Unintentional Firearm Injuries
Most Veterans interviewed for this module recall the moment they sustained or witnessed a firearm injury as, for many, it has had a significant impact on their lives. For some, the day of their accident “started off just like any other day.” Veterans spoke of following firearm safety procedures but recall that something caused them to get distracted; they were “tired” or “frustrated” and that is when a mistake happened. A couple participants described their accident as a “fluke” or “ione in a thousand, or one in a million” chance.
Not realizing there was a bullet in the chamber
Veterans discussed not being aware that their firearm was loaded when their injury occurred and often attributed it to carelessness. Ken recalled, “I’ve been around firearms all my life. I just made one stupid mistake.I did not check to make sure the gun was, you know, still hot. I just assumed it, and I was wrong.” Often, such accidents happened while Veterans were cleaning or servicing their firearms or when they were engaging in an activity, such as target shooting.
After cleaning his firearm, Chris realized he missed a step. When he went back to take it apart, he forgot that he had reloaded it.
After cleaning his firearm, Chris realized he missed a step. When he went back to take it apart, he forgot that he had reloaded it.
So, I carried a firearm, a handgun, from 1989 all the way through 2015, for a living and never had any accidents. I was having a lot of pain, and I was on Gabapentin for the pain instead of narcotics. I had a misconception that, in my mind, because it wasn’t a narcotic, my mind should be clear, and that wasn’t the case. I was handling a firearm. I had taken it apart and cleaned it. Put it back together and loaded it, and realized I had neglected a step and went to take it apart while it was still loaded. It went off and took my right index finger. The bullet went down the length of it. If you can see, it’s gone. Because the bones were all shattered, it wasn’t worth saving.
The week before I had that accident, I was teaching some kids how to shoot, and I was going over safety. One of the kids was seven years old, and he was my cousin’s child. So, he saw me after the accident, and he tells me, he says, “I know what you did wrong.” At seven years old. I said, “What is that?” He said, “You didn’t make sure the chamber was empty before you handled it.” I told him, “That’s exactly right. I did not do that. That is why you always check even if somebody says it’s empty. You always check.”
Then I realized it was a teaching point. My stupidity, my accident, became a teaching point for the young people in the community. I got with the firearms instructors with Pheasants Forever. The Wyoming Game and Fish has community instructors that do hunter safety, and I got with them in my community, and also with the 4H shooting instructors. Because I do have pictures of the injury before any surgery was done, I have pictures of the X-rays before surgery and after surgery, and I shared that. The injury was pretty graphic because it ripped my hand open. The bullet went down the length of my finger and came out the back of my hand. Depending on the age of the kids and stuff whether they use those pictures, but it’s an experience to try to teach kids.
While breaking down his semiautomatic pistol, Robert forgot to remove the magazine.
While breaking down his semiautomatic pistol, Robert forgot to remove the magazine.
I own a semiautomatic pistol and I was trying to figure out how to break it down. I had been shown a couple of times in the, you know, fishing, sporting gun shops how to do it, but I just couldn’t figure it out. And I made sure that each time I picked it up, I removed the magazine and put the magazine aside, and made sure it was clear. And I was not under the influence of anything, but I screwed up. I was attempting to find what was called the sweet spot, sliding the slide back to find the area in which it would release itself. It’s a little tricky if you don’t know quite how to do it. I was in the process of trying to figure out where that slide position was. So, I was listening to an AM talk radio show, which I listen to almost every morning. I am pretty sure I was doing that. And every, I don’t know, every ten or 15 minutes, I would pick it up again and go, “Now, I can’t find that spot,” you know? And every time I would pick it up, I would remove the magazine.
Well, there was one time I picked it up and I forgot to remove the magazine. And I’m sliding the slide back in the normal place for that slide to be, which to get it to release is only about, well, maybe a half inch or so from the end of the muzzle of the weapon. And I just was unable to find it. And I kept going further and further back with the slide, right to the point where I was just about all the way to the end of it. Well, in the process of letting the slide slowly back to its original position, I chambered a round because I had forgotten to remove the magazine.
This particular handgun, in order to get it to release, you have to pull the trigger. So, guess what I did? I pulled the trigger and I shot myself. And the bullet went in my left forearm and came out in my elbow area. It went in the part of the forearm that’s near the hand and went through the arm and went out near my elbow. And fortunately, it wasn’t any serious bone fracture or anything. I was very lucky in that regard. But as a result, I have lost some feeling in my left hand because one of the ulnar, they call it the ulnar nerve, had been shattered. And I have use of my left hand, but it will never be as strong or as sensitive as it used to be. So, it was a really dumb thing to do. It’s probably one of the dumbest things I have ever done in my life. It could have been worse, you know, of course, but I was lucky.
And it was quite an experience on the pain level. But I kind of became a poster child mentally, you know, like the poster child for safety for firearms. So, yeah, firearm safety is number one. You really have to respect it. You’ve got to understand what you are doing. And for that one little lapse of, you know, that little brain fart, that little lapse in memory of not pulling that magazine out, I messed up my hand for the rest of my life. One of the top three dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life.
While cleaning his firearm, Justice was trying to do a dry fire not realizing he had loaded the magazine back in the gun.
While cleaning his firearm, Justice was trying to do a dry fire not realizing he had loaded the magazine back in the gun.
Every time I went shooting, I’d be cleaning it or just give it regular maintenance. Oil it up, trying to make sure, preventative maintenance basically. And about a year into doing so, I was sitting in the living room. I was actually cooking a pizza and decided, “Well, I’ve got 30 minutes or so, let me clean my Glock out.”
Yeah, I was cleaning my gun out, stripping it down, cleaning all the components, greasing it up, putting it back together. And I hadn’t realized I put a loaded magazine back into the chamber. I thought I had a dead magazine on me. Cocked the handgun back, was trying to do a dry fire to cycle the weapon and the firearm discharged without me knowing a round’s in there. And it went through the meaty part of my left hand just like if you’re holding your hand towards your face. Just to the left of my index finger and it passed just through. It was a hollow point. It tumbled through, went through a wall, ricocheted off my furnace and went into a doorframe.
And after that, I was home alone. My girlfriend was working at the time. So, I got the gun down and away out of danger, held my hand up, got a towel wrapped around. Went to my parents’ house, which was next door, to see if anybody was home. Nobody was home. I had to call my grandmother, incidentally, to drive as not to worry about possibly bleeding out or like losing focus as I was driving. But I was able to get to the hospital. They got me patched up pretty good. The blood loss was barely minimal. No broken bones, but I lost probably 80% of my left hand—the thumb group muscle where if you clench your hand you see in between your index finger and your thumb muscle group, how it bulges out. Most of that is gone now. I got questioned there. They wanted to make sure it wasn’t like a suicidal action thing or anything like that. I explained to them what I was doing. They just wanted to make sure I was not feeling down on myself. I just told them it was just one dumb mistake and I had paid the consequence for it.
But after the questioning, I had to get transferred up to [hospital] to get some stitches and everything. On the underside of my hand, there’s minimal scarring. It really wasn’t too bad. But the top basing, I guess, from the palm of your hand has been massively scarred. It was a hollow point round that tumbled through there. So, it took a good chunk of me with it.
For what the damage could’ve been done, the injury was very minor in my opinion. I really got off scot-free. But I now have a visible reminder every day when I look at my hand. You can never be too careful around something that can protect you, but also damage you at the same time. I’ve always tried to pride myself on my knowledge of firearms and safety with them. But probably for the first year-year and a half, it really affected me and it’s still one of my life’s greatest shames. I really have trouble telling people about it.
Tom recalls his injury as “a combination of bad luck and a weapons issue.”
Tom recalls his injury as “a combination of bad luck and a weapons issue.”
The specific incident that I had with the one firearm I had was a shotgun that is probably 1940’s vintage. And it had an internal box magazine. It was a .410-gauge shotgun and it’s my grandfather’s. And it’s been in our – you know in my gun cabinet for years. And on this day, I took the weapon out. I was cleaning – basically just cleaning weapons. I’ll do that every once in a while, just to maintain them. And it’s a bolt action gun with an internal magazine. And when you clear a weapon, you clear it. You make sure there’s nothing in there, verbal or visual, and you check with your fingers. Well, unbeknownst to me, there was a round that had jammed in the spring mechanism and you couldn’t see it and you couldn’t feel it when you put your hand down in there. And so, when you’re done clearing a weapon, you ride the bolt forward or close the bolt system and you pull the trigger and let the hammer fall to show that the weapon’s cleared.
Well, this had been done numerous times before and this round had still been in there. I had no idea it was in there. And when I racked it forward and went back, because it’s a really long gun (it’s a shotgun), and squeezed the trigger, the barrel – and this is my fault. I should’ve known. The barrel never crosses – the rule is the barrel never crosses anything you’re not willing to destroy. Well, that day I destroyed my foot. I pulled the trigger and it caught my left foot in the corner and penetrated. And I had to go in. And it’s all birdshot. But it was so close range that it did some pretty gnarly damage to it. And I want to say this was probably seven or eight years ago. I can’t even remember when it happened. And my foot is healed and fine. And the only thing I feel about the whole thing is my own stupidity. Because even if that round was in there and that barrel wouldn’t have been covered by my foot, it wouldn’t have happened. It was just something, you know, completely random and minimum complacency on my part not even thinking about it. You know okay, let’s clear everything and, you know, squeeze the trigger. But it was that one in one thousand or one in a million that happened so. But it was a complete accident. Doesn’t affect me at all except for feeling stupid and getting ribbed by all my Army buddies so. It was just a fluke. It was just a combination of bad luck and you know a weapons issue basically.
Some Veterans said they weren't servicing their firearms on the day of the accident and didn't know there was a bullet in the chamber.
Seth recalls that while checking his firearm he didn’t realize he “had a live round in there.”
Seth recalls that while checking his firearm he didn’t realize he “had a live round in there.”
Knowing gun violence and not wanting to be a target, and now that I am responsible for these two kiddos, one of them isn’t even in school yet, so, he’s with me all the time. And so, I was like, okay, I need to go out and make sure my ship’s dialed in as far as my laser optics and whatnot on my piece. And so, I had been out in the garage, and kiddo was inside. He was watching SpongeBob in the front room. He’s content. He's got his Cheerios. And that’s when I go out and use, it’s called a laser bore sight, where it’s like a laser that goes in the barrel. And so, that points at where the impact would be, and then you can just dial in your laser optics underneath. So, I wanted to make sure I was on target. If we’re going to be walking around these places, you know, knowing my head space, that are free fire areas, with a kid, you know, I’ve got a number one job here. And so, when I went back in, the firearm that I have, it doesn’t have a hammer in back. It has a little like pin that comes out the back that tells you, “Hey, it’s charged.” You can pull the trigger and the hammer is going to go, and there is a little pin on top that tells you that you’ve got something in the barrel. And those are independent of each other.
Regardless, I had this holster pretty far back and I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t, you know, charged or anything. So, I went back, and I felt that both pins were up. And I thought to myself, “I haven’t had any live rounds out today. I’m just going to, you know, drop the hammer in the holster.” And sure enough, I had a live round in there. And it pretty much vaporized about three quarters of a cup of my right ass cheek. Yeah. Yeah, it was impressive. And I remember, you know, having seen, you know, gun injuries for years, I reached back, and I’m stunned as hell, obviously. I reach back and I look at my hand, and it looked like it was motor oil. And so, I’m like in this completely stunned state, now wondering what the hell just happened. And kid comes running around the corner. And he calls me Foff. “Foff, Foff, what happened?” And I just, “Big bang in the microwave and you know, go watch SpongeBob, it’s okay.” You know, trying to hold the pain in for the second at least what I thought was going to be pain, more shock. And he’s content with that. He runs back out to watch TV.
And at this point, I start getting lightheaded. And so, I take a knee and I’m like, “All right, you know, you’re bleeding out. This kid cannot find you like that. You need to soldier the fuck up.” And that’s when I stood up, dropped trou to assess the wound and like it was just millimeter speckles of red and yellow in the crotch of my jeans, meat and fat. And so, I’m like, “Okay, that’s bad.” And I look back and yeah, I mean, it was like a cross section out of an anatomy book. Like, you could easily see your dermal layers. It was, it was pretty amazing. But then I suddenly went into medic mode and I’m like, “Okay, I’m not bleeding. I’m bouncing on my foot. I’ve got neuromotor intact. I’m going to put some gauze in it and get an ace wrap and call the wife and say, ‘Hey, something’s happened.’” And from then, it was kind of fine. Not so funny. Yeah, it was, in retrospect it was.
I said, “I’m gonna drive on up.” She says, “No, you call Ken.” And Ken is an old buddy of mine. He was a platoon sergeant when I was in the Guards years prior, and lives kind of in the neighborhood. She said, “Call him, get him to drive.” All right. So, I call him. He comes over. “Let me see. Wow, oh my god, that’s amazing.” It’s, you know, again, we’ve got kind of a perverse sense of humor given backgrounds. And so, we pile in the car. And she calls, or she calls right as we are leaving. “I’ve got coverage. Come get me.” I said, “Okay.” So, go over there, scoop her, and as we pull up to Emmanuel, I am getting out of the car, I’m opening the door like I do, and she’s looking me up and down like, “Sure, you hurt yourself.” Because it’s completely numb. There was no pain to this. I think it was just the proximity of the blast that caused that to happen.
And I ended up spending a week on the floor there. I had two damage resection surgeries and got lectured by every trauma doctor that was on duty about the dangers of firearms and ya ya ya. “You are all military physicians. You’ve all carried. Shut up and thanks for the lecture. This was complacency in action and if you don’t think I get it by now, I don’t need the, I don’t need the jam up.” But I appreciated, you know, where they were coming from, too. Doing due diligence and what not. I was a dumbass and I’m a hell of a lot more careful. That’s how it’s changed my behavior.
Edward thought he had shot all the rounds in his firearm, but it discharged when he went to reload.
Edward thought he had shot all the rounds in his firearm, but it discharged when he went to reload.
The particular gun that I shot myself with, it was just carelessness. A little .25 semiautomatic and Raven had recalled them because the safeties didn’t work right. I actually had a person, an ex-brother-in-law that gave classes on gun safety and it went off accidentally on him too. Didn’t hurt him, just went through my wall. And we kept probably, I mean we didn’t know, we didn’t notice the circumstance behind it but we were up at my daughter-in-law’s parents’ house on Christmas Day and we were shooting my son’s .44, or my son’s Glock, 9 mm and I was shooting these little .225’s. I thought I shot all the shells out of them when I didn’t and was going back to reload and it went off and went off and went through my hand. I went to the emergency room up in Zachary and got all the movement, my fingers still, my fingers numb but everything works.
It was just carelessness on my part. I didn’t check to make sure all the rounds were out of it. We were just target shooting and I turned around to go back to the table to reload the magazine and I just wasn’t safe with it, and it went through my hand. Yep, and I said that it was better to happen to me than him or her.
Others described being injured by someone else who was handling the firearm and didn’t perform the required safety checks.
While helping clean his firearms, a friend removed the magazine from Sam’s gun, “but didn’t make sure there wasn’t one in the chamber.”
While helping clean his firearms, a friend removed the magazine from Sam’s gun, “but didn’t make sure there wasn’t one in the chamber.”
I guess it was probably just a few years ago. I was sitting on my couch cleaning some of my firearms, breaking them down and cleaning them, and a guy that lives down the street came over. We sat down and he wanted to participate. My biggest mistake in all of this was -- you know, I don’t blame him at all. My mistake was just making an assumption that because he was a country boy as well, that he knew what I knew and there wouldn’t be any issue.
So, the particular firearm that he had, he was sitting at the end of the couch to the right of me. The firearm he had was a handgun and the way that you break it down, he took the magazine out -- but one thing, I should back up and say is most of my guns in my home are loaded. They stay loaded. I don’t have any children. I never had any children. I don’t have a wife. I live by myself. And my closest neighbor is down the road. So, very little chance of anyone getting hurt by these firearms besides myself.
Anyway, the handgun that he had, he took the magazine out of it, but he didn’t check the chamber to make sure there wasn’t one in the chamber. This particular gun, the way it’s broken down is you have to pull the trigger before it allows you to take off the top slide to take the receiver off to get to the barrel. Well, when he pulled the trigger, it went off and it went through my leg, my calf, below my knee, above my ankle. Fortunately, it didn’t hit the bone at all. It just went clean through.
Anyway, I got him to bring me to the hospital. It was not a bad injury that day. It was painful and it wasn’t fun at all. That day it wasn’t bad. But now, I have a lot of nerve damage. I guess it went through some tendons or something in the muscles that caused -- I don’t have any feelings in my foot from my big toe to my small toe. It’s like there’s just no feeling there. I have a weird limp that it causes me to walk a little funny.
I guess going back, the assumption that I made and just thinking that everybody that knows anything, the very first thing you should know about firearms is just to make sure that there’s nothing in the chamber, and I just made that assumption, and it was a bad one and it cost me.
Everything that I’ve been taught my whole life, I didn’t put that into practice, and that’s why I got injured. If I had put it into practice what I’d been taught, then I would’ve never handed him a loaded gun. So, I just feel like this was my fault in every way.
While working on his car, Andrew was shot in the leg by an acquaintance who didn’t check the chamber of firearm he was handing.
While working on his car, Andrew was shot in the leg by an acquaintance who didn’t check the chamber of firearm he was handing.
My story is just kind of a tragic story. Even before I got shot, I was married to my second wife, and she committed suicide with a gun. And so, I moved away from New Mexico. I moved into Colorado. And I kind of put firearms on the back burner after that because it just kind of affected me really badly.
And so, one day I was going down and taking care of some stuff on the property where I was renting to a person. And I was working on a fuel pump on my vehicle. And him and some other friends were – they were comparing their weapon lubrication with each other. And they had set the firearms on the back of the tailgate of a pickup. And I was under a different pick up working on the fuel pump. And my brother pulled up. Just before my brother pulled up, I went to one of the firearms and I noticed the magazine was in it. Actually, there was only one gun there at the time. And I noticed the magazine was in it, so I popped the magazine, and I cleared the weapon. And I set it there.
And then unbeknownst to me another friend came and put the exact same weapon next to it, next to the weapon that was already cleared. And I didn’t know about it because I was working underneath the truck. And when I got up, the guy that had brought the second weapon was trying to clear that weapon and he didn’t make sure that there was a bullet – actually, he was trying to take the slide off of the top of the gun. It was a Springfield Army XD45, and part of the process is you have to pull the slide back, push down a little switch and pull the trigger and slide the slide off. Well, he didn’t make sure that there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber.
When my brother pulled up, I got out from underneath the truck to go make sure that – or just to go say hi to him actually. And I heard my brother say, “Is that gun unloaded?” And the guy says, “I know what I’m doing.” He kind of turned himself towards me. And the firearm, he pulled the trigger and he shot me in the leg. So that’s what happened. It wasn’t – there was nothing ever glorious or anything about getting shot.
After that he – he shot me in my tibia. And I couldn’t walk – it didn’t knock me down, but I went to step, and my leg felt like a wet noodle. And one of my other friends came running up after he heard the gunshot and grabbed me under the arm. And my brother threw a belt around my leg, around my thigh in order to stop the blood. And they threw me in a pickup. The guy who shot me called 911. By the time I got to the bottom of the road – I live about half a mile off a dirt road. By the time I got on the pavement the ambulance was actually – happened to be driving by there. And I was able to get in the ambulance fairly quickly. They took me to the hospital right away where they thought they were – they took x-rays of my leg. Of course, I was in and out of consciousness at that time. I lost a lot of blood, but I didn’t have any – I didn’t need a transfer of blood or anything. They took X-rays of my leg and they seen that it was – my tibia was shattered. And they were thinking that they were going to have to cut my leg off below the knee.
Firearm dropped and fired
Some Veterans said that their injury occurred when their firearm fell or was dropped.
When the sling on his wife’s rifle came apart, Johnny was hit with “a .243 round 100 grain bullet” from three feet away.
When the sling on his wife’s rifle came apart, Johnny was hit with “a .243 round 100 grain bullet” from three feet away.
It started off just like any other day going hunting. We were going deer hunting, and I shot a doe down bottom of the hill. And we went down there, gutted it out, started hauling it back up to my truck. And I had told her to put a round in the chamber because there was a bear popping its jaw at us trying to come in on us.
And she’d changed the sling out on her rifle the night before and I should’ve double-checked it. I really should’ve double-checked it, but I didn’t. So, when she went to put her rifle back on her shoulder, the sling came apart on her and from three feet away it put a .243 round 100 grain bullet into my shoulder—bottom of the shoulder, top of the chest, yeah. So, that’s how I ended up getting shot.
I knew I’d been shot. I couldn’t feel my arm. And I remember telling myself I needed to stay calm. So, that’s what I kind of did—tried to keep my heartrate down. Then her cousin immediately started putting—applying pressure onto my shoulder. Every time they moved their hand, my shoulder went gurgly. You could hear the sucking chest wound. I collapsed a lung. Let’s see—collapsed lung, shattered four ribs, broke the collarbone to where they can’t hardly fix it. Yeah, it’s good times. But you can’t look at me now and tell. I’m still very much firearm friendly. Firearms are a tool. They’re only as good or as bad as the person that has them in their hand.
So, Life Flight was only about a half hour helicopter ride to where I was down in Cottage Grove. So, they got in the air, got down into my area. They put two units of blood in me. They said if they would’ve just gotten a regular picture of me, they would’ve thought that I bled out. I was that blueish gray color apparently. Yeah. Yeah, pretty lucky that those guys heard me yelling, and screaming, and fighting the EMT’s.
So, it took the EMT’s 45 minutes to get there roughly—maybe a little bit more. And then, a 45-minute helicopter ride. That was good times. Most expensive helicopter ride I’ve ever taken, and I don’t remember none of it. But I can say that they saved my life, so yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Where was your wife throughout all of this?
She was right next to me. While I was sitting there waiting, she was in the front of the ambulance while they were taking me down to where they were airlifting me out. And then, she sat up there at the hospital with me after she got there a few hours later. So, she had to—she took all the guns out—all my guns out of my house and put them up at her dad’s house. That kind of upset me because it wasn’t the guns’ fault. It really wasn’t anybody’s fault that I got hurt.
So, she had taken the—she had put a round in the chamber like I told her to, put it back on safe, and put it on her shoulder. It was an older rifle—made in Belgium. It’s an old Sako. And the firing pin gets pinched by the safety. And it makes it to where when you pull the trigger, it doesn’t do anything. That’s how safeties used to work back then. Nowadays, it’s a two-piece firing pin and it will not—it moves half the firing pin away to where it can’t fire. But you’re talking a rifle that was made back in the ‘50s- ‘60s. Yeah. Yeah, it’s bound to have a few issues. So, I never did blame the rifle. I never blamed her. Yeah, it was just a series of unfortunate events that day.
Jack was undressing when the Derringer in his pant pocket hit the ground and fired.
Jack was undressing when the Derringer in his pant pocket hit the ground and fired.
I have several pistols. I’ve had some – I’ve inherited one. I’ve been given a couple and I’ve purchased the rest. I have a shotgun. I have an AR15 and assorted pistols. Probably six, including the one my wife carries in her purse. And I like to target shoot with some of them.
But, anyway, I would – we were going on vacation, my wife and I, one of her brothers and his wife. And I took my grandson with me, who was about – at that time around 16 or 17 maybe. We were going to New Orleans to catch a cruise ship. We’ve done a lot of cruises. But most of the time it’s out of Florida. This time we caught the ship out of New Orleans.
So, what we do, I have a large van. We all take that van. And we drove about half-way, which put us in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that night. And the next morning we’d up and finish the drive on down to New Orleans, as the locals call it, I’ve learned. I say New Orleans, they say New Orleans. Anyway, that night I was tired. And we got in the motel room. And I had a Derringer in my pocket. And it’s a two shot Derringer and it uses the same round as a 357 Magnum, or a 38 Special. It’s a big round. It’s a pretty heavy-duty round as pistols go.
And I took my – I was just undressing. I was just so tired. I took my jeans off. And I just kind of folded them around where the crease would be, forward. And I just kind of tossed it on the floor. And when I did, the Derringer doesn’t have a trigger guard, and when it hit the floor, it discharged. And I was very fortunate. It went through my thigh; high up on my thigh. It traveled about 5.5 inches through my thigh. And then exited. I was fortunate it didn’t hit my thigh bone. It didn’t hit an artery. It just passed through my thigh.
And they called an ambulance, 911. And the police came in and like – anytime there’s a shooting I’ve learned every police – I think half the police force in Tuscaloosa must have been in my room. They hear there’s a shooting, they don’t know it was an accidental shooting, they don’t trust that I guess. They want to see for themselves. Anyway, I was surprised by the number of law enforcement people. So, they put me on a gurney, took me out to the ambulance. Took me to the hospital.
It was a new gun. I never even fired it before. I just got it just the day before we went on vacation. So, I didn’t have any – I didn’t have any practice or anything. But I didn’t want to wear an ankle holster. So, I wanted something I could just put in my pocket. It doesn’t look good walking around with an ankle holster in shorts. You know? I don’t think that’s a good look. Plus they wouldn’t let you anyway. You couldn’t get on a cruise ship.
Basically, when it comes to firearms, and everything, that’s my story. What I said earlier, that I was familiar with firearms, and possibly too familiar. I got complacent. Because I was used to firing weapons of – that were very, very powerful. Automatic weapons and everything. So I got to where, handling a pistol, and especially a Derringer was like – that’s like a toy almost compared to what I had so much experience with weapons, and firearms. And I just got careless and I paid for that.
Paul’s Derringer fell out of his open holster and discharged.
Paul’s Derringer fell out of his open holster and discharged.
The accident happened in 2017. I was carrying a Derringer .38 caliber in an open leather holster. No way to secure the weapon to keep it from falling out. I was in the restroom of my residence, and the weapon fell out of the holster and discharged by my boot and into my left foot side. A complete through-and-through. It made a 90-degree angle about midway and went upwards towards my talus and took out my talus. Busted it in half. That bone in my ankle which, of course, allows your foot to fully flex in an upward position, to the left and the right.
My fiancée was with me. She was in the living room. It was a single-wide trailer. When the bullet discharged, I felt the pain and I was in disbelief simply because of the fact that I figured, or thought that a Derringer .38-caliber over and under barrels, the hammer was supposed to be fully to the rear, and the only way that the weapon would be discharged was if you pulled the trigger.
It entered through my boot, like I said, into my foot and out. Being in shock and disbelief, I looked down because the weapon had fallen on the floor. It was a tile floor in the bathroom. I guess just the jarring of it hitting the floor caused it to discharge and, of course, looking down and seeing the weapon on the floor and blood squirting out of my boot, my reaction, of course, was -- well, my fiancée heard the firearm go off, and she responded with, “Are you okay?” And I said, “No. I just shot myself in the foot.”
Called 911. And that was it. I knew where the bullet was. It didn’t go anywhere else. It didn’t kill anything. Didn’t injure anybody. Didn’t put any holes in the trailer that I’m going to have to explain to my landlord, so I was good to go.
I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, dizzy and lightheaded. I fell backwards into the bathtub. I had the ambulance show up. I had three sheriff’s deputies respond. They picked up the firearm from the floor because when she was on the phone to the 911 dispatcher, the dispatcher told her not to pick up the firearm, to leave it exactly where it was. They put me in the ambulance and transported me to the hospital. I’m not sure exactly how long I was in the triage room before the doctor came in and told me he was taking me into surgery to remove the bullet and that I was going to be under anesthesia.
My accident was just a ridiculous fluke that happened and wasn’t meant to happen. I realize that instead of the round going through my ankle, it could have gone upwards and could have hit me in the chest. It was a stupid thing to do. I’m never taking the firearm to the bathroom again. No open holsters and shit. There’s nothing to secure that thing inside the holster. That was the thing. You pull down your pants, you’re lucky if the damn thing doesn’t fall out and shoot you.
Eric forgot he had stashed a gun under the driver’s seat of his truck. When he got out it fell, “hit the running board,” wounding him in the leg.
Eric forgot he had stashed a gun under the driver’s seat of his truck. When he got out it fell, “hit the running board,” wounding him in the leg.
And then the last time I got shot, it was in 2011, I went and checked on a mare I had, she’d just had a colt. So, I drove to the veterinarian's office, and when I drove, I forgot that I had that .45/.410 underneath my leg in the front seat of the truck. When I stepped out of the truck, it slid off the seat, hit the running board of the truck, and shot me in the back of the thigh, blew the bottom third of my thigh off. I’ve still got a leg full of buckshot. It gives me quite a bit of trouble, there’s a hole in it as big as my hand is. About three inches wide and about four inches long. It’s never going to be right. It hurts to stretch, hurts to walk, you know. It just, it’s a pain in the butt.
I stepped out of my truck and naturally heard a big boom behind me. Realized immediately that everything went south, you know. It was a bad day. You know, I felt the impact in my leg, I knew I’d been shot, because I knew a gun shot, and oh shit, I’d been shot. I jerked my belt off, put a tourniquet on my thigh. Luckily this kid was a first responder pulled up to the stop light that was right there by the veterinarian’s office. He jumped up and came running over, got me laid down, he looked at my son, he told my son, “Man, there’s three holes here and I only got two hands.” My leg is just hamburger meat looking. Well, it was about a few seconds later the ambulance showed up, they loaded me up in the ambulance, and took me to the airport. Got to the airport, they loaded me on the helicopter and flew me to the hospital. I was on one end of the hospital; my son was at the other end because it burst his eardrums. They went in, stabilized the wound, and then the next day they went in and did surgery.
It’s been hard to deal with. You know, because a lot of my friends thought I’d tried to commit suicide and shit like that. They didn’t know- all they’d heard was I got- I shot myself. You know what I mean? They all thought, “Oh, you tried to kill yourself,” and stuff. And no, it wasn’t nothing like that, just- we call it a “do he”. Two words, “do” “he”. Do he mess up? Yes, he do. You know, and yeah, I messed up real big on that gun shot.
You know, I’d had a buddy that had just died, and he was like a brother. Literally like a brother, he was one of my closest friends I’ve ever had. And I got shot the day before his funeral. You know, that’s kind of how I got shot. I was distracted, wasn’t really thinking. And just that lapse of gun safety there, you know, bit me in the ass.
Mark accidentally knocked his firearm from a magnetic holster on a high shelf in his workshop and was shot at close range.
Mark accidentally knocked his firearm from a magnetic holster on a high shelf in his workshop and was shot at close range.
So, one Christmas somebody decided to give me one of those magnetic holders. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one. If I’m not mistaken, I think Duck Dynasty put it out. I’m not sure, but it’s just a magnet. You put the gun up on top, and it’s supposed to help. It’s basically for a car, but I put it in my shop. I don’t know what year model it was, but it was a 9-millimeter Makarov. I put it up there. It’s been up there for years. Every now and then, I take it down and clean it up. That and the fact that I’d never dealt with anything more than full metal jackets, so I didn’t have any hollow points in it or anything like that. It’s basically just shoot dogs, or if an intruder comes in, shoot. It wasn’t there to kill. I’m there to stop.
One day, I was going in the shop, and I was reaching for a framing square. I was doing something in the kitchen, and the thing fell off. It fell off and it landed on the counter, and it shot me. So, it got me right there, and it went all the way up to about this far away from my spine on my back and stayed there. Of course, after about the first two or three minutes of cussing up and down myself and running around looking for where the bullet was, I finally realized that I was hurt. I realized that I was shot because there was blood all over the place. My wife, she was out here painting underneath the car port. She ran in and saved my life, because she’s the one that put her finger in the bullet hole. Called 911. Those guys were awesome, got here within four minutes. Had me quite stabilized. Ran me down the hill about four miles to where there’s a helicopter pad. They medevac’d me. I think there was something in the neighborhood of 22 transfusions.
The preliminary report that I remember hearing was the gun was on sure-cock. Now there was a load in the chamber, but it was on sure-cock, so there should have been no reason for it to fire. It just did. Fluke thing. Just one of those things that just happened.
Unexpected firearm discharge
Others described their injury as a “fluke” or a “freak accident.”
While wiping “an oily thumb print” on his wife’s gun, Bill snagged the hammer with a rag and it fired.
While wiping “an oily thumb print” on his wife’s gun, Bill snagged the hammer with a rag and it fired.
One of those days, I think it was when my oldest daughter was about six and at that time, she was shooting with us, she had her own firearm by that age. My youngest daughter hadn’t been with us on that trip. I went out shooting with my father-in-law and a good friend at work at HP. We had taken four or five firearms out shooting trap, off of an old logging road. There’s a lot of places around here to go.
I guess I should point out I’m a hunter as well. But not since the gunsmithing has really taken over, because during hunting season I tend to be fixing everybody else’s rifles and shotguns, so I don’t get out that often anymore.
But after returning from that day trip on Memorial Day 22 years ago I came home and put the required piece of wood down on the coffee table so I wouldn’t get thrashed for it by my wife and started cleaning guns so I could sit there and watch TV with her and the kids. I had gotten through I think it was four or five firearms that I had taken and my oldest daughter had taken them back to the gun safe and locked them up for me.
And the one firearm that I had left out was a five shot snub-nosed .38 special revolver that my wife at the time often carried in her purse—she has a concealed carry license—if she was going out to the store after dark or anything else like that. And as such, I had reloaded it so that I could put that in the bedroom up where the kids couldn’t get it and she could reach it later. I happened to glance down at it and noticed an oily thumbprint on a highly polished blue beautiful flawless five shot cylinder and said, “we can’t have that oily print.”
So, I reached down, and I picked up the pistol with all due safety in mind. I guess I should have had a pistol here for an example. My finger was not on the trigger. It was a double action revolver. It was not cocked. And I wiped the hammer with a rag, or not the hammer. I wiped the cylinder with a rag and somehow it snagged on the hammer. I don’t even remember exactly how it happened. Pulled the hammer partway back and then released it while my hand was right here.
And it blew a hole. You can see the scar right here and especially right here. Blew a hole through my hand. On the backside you could have dropped a silver dollar in it. And I was looking right through my hand instantly. I looked over at my wife kind of surprised and she looked at me kind of surprised and she goes, “What the hell did you just do?” I said, “I don’t know, get me a towel.” And she said … it’s funny now in hindsight. And she said, “But your finger wasn’t on the trigger and I said, “I know.”
So yeah, the aftereffects. The immediate aftereffects of the injury obviously were worse than anything. I mean when that type of injury happens, first of all, the first immediate impact is, “holy hell that hurts.” I don’t care how small of a bone gets hit by the smallest bullet, a .38 is not a high-powered firearm and the fifth metacarpal in your right hand is not a very big bone. If you didn’t know already, Hollywood is full of bull. It does not take much to throw you into shock. I have been severely injured in my life before then and after then. But I can tell you, that amount of energy going through your body is enough to shut you down really quick.
I was very fortunate my neighbor across the street at the time was a Navy ROTC OSU student and he was about twice my size and we used to throw the Navy and Marine Corps jokes around, but I have the utmost respect for him especially now today because when he saw me collapse on my way out to my Suburban in the driveway while my wife was getting the kids rounded up, he picked me up and put me in there and just … I don’t know how much time passed but I can tell you it was probably only 20 or 30 seconds from the time I wrapped a clean dishtowel around my hand and said I’ll see you in the Suburban and I don’t remember a whole lot from then. In fact, my wife at the time told me that I passed out some three or four different times between our house and Albany General Hospital. We lived in Albany at that time when that happened and that’s not even a mile-and-a-half.
I still have the pins that were in my hand. I still have the plate, the screws, the bullet. I still have the empty shell. One of my kids trying to be nice for me for Father’s Day one year, washed that rag so there’s no blood on it anymore, but I never told her that I was disappointed. But when you look at that rag, you can clearly see where the muzzle was. It blew a big old hole in it. And just the right distance away, you can also see a very defined snag where the checkering on the top of the hammer, to keep your thumb from slipping off of it, had actually been pulled by the rag. I still have all that stuff. Emotionally I’m not embarrassed about it. But like I said, I’m kind of a unique case where I wasn’t really violating one of the cardinal rules of gun safety. But you can’t cover everything anyway because if you have too many cardinal rules of gun safety, people will only focus on the top two. So, you can’t say, “Oh and by the way, with revolvers and clothing and cloth and rags and gloves, there’s this danger too.”
William A had his “old Ruger .22 target pistol” holstered when it suddenly discharged.
William A had his “old Ruger .22 target pistol” holstered when it suddenly discharged.
One morning in 2014, I was walking through the woods. I had my little .22 on my, in my holster, old Ruger .22 target pistol, just for whatever. And I'm walking and it discharged. I didn't touch it, it just, it shot me in the leg. I went down to the ground. It went, and it didn't, it just, I mean, it just all of a sudden, I heard a bang. And there, all of a sudden, I had a hole in my leg.
Now, I went and knocked on a neighbor's door, and I got a ride to the hospital. And the police met me there because anytime there is a GFW, they got to be involved. And I told him what happened, and he said, "Okay." And he said, "I wouldn't carry that gun." So, my mistake, which I've always carried cocked and locked, just because that's the way I was trained. I don't do that anymore.
But the safety was on, on this .22, so I don't know how to prevent it. It was, but except the gun discharged. So, I took the gun, after that, up to a gunsmith in – I forget where it was, anyway, up in the hills, a really good gunsmith at the mercantile in Washougal, Washington. And he tore the gun. He had the gun about three months, charged me $75, and he said there was this spring broken in the mechanism that allowed it to bypass the safety.
So, when I was at the hospital, they took X-rays. And the bullet, it just missed the bone, and any blood vessels, and it just, I was lucky. It was just a .22. If it was a .45, like I usually carry, or a .9, it would have been a little different story. But so, as far as what I did wrong, I, you know, as much as I had to take a lot of crap from guys at work who called me Gunshot Willie. And that's, that's basically it.
Non-bullet wound injuries related to firearms
A few of the Veterans we interviewed experienced non-bullet injuries that, nonetheless, had a large impact.
The kick of Keith’s gun caused him to slip on wet ground leading to an abdominal injury.
The kick of Keith’s gun caused him to slip on wet ground leading to an abdominal injury.
It was a freak accident. It was on a day that it had been raining the day before. It was myself and a friend, and we were hunting in an area where I’ve been a couple of times. We left in the morning, very early. We got there, we were quasi-camping, deer hunting. We didn’t catch anything, and when we had seen two does – because it had been a while since I had been out in the field – I rushed it. I hadn’t fired the gun in a while, and I wasn’t used to the kick. Because I was rushing, trying to get the shot off, it wasn’t fully in the correct position, and it was a little low on my arm from where I would normally aim. I slipped a little, and the kick of it forced the gun because my feet went up a little, my right foot into my upper abdomen.
In hindsight, I was too over-confident. You never go hunting in the rain or near when it’s rained. If it would have been dry, this wouldn’t have happened, but we were excited we were going. We weren’t conservative enough in our outlook. The thing is, you can make every precaution, or at least attempt to, but there’s always that one percent fluke thing that can occur. This is a case of that. We were wearing our orange and yellow, reflective clothes. We were not drinking or on any drugs or anything. We were in tandem. There wasn’t a big group. There was nobody else in the area. We did everything correctly other than, just, it was wet. What I’m saying is guns, because of their force, even if you do 99% of the things correct, there’s always that one percent chance.
Jason recalls his fondness for spending time at the shooting range.
Jason recalls his fondness for spending time at the shooting range.
I'm 40 years old and I went into the military when I was 18. And after I got out, I was really into going to the shooting range, and really big into spending a lot of time shooting guns. And I didn't realize the impact that it was having on my hearing until it already had happened, and I was diagnosed with tinnitus, the ringing in the ears.
And some days are better than others, and some days it's really bad and it's really hard to do pretty much anything, but other days it's better. And common sense says wear earplugs. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't, but I just didn't know how important it was to wear the earplugs, and the ear protection, and stuff like that.
Part of the military culture is the macho, "I'm a man and I don't need help with anything." That's just part of it. But, and it may have just been me and my friend's personality, I just felt like I didn't need them, and didn't even think about it. It didn't even occur to me, "Maybe two years down the road you won't be able to hear." But the damage was already done. And I should have been smart, and I should have worn them from the beginning, but it was, kind of, an emotional, it was a little bit emotional to accept that.
The hearing loss is what I noticed first. There was just me watching TV, and somebody else coming in, and saying, "Wow, that TV's really loud," and stuff like that, and having to ask people to repeat themselves. That's how I noticed it first, and I was diagnosed with hearing loss. And then I started having ringing in my ears, and really bad headaches, and like throbbing in my eardrums. But yeah, the hearing loss is what I noticed first, and that's how I realized that there was a problem.
It was, kind of, hard to accept it, that I was losing my hearing. But it wasn't hard to decide to go see the doctor or anything like that. I knew that was what I needed to do. I wear a hearing aid. And there's, I don't know, it's, kind of, like a white noise kind of thing that is supposed to help when the ringing gets really bad. But yeah, the hearing aid is about the only therapy I received for it, or treatment I've received for it. I feel like it if there had been more impact on how important ear protection was, I think it would have made a difference. But ultimately, it was my decision, and I don't have anybody to blame but myself.