seen. I did the only thing that occurred to me...I gave him the hardest right cross I could muster from my awkward position. He rolled over to my left, and I quickly got on top of him and let him have a couple more, just to make sure I had gotten the point across to him. He never even raised a hand.

When we got back to the farmhouse, his mother took one look at him and about fainted. His father raised one eyebrow and waited. We were both covered with mud head to toe after our impromptu romp on the ground, and my friend's shining cherub face was a bit the worse for wear also. His father looked at my buddy's slightly battered face...then at my snot-and-mud-caked but otherwise unmarked one. His trained eye quickly noted the condition of my righthand knuckles. Watching me closely, he quietly asked "What happened here?" I was scared green, but also still a bit truculent, so I started with "Well, I couldn't help it! After he shot me..."

"WHAAAAT????" His focus immediately turned back to his son. I did what any good friend would have done under the circumstances: I left as quickly and quietly as possible.

Good times! :)

Edited to add: Hoytcannon, I just read your post. That's a sobering story, and probably not easy to tell. Tough way to learn a lesson, especially for a kid.
 
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Stupid is as stupid does. Boy, have I done some stupid stuff. However, here's a lesson for all of you regarding eyewear:

I'm a lifelong shooter, I'm also over 60. I have worn eyeglasses since I was 4 years old. Every time I go to my Optometrist, he always remarks on the fact that my corneas have no scratches on them. My eyesight is so bad (but better than average corrected) that I have to wear glasses whenever I'm conscious, so all the stupid stuff I did that should have screwed up one or more of my eyes had no effect since I was wearing glasses. Imagine what your eyes would look like if you had worn safety glasses every minute of your waking life. I cursed those damn glasses all through my childhood. Now I'm grateful.
ps. just to add -I was in an industrial accident when I was 19. I was hit in the face with a high pressure coupling when it blew. I was wearing my standard horn rimmed prescription "hardex" lens glasses at the time. We found one lens still intact. No other part(s) of the frame or lenses were found. (Happened on a ski hill making snow) The shock was transferred to the bridge of my nose. While it smashed the hell out of my nose, the glasses saved my vision. Not a good way to get a nose job.
 
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When I was about 11, I had a Crossman 88 I believe, pistol, C02 powered, I used to shoot it in my back yard into the windows of an old playhouse we had, we would set the cans up in the window sill and I would create a ricochet resistant backstop. Now I would hardly ever let my brother shoot this this, as it was one of the first things of value I had ever bought with my own money, so he would tail me around when I had this thing in hopes I would let him shoot a few, he would usually be my target boy and keep the C02 readily on hand. I was decent with my rules, we wore sunglasses (in lieu of proper safety glasses we didn't have) always had the shooter only at the line, and I never kept the rotary mag in the pistol when not in use. So one day we went out, I set the pellets, mag and gun on the trampoline, and went to set up my cans/targets in the window of the playhouse. I came back, put the pistol to my hand to check the C02 pressure, as I always did before starting when I was a half used cartridge, and BAHM, my hand started instantly pulsing. My brother, trying to be helpful to me, had loaded it without me knowing, or noticing the mag was no longer beside the pellets. I ran inot the house, cleaned it up, dug around in the wound with tweezers and bandaged it up, seemed to be ok, just very, very sore.

Years later, after a fall snowboarding, I needed an X-ray of my wrist, the doctor came in after the X-ray and asked me, "have you been shot before?" I said yes and told the story, he said to me "come look at this...." here was a perfect outline of the pellet, the only difference was now it was a round point, instead of a pointy one. I asked him if I was in danger of lead poisoning, he assured me I was alright, it seemed to had a "layer" over it and was more than likely going to be a creepy pearl-like object if we remove it. It is still in my hand, as it has caused me no discomfort since and has not yet had any negative side affects that I am aware of. Its a good reminder to double check what you assume you know once in a while.
 
banditos said:
I was on the range one day and we were practicing live grenade exercises. The grenade bodies were being loaded with the explosive detonators at the back of 3/4 ton in one area when someone f#cked up big time and a live one hit the ground with the pin pulled. Six of us hit the ditch while the damn thing went off. Nobody got hit but the truck had some damage to it. Nobody hit....no report. Alcohol was a factor.
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Lol, I was in the reserves, Now that that's a pretty good one, but I think people would be surprised at the amount of "stripes esque" shenanigans that take place in the forces. Makes me wish I could've been in training during the fifties and sixties, where all the good stories come from. Nothing gives you better cardio than irresponsible handling of live ordnance.
 
Like many posters on here, I have been around during a few "incidents" Remember a buddy shooting his 22 rimfire at a bunch of heavy ceramic pots.
Bullet ricochets back and nails him in the cheek....bled pretty good, too.

Another one where a 22 handgun was laid across the forearm and when it was fired, the slug carved a nice shallow groove in his forearm. [This guy was a bit dim, anyway, lol]

We also had those BB and pellet gun wars, usually in one of the nearby gravel pits. Many hits, but fortunately, no one lost an eye.

Once when I was out hunting tree rats, I shot one in the head at about 35 feet, and as I stood ejecting the empty, the bullet came back and struck me in the jacket. Not hard, but
it must have ricocheted off a couple of trees to come around 180º and hit me. I still have the mangled slug in my collection.

Most serious incident happened when I was about 14. I hunted gophers with two other guys my age....we hung around a lot. I used to warn those two about safe gun handling,
but I think they didn't take it too seriously. Long story short, they got into some kind of argument, and one took a shot with his 22 right beside the foot of the other.
Of course, that escalated the tempers, and before I could open my mouth, the other guy returned the favor....problem is, he shot the other guy right in the instep of his foot with a 22LR.

It is still very vivid in my memory, when the fellow who was shot stripped off his penny loafer and grabbed his foot, the blood shot up about 3 inches, and he hollered, "You shot me, you bas***d"
Fortunately, the bullet did not hit any bones, and it exited the bottom of the foot, leaving only a bullet size hole. I still shudder to think what might have happened if it had been a Hollow point load.
And we packed them quite a bit for gophers, since they killed better than the solids.

There was a dramatic change in the way those guys handled their rifles after that incident, believe me!!

Regards, Dave.
 
I have been fortunate not to have anything happen to me but I can remember something that happened to my son. He was six at the time and playing with his BB / pellet gun shooting at something that I said was too close. While his grandma spoke up and said leave him alone he will be fine. So I being a good son go back to what I was doing at the time which was cutting firewood with my dad. Next thing you know I look over and my mom is looking at his hand and he is crying. Well as I said it was too close and a BB bounced back and hit him in the finger. Good thing it wasn’t the eye grandma :p.
 
I was on the range and the next guy over was shooting a revolver that was spitting lead. It came from the side (he was back a bit) so my regular glasses didn't catch it. Certainly got my attention, hurt like hell for while, ended up in an eye clinic to have the md dig it out of the white. Was shooting TR with a world champion, he had seated a primer upside down and had put his rounds point up in the box, luckily it was sunny and he was wearing his shades, only singed his eyebrow. A friend was shooting my 45ACP revolver and was in the habit of cocking it and then holding it around the cylinder to adjust his grip. Mind the GAP boys, not a healthy place to be!
 
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hoytcanon said:
We did the same... but someone did loose an eye... we had the "no shots above the waist rule," but a pellet ricocheted and hit a friend in the eye and he subsequently lost the eye... and I had the misfortune of being the 10 year old perpetrator... most shameful event of my shooting life... and has made me a staunch proponent of rigid firearm safety.
Click to expand...

Same rules when I was a kid. We got lucky, not so much for one of my kid's buddies. Not his eye but the permanent scar is about 1 inch above his rt. eye. Seems to be, boys have to learn the hard way.
 
wow. When I posted this, I thought I may hear one or 2 but is seems there have been a lot of incidents over the years. And not just from young years. For years I always thought that ahhhh, its only 22 it cant hurt you. However, over the last few years safety has become more pronounced and your stories should drive the point home to everyone. As the story goes, "johnnie did not wear safety glasses. Now he does not have to."

Keep shooting. and for CGNers everywhere sake, do it safe.
 
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