My dad lost a friend this way when he was a child. He was one of the few friends to not attend the showing off of the gun....

It was on a virtual range with a rifle that fired bursts of air, but someone before This Troper forgot to "clear" their chamber after a session and when I picked the firearm up I accidentally fingered the trigger and it fired. It wasn't pointed at anyone else but it surprised everyone.

This troper was on the receiving end of a three round burst of blanks at close range during training. It burned a hole in his uniform and, more to the point, it bloody well ''hurt''.

This troper got a couple of blanks in the helmet at close range from an idiot a few years back. And the other guy was already supposed to be 'dead'.

This troper's group needed a gun for a production of ''Tommy'', and we not only had a fire-arms safety person on set for the entire scene every night, but only a single member of the cast (the one who was to fire the gun) was allowed to touch the thing, on pain of being thrown out of, and barred for life from, the theater group. Of course on our opening night the damn thing failed to go off.

This troper who often lends replica firearms to his theatre group is annoyed by the number of playwrights who write "the gun is thrown/dropped to the floor". Not only is it poor firearms handling, such action often damages the replicas which are just pot metal reproductions.

Despite the military's constant emphasis on firearm safety accidents still happen. This troper had several weapons turned in to his arms room with blank ammunition still in the chamber, and one infamous incident saw a blank fired (into the ceiling, fortunately) after the lieutenant holding it refused to clear the weapon while swearing there was nothing in the chamber.

Most military weapons are cleared by turning on the safety, dropping the magazine, clearing the chamber, visually inspecting the chamber, locking the bolt forward, turning off the safety, and pulling the trigger, in that order. (The last three steps are to prep the weapon for storage.) This troper has observed people clearing the chamber, locking the bolt forward, dropping the magazine, pulling the trigger, and being too damned surprised to complete the remaining steps because they forgot that locking the bolt with a magazine chambered the round they just fired.

This troper once saw two friends looking up a detail about their bb gun online. The one holding the gun was standing beside the one sitting at the keyboard. When I pointed out it was a bad idea to hold a loaded bb gun so it was pointing at the seated person's temple at point blank range I was met with withering looks from both and an explanation that the safety catch was on. I moved away.

This troper's happy to admit that he is a subversion of this trope. My firearms safety teacher was a Master Sergeant who had previously been a paratrooper. Sarge was all too happy to tell us more than a few horror stories about what happens when a weapon is improperly cleared. The fact that you'd run laps around the gym building if you screwed up was just icing on the cake.

My gun safety teacher was a retired navy captain, meaning he had more tales to tell.

Happened with this troper's friend with this troper's Red Ryder BB gun. He has a rather bad tendency to sweep people with the gun, which makes this troper panic sometimes, especially when loaded with big pellets. The worst was when he tried to put the gun down and it slid against the boxes it was leaning against, pressing the safety and turning it off as it fell. This troper is personally very cautious with the rifle, and always has it unloaded with the safety on against the wall.

Done to this troper himself with a cap gun. He usually loaded it (a break-open revolver) and then swung it back to snap it closed, but once he decided to carefully put the two ends back together manually while the gun was sitting near his leg. The hammer snapped forward a bit with just enough force when he closed the gun to detonate the first cap, slightly burning this troper's leg.

And one more since it happened today. This troper's production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' is, basically, like we're all actors in 1969 who have similar relationships as the characters and are putting on the play to vent their anger. During one scene, Tybalt takes a real switchblade during his fight scene and "stabs" Mercutio, and Romeo's actor is so distraught he pulls a "real" gun from his bag and shoots the other actor. In order to represent the chaos of a real fight and attempted murder, Romeo runs up to Tybalt, grabs him by the shoulder, and puts the gun next to him and fires, making it appear that he's shooting point-blank. To disguise this, several actors all crowd around them to block the audience's view and make them think the gun is shoved into his gut, but all that has to happen is for someone to end up in the wrong spot and end up on the wrong end of a powder burn.

The worst, though, is the drama teacher/director, Mrs. Woods. She apparently forgot proper gun safety, because when talking to the actors to tell them that they were going to be rehearsing with the gun before a summer school group arrived to watch the rehearsal, she was playing with the revolver's open cylinder and casually gesturing with it, sweeping the gun all over the place. She then accidently had it pointed at the actors watching the scene from the audience while telling them the next scene to set up for, and the worst was during intermission when she was reloading the gun for the shooting scene right after intermission. She walked up to the semicircular group of people chatting backstage and said "Is everyone relaxing?" as she had her finger on the trigger and sweapt the muzzle over the entire group, causing everyone to jump back. Only then did she notice what a fuckup she was being with gun safety.

{{Ripsaw}} averted this ''hard'' his one day working the paintball & airsoft counter at a summer job. Airsoft pistol is empty (confirmed by me), no gas, no pellets, magazine on the counter in front of me. The kid waves it around a bit and points it toward me. I gently push it aside and inform him that the next time he points it at me, it's going back in the display case. His mother wanders over just as the barrel slides back in line with my torso, so she gets to see me grab the teen's wrist, extract the gun from his hand, slide in the mag and place the gun in the case. She, of course, starts yelling at me. In between breaths, I explain what happens...with the manager standing behind me. The teen and his mother are asked to leave the store. Win.

This troper was, ahem, reminded of why you should follow all the safety precautions one time while shooting skeet. With the gun loaded, round chambered, and while I was standing in the shooting position, with the gun lowered, I had my finger on the trigger as I turned to ask the attendant a question. The turning pulled the trigger just enough for the gun to go off, startling the crap out of us...but fortunately, for all the other ways I screwed up, the gun was resolutely pointing down range, and the shot discharged into the ground right in front of me. Keep in mind, I'd been shooting regularly for ''years'' at this point, and had gun safety drilled into my head from day one, it was just a moment of carelessness.

This troper recently bought a pistol crossbow (same as a gun for safety purposes and damn well lethal) and was foolish enough to assume firearms safety was a commonsense matter that did not need explanation to my close friend. After it was casually waved - cocked, loaded and safety OFF - past my face once, a rather obscenity-filled crash course was dispensed. Not on topic but I also found it was naive to think everyone knows how iron sights are used...

This troper is used to wrangling live firearms from his summer job, hence a surprising ease of handling weapons on display at the USS New York events, much to the surprise of the Marines. The other people on the other hand... There were plenty of Marines who were freaking out since the civvies were pretty much waving the weapons around at them with their fingers on the triggers.

This troper had archery lessons in high school gym class. At one point, I stepped up and took my shot, then heard a scream... a girl was still at one of the other targets collecting her arrows from a previous attempt (no she wasn't hit.) The coach yelled at me what the hell was I doing, so I turned and held up my bow and deadpanned "I didn't know it was loaded! I was just playing and it went off in my hand!" Got laughter from everyone, but didn't get me out of detention...

This troper went to a high school where one of their heroes was a football player from the early years of the school. One night, he saw two dogs fighting, and grabbed a gun to whack the ground with to break them apart. He neglected to point the barrel away from himself, and you can guess what happened to him. Despite the rest of my high school idolizing him thanks to some inspiring last words, I thought the guy was an idiot for not knowing how to safely treat a gun.

This Troper went to school with a guy who, while at the clay pigeon range, rested his shotgun on his toes. This is normally standard practice, except that in his case the barrels were loaded and unbroken...And his finger was resting on the trigger. When the word "Pull!" was yelled..Well, I'll leave it up to your imagination.

This Troper has been awed by the simplicity of the Polish version of these rules. "Every gun will fire itself once per year and you can never predict when it will be."

This troper, who lives in a pretty small town, knows of a couple incidents of this, though he didn't see either first-hand. One of those was a high-school student who had been out and about shooting with some friends. When they got back to the cabin they were staying in, he decided to horse around with the semiautomatic pistol he was carrying by removing the magazine, then putting the muzzle to his head and pulling the trigger. Since he'd neglected to check the chamber, he wound up blowing his own brains out.

This troper(Finnish) had a fellow conscript from Africa who had finally understood what safety catch is after 4 months of training and telling our (German) Sergeant about this. That was quiet moment. The reason being we´d been in the shooting range the whole day, with live ammo. And the guy was next to me. In Finnish army we didn´t use bulletproof-vests in shooting range.

This Troper's GM uses his (detached) laser sight/flashlight to highlight various things during a game. He points the gun at himself as he reattaches it, explaining "Hey, I know I'm not going to pull the trigger when it's pointed this way.". Well, at least it's not pointed at anyone else, and I suppose his willingness to sacrifice himself for the safety of others speaks well of him.

When This Troper's dad was teaching him to shoot, he stressed the importance of firearm safety, mainly because he (that is to say, my dad) lost an ear when some novice was playing around with a pistol during his college days.

This troper's Papaw apparently used to be rather good when it came to gun safety, but now...not so much. He used to have a decent collection of guns, but sold most of them ages ago. The only one he kept was a .22 9-round revolver (the ones you used to be able to get at Sears)...which he keeps loaded. In a gun safe where the key is often just left in the lock. One day, he decided to take it out to show it to me, which of course meant waving it around like an idiot as he tried to remember how to unload it. While it was pointed in my general direction. Needless to say, I got a bit concerned, although at least nothing happened. What's annoying is the fact that I've never even fired a gun in my life, and yet I was more cautious with the damned thing than he was. -_-

A while ago I was helping some friends of my brother and dad move. I turned the corner to go into my brother's friend's room to get more stuff and saw him and my brother pointing a rifle at me. I was slightly startled but calmly asked "is that thing fucking loaded?" They said no and I came in to the room. A moment later the friend cocks it twice and a round came out, meaning they lied (kinda).

While I'm very clumsy and carefree with weapons (and it's a luck that I've no business with them), my father is a retired hunter and has a small firearms collection. for sport purpose, he trained with pistols at firing ranges. He never, and I swear ''never'' unproperly used any weapon, and was the first to empty firearms when not in use, even for a couple of hours. His reward for such care is to have dodged a bullet once, and being pointed with jammed or "not sure if it's unloaded" guns three time by others. One time, both him and me where under custody by a soldier (airport security, long story) bracing a machine gun with safety off. He was a very young soldier, and ''very'' nervous. We were a lot more nervous, for same reason.

This troper plays Airsoft. At one game, one referee was rambling on to the assembled (especially the noobs) that he was hardcore regarding range safety. He has his Airsoft rifle slung as he does so. In his vigor to demonstrate remembering to remove the mag and apply the safety when off the field, he triggers his slung rifle. One "VWIP!" and a quarter-gram Airsoft BB rattling through the underbrush later (as in real automatic rifles, dropping the mag usually leaves one round in the chamber), and the referee is the butt of laughter from experienced gamers and noobs alike.

An associate of this troper once Shot Margaret In The Arm when entering a speedball match. The barrel sock had been removed for the game, but due to heavy modification as it was a long-range marker, a paintball was discharged at close range (perhaps a few inches) into the bare skin of a teammate's forearm despite what was before and after thought to be a closed safety when some jostling occurred (The result was a deep welt with a narrow ring of torn skin around it, but fortunately no deeper damage aside from bruising).

While not technically violating any of the main rules, this was still a pretty damned bad thing to see someone do. I was a sailor on the USS Enterprise, and one day while they were having a security drill, me and a buddy saw one of the security MAA's running down the passage-way so we jump to the side. Well this guy had his shotgun slung on a strap over his shoulder, and next thing we know, the strap had slipped down off his shoulder, and because of the way his arms were pumping from running, he ended up throwing a shotgun down a very cramped and full hallway.

This troper's granpa owns a classic Winchester .22 pump-action rifle he prefers to use for hunting squirrels and other small game. The rifle is fed by a tube magazine underneath the barrel that is designed to be swiftly unloaded by removing the magazine-stop at the end and simply pouring the remaining rounds out. Despite this, granpa always un-loaded the weapon by operating the slide until shells stopped flying from the breech. One day this caught up with him as he emptied the rifle after a day's hunting, *cha-Chak, cha-Chak, cha-Chak, cha-POW!* resulting in a .22 caliber hole in the eave of the house.

This Troper almost caused a horrific accident with a harpoon gun due to this very trope. I was holding a harpoon gun while trying to set something and I did not realise the harpoon gun was pointing at someone. Mind you the harpoon gun was set and ready to fire. I don't want to imagine what could have happened : /

This is one of the reasons I left the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), They used to set up and allow archery practice, which I liked... unfortunately, it was done in such a way that there was NOTHING stopping the small kids some people insisted on bringing from dashing out in front. When the ninnies technically running it screamed me out after they let their child run out in front of /right as I released an arrow/ (note that this had happened to other members of the shire as well, and they seemingly never had the sense to tell precious darling to not walk in front of a drawn bow), I finally had enough and left. Nothing happened, but I had nightmares for months afterwards when I thought of what could happen.

This Troper saw someone shoot himself with a bow and arrow. He claimed to know how to shoot, and obeyed the 5 rules of bow safety, but invented a new one when he steadied the arrow by putting his finger on the point.

My ex-best friend, while in elementary school, was practicing for a merit badge for Boy Scouts by going with me to the air rifle range. I can't remember if he was reloading the gun or just resting, but he happened to have the barrel pointed right at his foot when he accidentally pulled the trigger. The BB bounced off of his tennis shoe, then off his shooting goggles out toward the range.

I was having a blast plinking with a [=CO2=] gun, and my friend had one too. He hadn't loaded it with pellets, and shot me in the face. Little puff of air, no biggie. Me, forgetting that I had just dropped in the 8-shot cylinder of pelets into my gun, aimed and fired off a few rounds rapidly, at point-blank... He recalls that he thought "That was a really hard bit of air" that had clocked him right between the eyes. He still refers to the resulting scar as his third eyeball, fifteen years later, and I think he's finally over it.

Wwe were at a friends house. he decided to be coola nd show us his step-dad's Casull .454 revolver. he produces silvery thign of doom and starts to wave it around the room - I had to emphatically tell him to make sure he kept it pointed at stuff he wouldn't mind being shot. Like, anything but us.

I've had gun safety drilled into me ever since I found out about the fricken things. "Always assume it's loaded and cocked, even if you know it's empty" and "never point it at anyone."

On the theatre side of things, I had a director in Ohio who always insisted that any guns in the show be real ones with blanks loaded. To his credit, he carefully instructed us on proper handling of the gun including how to check what rounds were loaded, and to never actually point the gun directly at anyone for any reason. Sadly, not all of the actors took it to heart, and I lost a shirt (fortunately nothing more serious) to a discharge of blanks that included flaming bits of gunpowder. In the next show I was in with a gun, there was only a cap-gun. An unloaded cap-gun.

My mother was nearly shot by her dad when she was a kid. She was walking down the path, and him and his idiot friends were using it as a firing range without realizing--or caring, knowing my grandfather--that people were using the road as, you know, road.

Man, I was just gonna tell the story how much brother put a pencil in a Nerf gun and fired it against the door, which I opened just as he shot, hitting me square between the eyes (luckily, I only bled a little, if he was off by an inch on either side, I'd probably have been blinded in either eye), but after reading all these entries about real guns, I'm kind of depressed now.