No experience with guns whatsoever, so apologies if this is a dumb question. But we’ve all seen videos of ‘gangstas’ sticking their guns in their pants and accidentally discharging them.
Are triggers really that sensitive? Do guns go off for no reason? Or are people actually squeezing the trigger so hard for no good reason?
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Ever heard the term “hair trigger”? Triggers can be tuned to fire with barely any force at all.
We’ve all seen them? What are you on about… not everyone watches those videos, most people don’t watch those videos
Yup. All guns have different trigger sensitivities. And also people are stupid, have shitty discipline, and show off like fucking morons
Triggers can have different sensitivities for different reasons, however the biggest mistake is having the finger on the trigger. Anyone who has seen a gun safety video or taken a course understands a few of the general rules such as always keep the barrel down range, never put your finger on the trigger until your ready to shoot, always take account of what’s behind your target, etc…
The “gangsters” are just not handling the firearm properly
The easiest answer is while there may be no stupid questions, there are definitely stupid people. The basics of gun training includes that you do not put your finger on the trigger ever, unless you are planning to pull it.
I was told guns were safe and furthermore gun owners would never ever allow anyone else to access their guns and it’s a foolproof system.
Adrenaline. Lack of experience. Lack of training. Using a gun that they have never used before. All lame excuses, but that is what it is.
Guns don’t go off for no reason, but triggers don’t require a lot of weight to go off. That’s why you keep your fucking booger hook off the fucking bang switch until you know you are ready to fire and have the muzzle facing something you intend to fuck up.
Most people without training have poor “trigger discipline”, you should only have a finger on the trigger when you’re pointed at something you want to shoot and you’re ready to shoot.
You also should never point it at yourself or any person you don’t want to shoot.
These two points are the main goal of teaching people to use guns, hitting targets is a much lower priority
One of the cardinal rules of firearms is to keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger well/guard. But plenty of people either forget out of anxiety or simply don’t know this rule because they were never taught.
In order to hold a firearm, you have to curl your hand and make a fist around the grip except for your index finger which should be off the trigger. Now you can see why an accidental discharge occurs when people keep pressure on their index finger which is on the trigger.
Actual “poundage” (which is how much force is required to squeeze a trigger) varies from firearm to firearm. Some are very light, but some as heavy as 11 pounds.
Also some holsters aren’t well designed and also contribute to accidental discharges even if you are following the cardinal rule. I believe a company called Blackhawk! had to recall an entire line of holsters because the draw motion ended with fingers on triggers and bullets in legs under high-stress scenarios.
Too many people put their finger on the trigger before they are ready to fire, dramatically increasing accidental discharge.
No problem! Guns don’t just go off on their own; it takes pressure on the trigger. Some guns have light triggers, but accidents often happen because of unsafe handling or lack of training. The key is proper safety and care to avoid mishaps.
Bad trigger discipline. People have a bad tendency to put their finger in the trigger guard when their not ready to shoot. Dealt with that as a range master in the Navy. It became my obsession to teach sailors trigger discipline.
Some people have much lighter triggers. Idk the rate and I’ve never modified anything but some, to whatever ratio, do.
Even still a trigger isn’t hard to pull. If you’re careless it wouldn’t be so hard. Perhaps an ok example would be like having a glass of water 2/3 full or even half full and not wanting to spill any. 2/3 full leaves plenty of wiggle room but if you’re not paying attention or something, would be easy enough to spill over time
Because they learn firearm discipline from hollywood,you know,the anti gun people.
sig sauer p320 be like : U dont even have to touch me
If a gun has a safety switch, and it’s on, it is very very hard to pull the trigger. In fact, by design, it’s basically impossible.
If there’s no safety, like on a revolver, pulling the trigger take some effort.
If the gun is cocked, so the hammer is back, the amount of weight it takes to pull the trigger is greatly reduced.
Also, the safety features on guns have gotten much better over the years. So it wasn’t that long ago that if you dropped a gun, and it hit just right, it would actually fire. Today, with weapons manufactured since the seventies or eighties, that’s very very unlikely to happen.
It’s almost always the case that somebody has their finger on the trigger. I’m going to assume that they also subconsciously squeeze on it the way that you would anything you’re holding, just to get a tighter grip.
And handguns are all different. The force required to pull the trigger is measured in pounds, and it varies from handgun to handgun. I have a 1911 that has a trigger weight of 4lbs. That trigger’s only job is to release a small clip that’s holding a spring-loaded hammer in place, which then drops and fires a round.
I also have a Glock handgun with a trigger weight of 6lbs, the difference is very noticeable. It’s heavier because a part of the job of that trigger, amongst other things, is to actually pull back the firing pin a little bit before dropping it.
And there’s also double action pistols which have very heavy triggers, around 10-15lbs. When you pull that trigger, you’re actually fully cocking the hammer with the trigger, and then dropping it.
It’s very rare for a gun to literally go off for no reason. It’s slightly more common for a poorly manufactured gun to potentially go off if it was dropped a certain way, but most manufacturers obviously want to avoid that.
Canadian Gun owner here:
2)Yes and no, but 99% no. A gun in good working order? Never. There are ways a gun can miss fire and go off unexpectedly but that is typically going to be because of poor maintenance, something broken, or a person doing something exceptionally stupid. Like putting a loaded gun with the safety off in their pants.
I’m a very pro gun person. I shoot cans and live rural so I appreciate having it as a woman on the smaller side for personal protection. Just a shot in the air for a bear is more action that I ever expect to see! But I’m not spooked by guns at all.
That being said, I have people In my life that I like a lot, family and friends, that I would NEVER allow to have be around me if I’m shooting, hold a fire arm, bring one to my house, hell not even a range. It’s just way too serious of thing to fuck around with. The only thing I’m more cautious about are my chainsaws.
I don’t know, but my husband’s long ago coworker shot himself twice: no, he was not attempting to harm himself, temporarily or permanently, although he did in fact harm himself., Though not fatally. Once, he shot himself in the ass, and another time he literally lost an eye, and was blowing Fragments out his nose for a long time. He was young and stupid.
I know enough about guns to know that I don’t know enough about them to handle them.
there are plenty of safety features involved with guns, however if you don’t know what you are doing and you don’t use them they wont protect you.
Because the kind of people trying to “flex” their guns in videos are the kind of people who didn’t learn basic gun safety and to keep their fingers off the trigger.
Yes triggers can be very sensitive but the vast majority of those videos you see online are people who have never held guns before and have been very poorly instructed, the even sketchier ones are somebody obviously being shown how to shoot for the first time and they turn and full on flag the camera guy etc
Some triggers are that sensitive – by design – especially if they have been illegally modified and sold on “the street”; a lighter trigger, or “hair trigger” can be pulled with less effort, which can translate to “weapon go bang-bang faster” when adequately marketed to your low-level gangsters.
There was also an actual trend a few years back which involved young “men” – often wannabe gangsters – intentionally aiming handguns at their crotch and pulling on the weapons’ triggers as much as possible without firing… this did result in said individuals sometimes receiving a “Darwin Award” in a fairly roundabout way, if you know what I mean.
Finally, many of those videos are made by teenage boys that have listened to too much “Gangsta Rap” and played way too much Grand Theft Auto while being unsupported by parental figures, leading to them accepting the false belief that the “thug life” is all about dating strippers and showing guns off, rather than committing crime in a competent manner… said boys also usually have no experience with guns whatsoever, like you, but unlike you do not have the wisdom to ask questions about guns before playing around with them on camera and pointing them at body parts they might need later.
Squeezing too hard for no reason is the most likely answer. A gun from the factory will have been engineered to not go off randomly. Lots of lawyers and engineers are working so this does not happen. Shooting your customers in the leg randomly while keeping the gun in a holster is bad for business.
This is why in the four rules of gun safety, keeping your finger off the trigger until you intend to shoot is one of the most important. Can’t negligently pull the trigger when there’s no finger on the trigger.
In the gun community, this is known as a “Negligent Discharge,” not an “Accidental Discharge.” Negligence says the blame lies with the user for using it in an unsafe manner. Accidental would be reserved for a genuinely faulty gun that went off with no input from the user. While technically possible, most people lack the necessary technical skills to manipulate the actual trigger release mechanism to create a genuine accident scenario. Thus, true accidents are quite rare, and poor gunsmithing leading to an accident is also negligent, so in the end, someone had to be dumb for it to happen.
Intrusive thoughts
“Are triggers really that sensitive?” Yes
“Do guns go off for no reason?” No. If a gun “goes off” it’s because of improper storage or handling
“Or are people actually squeezing the trigger so hard for no good reason?” If you lack proper trigger discipline and rest your finger on it, then yes, you can accidentally pull it. That’s why when you’re learning marksmanship the first thing they teach you is to never point the gun at anything you don’t intend to destroy, and don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to shoot
Good questions
A semiautomatic pistol has a trigger weight of maybe four or five pounds. A big pistol could weigh as much as three pounds.
The amount of force you would need to pull it out of a tight-fitting waistband might be over four pounds. So if your finger hooked through the trigger and you pulled up, you would pull the trigger before it drew.
Or, if you are sticking it into your pants and your pockets have keys or something that are poking out, the trigger gets caught on that and you shove the gun down and it fires.
The thugs you see have never been properly educated and trained with firearms handling…therefore, they are illegal guns in their hands. The only time your finger touches the trigger is with intent to use it.
Lack of training, you don’t’ really see it in country’s that have more then 30 minutes training.
There’s a handful of examples of firearms that will go off randomly. Very rare. Rounds will also cook off in extreme heats occasionally. But 99.999% of the time it’s just shitty trigger discipline from untrained dipshits
Because they’re dumb as hell. That is the only explanation.
Revolvers have a hard to pull trigger unless they are already cocked. In one case the trigger is doing the dual action of compressing a spring and releasing, in the other case it’s just releasing.
Semi automatics tend to be more sensitive but they don’t do anything if they are not cocked and they can be stored with no bullet in the chamber. Also they generally have a safety switch which revolvers don’t.
Most of the mistakes with semiautomatic come from thinking they have the safety on when they don’t. Or thinking they are not cocked when they already are.
You can buy a goddamn gun with zero training, zero time taking a safety course. It’s fucking ridiculous. This country is genuinely ridiculous. There are a lot of morons running around out there, posing with guns because they think it makes them look tough. Keeping loaded weapons in the house with absolutely no concern for anybody’s safety. People have been shot by toddlers and dogs.
What the fuck are we DOING?
I don’t own a gun and am not very knowledgeable, so forgive me if my question is ignorant. Don’t guns have safeties that would prevent them from accidentally discharging?
Every trigger is different. Some are really stiff with a lot of travel before engaging. Some are really sensitive. Not everyone has proper education or situational awareness.
“Gangstas” are not shining symbols of responsible firearm ownership and use them to look cool. They do not understand firearm safety in the most basic sense. The concept of keeping your finger off the trigger is alien to them. Shoving a loaded gun into their pants without a holster is just asking for negligent discharge.
And yes, theres plenty of people in the world who death-grip their guns because they lack grace of movement
Then theres other times where something might get stuck between the gun and the holster and get into the trigger guard.
Guns do not go off “for no reason”, unless they have a catastrophic failure with the structure of the internals. Any regular healthy gun will never fire on its own. And anyone who regularly cleans and inspects their firearms will be able to determine if something might be wrong.
I’ve been a gun owner since 18, Im 25, have not had a negligent discharge or catastrophic failure.
Guns are not sensitive weak little things, they are built to withstand abuse and contain small explosions. If a gun goes off accidentally 9/10 times it is the owner’s fault
If ur around guns long enough the odds go up that u will eventually accidentally pull that trigger.
I carry a gun quite often, all it takes is a couple minor fuck ups coming together.
Or just being a complete dumbass. U gotta lock in with anything involving firearms.
Piss trigger discipline. When you’re holding a gun, your index finger should be lying on the frame, parallel with the barrel. Finger only goes inside the trigger guard when you’re ready to shoot.
Finger off the trigger until ready to fire. One of the rules. I’ve never accidently pulled the trigger.
I think A LOT of these accidental shots happen, because stupid people removed the magazine and think the gun is now unloaded. But, there’s usually a bullet already in the barrel. Even if you remove the mag, the bullet in the barrel stays and when you pull the trigger you shoot that shot.
In short: Stupid people think the gun is save, but it is in fact not safe.
That’s why the first rule of handling a gun is to “Never point the barrel at something you do not want to shoot“.
Average trigger pull weight for a handgun is between 3-6 lbs. Those shitty grip trainer things start at like 10 lbs, and those take almost no effort to close. So, yeah, it’s really easy to exert 3-6 lbs of force if you’re dumb enough to have your finger on the trigger.
Its a lot easier for them to go off (Moreso with Glocks without manual safeties) when you are carrying them in your pocket instead of a proper holster. With a proper holster its very hard to mess up with basic training.
The triggers can be relatively sensitive, yes. the average is about 5lb-7lb of force with the heaviest triggers being 14ish and the lightest being 1.5lb-3.5lb.
No, guns cant go off by themselves (mostly). at least with glocks it is always user-error, they cannot physically go off without you pulling the trigger due to the way the internal mechanism works.
A Sig P320 is the only gun in recent memory which has had issue with actually going off without user-error.
Same reason why ppl open phishing emails, the best safety is the thing between our ears, but it seem not everyone have it.
Carrying a single action or double action revolver with the hammer cocked and “one in the chamber”. 🤦🏻♂️
All guns have different trigger sensitivity. If you put your finger through the trigger guard and attempt to “draw” your gun you may cause the trigger to depress and cause a negligent discharge.
And we do prefer to call it negligent discharge instead of “accident” because it’s completely avoidable.
Look at how bad many people are in cars.
Every single one of those people had to pass a test.
Now imagine you get to handle something much more dangerous with no instruction required.
For most firearms, you don’t pull the trigger all of the way down. You just slightly pull it against minor resistance and it fires.
By lack of trigger control, assembling it incorrectly or putting a stupid soft trigger mod.
True story. Back before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I have a nasty focal seizure. I do stupid thing when having one and they last for hours. I act like I’m wicked drunk.
I had one of my first seizure and I decided to clean my gun. Regardless of the fact that it was already clean. Mind you I have no memory of this. I took it apart down to the last screw.
Putting it back together, I did something wrong. I also loaded it with one in the chamber. I was raised shooting, you don’t do that.
Putting it in the case and it went off because I fucked up. Please remember that I was having a seizure and wasn’t there. It went in my wrist and came out the back side of my elbow take most everything inside with it. Only one finger kind of work now.
For a semiautomatic pistol, or a revolver, the hammer would need to be pulled back to easily discharge a firearm.
So it comes down to people being unsafe and morons.
Most guns have multiple safety features in an effort to prevent such discharges, but not all of them do. Every gun is different, and the cheaper ones are often somewhat less safe than the expensive ones. Some states mandate certain safety features, while others do not.
Many guns are required to have a “Safety,” that is something which prevents the firing pin from hitting the primer on the round. If nothing hits the primer, the round should not fire.
With a semi-automatic (Most guns with a separate magazine) you have to load the bullets into the magazine, slide the magazine into the gun, and then “cock” the gun, usually by pulling one piece back to put a round in the chamber. without a round in the chamber, it cannot fire. These kinds of guns are also easier to build with a safety, and a round indicator.
With a revolver, (Cowboy guns, where all the bullets go into the spinning cylinder) a number of bullets, usually between five and eight, go into pre-drilled holes in the cylinder. If you fully load the revolver, there is always one round in the chamber with the firing pin behind it, and only a safety can keep it from accidentally discharging.
Various guns require different “trigger pull weight,” which is the amount of force needed to bring the trigger backwards enough to make the gun fire. Some models allow this to be adjustable. Some are so poorly made that the exact trigger pull varies significantly based on things like the weather. Different people have different ideas about what an ideal trigger pull should be. Some people (such as parents who worry a kid might get ahold of their gun) may want a very heavy trigger pull specificially to reduce the chance of accidental discharge. Others (people who are giving a gun to someone they perceive as weaker than themselves) may prefer a lighter trigger pull so their student/friend/wife can more easily pull the trigger.
I personally feel that 90% or more of the “accidental discharges” that lead to injury are not accidents at all. I believe most of them are just justifications to convert a murder charge into a lesser offense, and a few are the result of sabotaging a gun to cause another person harm or legal trouble.
I’ve only shot a hand gun once. I was shockingly surprised how easy it was to squeeze the trigger. No joke, it was about the same pressure as me typing on this keyboard.
My husband who was introduced to guns at an early age (nothing traumatic, just an outdoor Texas life), never stfu about shows like FBI where they run around with their finger on the trigger. That’s how it could happen, and that’s why they’re trained to not do that. The finger should be flat close to the trigger (obvs this is in a dangerous situation), but not on the trigger. Or so he tells me.
Typical yanks
They’re mostly just idiots. Don’t play with your gun and it won’t go off (if it’s in reasonable working order).
You violate the third rule of gun safety, keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. Then if someone gets hit that means they violated yet another rule of gun safety.
There are only four, and they are simple. Follow them and nobody gets hurt. Almost all gun “accidents” are more properly described as negligence.
All triggers have different amounts of force that is required to set the gun off. People who’s don’t practice proper firearm safety, “gangstas”, don’t have trigger discipline, so they end up putting their finger on the trigger when they shouldn’t.
guns have safeties. if you put a gun in your pants with the safety off that’s on you
It’s a mix of poor trigger discipline and the fact humans are way less rational than we think.
Most accidents happen with some form of drugs involve.
It’s rare but some guns have quirks that make accidents more likely, some old six shooters can fire if you drop them or even just riding on a horse other guns with failure are rare.
With a Sig P320 you don’t even need to pull the trigger for it to go off. This is the gun our military is issued btw.
People pocket carrying without holstering. A good holster had a trigger guard that won’t let the trigger be pulled.
Happened to me once on the firing range. I’ve only shot military pistols and rifles before. First time for me holding a small caliber sport pistol in my hand. I swear I could not even feel the trigger point and I accidentally released a shot while starting to aim. No one hurt but the bullet hit the ground like 5m away from me.
Long story short, different pistols have different triggers. Could happen to the best of us.
Some are easy, some are not.
The main reason for negligent discharges is people forget the 4 rules of gun safety.
I actually knew someone, years ago, who for some reason decided to stuck into the back of his pants his loaded race gun with super extra sensitivity split hair trigger.
You can guess what happened next.
There are guns with “hair triggers” that require very little trigger motion to fire. I think a .45 ACP is one of them. They are very dangerous since they can be fired so easily. But it is a feature rather than a flaw.
Most people, without training, when they pick up a gun their instinct is to do so with their finger on the trigger because that’s what they’ve seen in movies or whatever. But anybody who’s had any training with guns – military, police, civilians that go to the range a lot, etc – knows that when you pick up a gun, you keep your finger off the trigger, pointing straight ahead along the side of the gun, until you’re actually in position and ready to shoot something. If you ever see a picture online of someone holding a gun, and everybody starts commenting “TRIGGER DISCIPLINE!!” that’s what they’re talking about.
That’s just a basic gun safety 101 rule. Any time you hear about somebody accidentally getting shot, it’s because somebody broke one of those rules. It’s all astoundingly common sense stuff – assume a gun is loaded until you’ve physically checked it yourself, don’t point it at anything you don’t want to shoot, and so on. But “common sense” isn’t so common it seems.
I once went to a shooting range with a friend. Everything there was full of bullet holes. My friend commented how stupid people were for shooting things other than the targets. About ten seconds later, he loaded a gun with his finger on the trigger, and BANG, he shot through the roof.
Untrained idiots who keep a round chambered with their finger on the trigger( aka,no trigger discipline) while putting it in their wasteband = shooting yourself. Then, when they go to grab it, they put their finger on the trigger and grab too hard, which, also means shooting yourself.
They also do not have holsters, which means if the trigger can get snagged on something.
99.9% of the time it is user error. Like anything that can be very dangerous, training is required.
So you would not be wrong in thinking that members of the US military live in a strong gun culture. I can’t speak for the other branches but extremely so in the Marine Corps. But they also drill respect for them into your head. Even when deployed where you have your weapon on your person at all times you live by the 4 safety rules: treat every weapon as if it were loaded, never point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot, keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you’re ready to fire, keep your weapon on safe until you intend to fire. A gun trigger is not a pull like a lever on a console it’s a squeeze like juicing citrus or crushing playdough. If you’re, let’s say not thinking and your playing around with it and your finger is on the trigger, well even right now pretend you’re holding one and like punch the air or wave your hand and try to keep your mind on what your index finger is doing, how many of those movements did you notice your finger flexed on? It doesn’t take that much pressure for a gun to go off
Simply lack of training. Most people don’t know because they watch tv and see how Hollywood does it and most of the times it’s completely wrong and unsafe but they don’t know any better and then they have an accidental discharge.
You never want to carry an unholstered weapon especially semiautomatic unholstered in a pocket or tucked in pants or in a console of your truck for that matter. Any thing can grab the trigger and pull it when you grab the weapon and an accident can happen. Always keep the trigger covered by a holster when you push it into your pocket or while taking it out. It keeps other things like keys and chapstick from pushing the trigger. You can buy small thin sleeves that slide nicely into your picket with the pistol.
Also it is quite common for people to accidentally pull the trigger while doing something else with the other hand like opening a car door. People have been accidentally shot by law enforcement while trying to get a suspect out the car. It’s termed sympathetic reflex that’s why the cardinal rules of gun safety are so important.
Never assume a firearm is unloaded—always check it yourself.
Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.
This helps prevent accidental discharges.
Know what you’re aiming at and what lies behind it, in case the bullet passes through or misses.
Stupid will always find a way
So, at its core: Poor trigger discipline.
Saying that, there’s a secondary problem many won’t mention directly…
Modification. I’ve seen so many trigger mods, hair triggers and custom jobs that have caused negligent discharges from Gucci gear. I’ve seen very few people negligently discharge a single action revolver without the hammer cocked back.
I’ll admit, this isn’t very scientific, as not many people are shooting single action handguns anymore.
One way is not ensuring the chamber is clear after removing the magazine. They ease the springs, then bang. Shit discipline.
Friend of mine got into a scuffle over a girl, other friend of mine came to “help” since it was 2v1 and pointed a gun to “scare them off” and due to adrenaline pulled the trigger by mistake. Didn’t kill anyone but shot one of the guys in the arm. Soon as the cop came he confessed it all and apologized many many times. Got three years in jail now…
Poor trigger discipline. I don’t really shoot anymore, but I hunted a lot when I was younger, and something I am really glad was drilled into me is to not rely on the safety for keeping the gun safe. Keeping your finger off the trigger until the moment you are about to fire is the biggest safety there is, and the “Safety” on the gun is a backup to that/human error.
Think of when you are at your computer- how often do you accidentally click the mouse buttons in a moment when you weren’t fully paying attention or were multi-tasking? What about when you are in a moving vehicle trying to use a device? It is surprisingly easy for your finger to move a bit ‘on it’s own’/unintentionally. If that finger is resting anywhere other than on the trigger you are fine. If it is resting on the trigger and the gun has a light trigger pull it could get ugly.
No trigger discipline. Should only put your finger on it when you intend to shoot.
“hair triggers” are actually quite sensitive yes, regular triggers are not, they require a much stronger pull, like on a revolver for instance, but even a handgun can be ‘cocked’ to put a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire, same as a cocked pistol, making it easier to fire, but still not as easy as a hair trigger though, if the safety is not on on a hair trigger weapon, it can fire very easily, possibly accidentally…not the case with a regular trigger or a pistol, those require forceful pulls unless they are prepared before hand (cocked, ready to fire)
Probably 30 different actual reasons, but the main one is education. Even a terrible gun safety course will teach you what you need to know to not blow a hole in your bathroom mirror.
I don’t have a ton of rules for my kids, but the one I drove into them hard was “If you see someone mishandling a gun you leave immediately.” If they want to drink a beer or smoke a joint, we can have that talk, but idiots and guns is non-negotiable.
That’s stupidity on the part of the “gangstas”
I carry a pistol every day. My holster has a trigger guard.
I’ve fell with it, fell in a lake with it, dropped the holster with the pistol in it, even dropped the pistol in the grass. Never went off until I wanted it to..
The reason one uses a holster is to protect the trigger from accidentally getting caught on clothing, or bumped by a finger, while concealing it. No sane gun owner sticks an unholstered weapon in their pants; that’s stupid movie stuff.
Trigger pull on a pistol can be as low as 2 lbs. That is very little, just a gentle snag on a tshirt is enough. Revolvers typically have 5-ish lbs of trigger pull to fire. Different manufacturers use different weights and most add some additional safety features to prevent accidental firing.
Guns don’t just fire; one has to pull the trigger. People have clench reflexes and such. Accidents happen. That’s why you never put your finger on the trigger until ready to shoot (talking to you, Alec Baldwin).
99% of the time there is no way to fire a weapon without pulling the trigger. There are some exceptions.
Dropping a weapon may cause it to fire. I’d consider this a manufacturing flaw.
If the breech is too hot, a new round in a hot breech can get so hot the powder in it will ignite. This isn’t a problem on semi-automatic weapons. Normally seen on fully automatics and belt fed machine guns. Operation of the weapon as intended will usually prevent this.
Some other manufacturing flaw.
Now a caveat here. Old weapons, I mean really old, don’t have many of the safety features of modern weapons. So what we would consider a defect today was the intended design then. One example is the old single action revolvers. With the hammer down, a round under the hammer, and no finger on the trigger, a good enough bump could set it off.
So people used to resort to the “cowboy load” they would only load 5 instead of 6 bullets so the hammer would set over an empty chamber and a bump would not fire it.
The rest is negligence, poor training, or flat out ignorance.
Ever see someone shoot themselves while holstering a weapon? That’s likely because their finger was still in the trigger well, when they shoved it in the holster it pushed their finger into the trigger.
There really are triggers that require that little pressure. It’s why one of the first things you learn is to never put your finger on the trigger until you have the intention to shoot.
500 Americans die each year from unintentional firearm discharges. Additionally, there are about 27,000 unintentional firearm injuries annually.
annually, estimates for defensive gun use (DGUs) range from 1,195 to 2,119.
Those are idiots that shouldn’t own guns. They are all pretty easy to pull. Mine doesn’t have a safety lock but is built in to the trigger. Takes a harder pull but still easy to fire. Respect the tool 😂
Depends on the gun and type of safety.
There’s a manual safety, which if off could easily fire if your keys or something else in your pocket got wedged in the finger guard.
There are two stage triggers, which are harder to fire with something in your pocket. But it’s still possible.
There’s also just idiots who test their trigger in their pockets.
“Keep your booger picker off the boom maker” was one of the first lessons our gun trainer taught us. I live in a state with significant (for America) licensing for firearms, and I can’t help but feel that the training I was required to undergo to get my ccw was incredibly valuable from a safety perspective. I think most people just never get the gun safety training they need to safely operate a firearm.
No trigger discipline, you’re not supposed to even have your finger on the trigger unless you’re ready to shoot. A gun should never go off if you don’t have your finger on the trigger plain and simple.
Everyone here is saying bad trigger discipline but I haven’t seen anyone mention that if you’re not using a holster, nothing protects the trigger and by tucking your gun into your pants, a shirt can get caught in the trigger guard and when paired with the downward “holstering” motion, can be enough to pull the trigger. That’s why holsters are so important
Ive been a gun owner and hunter for 30 years. Own probably 25 guns. Not once have I had an accidental discharge. These people are morons who do.
So there are several issues of gun discipline that usually lead to accidental shot.
Guns should be “safed” – in addition to the trigger we all know most guns have a safety lever. That can either be put in “safed” or in “fire”. While the gun is “safed”, it is impossible to pull the trigger. The trigger mechanism gets locked. Unfortunately the safety lever can just happen to slide out of place if stuff (like clothes) touch the gun. The safety lever is usually pretty easy to move (as it is supposed to be moved with onw finger of the handler). Do many people might think their gun is “safed” anf not notice the safety lever slipped out of place. So they end up pulling the trigger, expecting it to lock, but instead it fires.
Gun grip – while it is easy to just hold a gun and shoot stuff at short ranges, the grip in the gun becomes more important the further away your targets are. Especially when it comes to pistols many people tend to just go for short range shooting, which can lead to a bad grip on the gun. You can try that yourself by just loosely imitaing the grip on a gun with your hand in the air. Now pull your index towards you fast. You may notice that st least your middle finger tends to also move a bit. Same if you only try to tighten the grip of all your fingers but rhe index. The index will likely move a bit as well. To actually use a gun correctly you need a stable grip including both hands. Additionally you should only put your index nesr the trigger if you are wantibg to shoot within the next few seconds. Many people wrongly grab their guns and immediately rest their index finger in the trigger area. Hands are pretty strong. Any movement of the ither fibgers can easily lead to the index finger accidentally moving as well, triggering the gun.
Trigger sensitivity – triggers of different typed of guns have different amounts of “trigger weights”. Trigger weight meaning the amount of weight your finger needs to pull back in order to set off the gun. Some guns have heavier trigger weights than other. The piszole P8 for example needs you to pull sround 5kg, while many other pistols only require you to pull 1 or 2 kg. As pistols are all similar in shape, your muscle memory can easily confuse them if you don’t pay attention. Oftentimes it is recommended to pull the trigger slowly, as to decrease the risk of accidentally moving the gun. So you might think you need to slowly pull back 5kg, but the fun might wnd up firing at 1kg, leaving you shooting significantly earlier than you had intended. Oftentimes pulling the trigger back halfway is also done as a scare tactic, as the threatened person can see the “hammer” of the gun moving and knows you mean business. But if you try doing thag and end up mixing up the weights, you might end up shooting.
Bad luck – due to rhe trigger sensitivities guns with low trigger weights are also prone to firing when dropped on the floor, hit with something, intense vibrating (like when stored on the floor of a vehicle) and other mishaps. That’s why guns should only be transported in a “safed” position. But as already established, when improperly stored the safety lever might move away from the safed position. If that happens on a gun with a low trigger weight and nobody notices, it really only is a matter of time u til something sets off the gun.
I’m sure there are many other reasons, these wete just some that came to mind. Guns are deadly amd as soon as the trigger is moved, the bullet doesn’t distinguish between friend and enemy. My instructor always said “All bullets are enemies. Make sure you keep them locked away until absolutely necessary.”
Guns require attentive and focused handling. Most accidental shots happen with people who are either poorly trained or not paying attention to their gun.
They can have a trigger pull anywhere from a couple ounces to 12ish pounds. They don’t go off on their own though, anyone that accidently discharged their firearm had their finger on the trigger when they shouldn’t have.
There are a few things to consider. One, not all triggers have a heavy pull, some are designed in such a way that they go off with little movement or effort, that’s what a “hairpin trigger” is. Two, a bullet is designed that the primer needs to be struck hard and directly in order for the round to discharge, and usually the only thing that can easily provide that source of impact is the hammer of a gun, but bullets are mass produced. So while you will have 99.9% of bullets that will perform as expected, that .1% that may be prone to going off when it shouldn’t is a frighteningly large number of bullets when you consider how many are made every day.
Then there stupid people. This is one of the reason a lot of gun control proponents advocate for a gun registry. Gun safety is incredibly important, but there is no requirement that you actually know any of that as a prerequisite for gun ownership. So when you have stupid people who own guns, who keep them in stupid places or do stupid things while holding them, you have a large propensity for something bad to happen. You also have the people who know gun safety but believe themselves and their family to good enough with guns that you can take shortcuts, which is how you end up with guns being left outside a gun safe and into the hands of children who, while they have been told gun safety, are little stupid children who will probably do something very stupid with the gun.
All in all, accidental discharges are actually quite rare percentage-wise, but when you have so many guns out there, it ends up being a weekly to daily occurrence.