Admitting your screw-ups

[Dietrich]

One of the most bitter pills a person has to swallow is the one where they admit they have screwed up.I suppose most of us in the shooting sports have a story we can tell but don`t really want to.That`s what this thread is all about.It was actually inspired by Newkahrowner and his thread about doing what you`re taught.So anyway,if you`ve got the stones,tell about the stupid mistakes you have made involving firearms.I would love to say that I haven`t made a mistake but lying isn`t what this is about.Here`s mine.
I was in my workshop,cleaning the .357 snubnose I kept in my truck.It was beautiful work.Clean,oiled,perfectly functional.I squeezed down on the trigger to check the pull of the DA and you know the result.An ear ringing explosion inside that tiny room because I had forgotten that after I finished cleaning the gun, I had reloaded it.Fortunately for me and everyone else in the neighborhood,the damage was limited to a nice sized hole in the floor and my ego.It was a lesson I have not forgotten.

[jocko]

dumbest mistake I ever made was 46 years ago, when I married my first wife.

yea I know u meant with fireamrs

[jeepster09]

dumbest mistake I ever made was 46 years ago, when I married my first wife.

yea I know u meant with fireamrs

Go figure.....I made the same one 40 years ago....geeez you could of told me considering you already made that one 6 years earlier.

[Indigo]

I was giving a rather informal intro lesson in how to operate a handgun to 2 of my wife's friends. It was a nice 95 degree North Carolina day with sweat pouring all over everyone. I handed everyone a Kahr K9 and kept a Sig 229 for myself. After loading about the 50th magazine for someone I finally got around to myself. Racked the slide then had to pause to tell someone "Hey don't point the gun at people when you wave your hands around happily after hitting the target" and rather than hit the convenient hammer release lever I just tried to thumb down the hammer. Big mistake with a slippery wet sweaty hand. BAM! right into the ground by our feet. Since they didn't know crap about guns I immediately passed it off as "See what if you accidentally did that while you were pointing at someone" and just kept the mistake to myself.

[TheTman]

I had a hang fire on an SKS and didn't wait long enough to clear the chamber, waited about 20 seconds then started to unchamber the round when it went off. I had raised up my rifle barrel so it was no longer pointed at the backstop when it went off. Fortunately there wasn't much around there but farmground.

[Bawanna]

I wont share my own yet but I'll rat my uncle out who is waiting for me on the other side of the river.

We were at his house, grandparents, my mom, dad, 2 sisters and his 3 boys. The house was laid out so you could go from living room to dining room thru kitchen down a little hall past some bedrooms and back into the living room. Uncle, dad, and grandpa were watching the usual western movie on tv and all the kids were doing what kids do, playing the thundering herd making the circle chasing each other.
Uncle was or had just finished cleaning his 22 pistol. I don't recall what brand, a Woodsman or a Hi Standard maybe I was too young to know but of course was infatuated with it.
Anyhow he had cleaned and made the comment that the next time the bad guy came on the screen (might of been Black Bart) he was gonna shoot him.
Well you guessed it, after cleaning he had reloaded. He hit the bad guy center mass directly in the center of the old black and white tv. The world came to a screeching halt. The picture sucked down into the hole like a vacuum. I remember that part like it was yesterday. After about 5 minutes it came back out of the hole and worked fine. Granpa was pissed cause he missed 5 minutes of the movie. Had to replace the glass but not the picture tube.
Nobody hit, all the kids were just at the entry point of the living room so we saw it but were behind the accidental firing line, but that was the end of semi autos and my uncle. I bought all his guns about 10 years later, couple nice winchesters, he didn't use em anymore. I recently gave them back to his sons, I still regret it but they were his sons so they deserved em.

[melissa5]

OK...I had taken a Glock to a dealer to possibly trade it on something else. The guy behind the counter takes it out of the case and racks the slide. Oops! A round pops out. He gives me a dirty look and I say "My bad". So far, I haven't shot anything other than a paper target. Knock on wood!

[OldLincoln]

So far the closest I've come is switching to my 1911 45 after shooting the 9mm on a range trip. I was drawing down on the target when the gun fired over the target thanks to the extremely short and light pull. I know you aren't supposed to put your finger on the trigger until the target is in the sights but I hadn't even thought about pulling the trigger. Maybe a breeze came up or something.

When I shot the Glock 36 the other day I was on the target zeroing in when it went off before I was ready. Just one more reason to get a P45 rather than Glock 36, assuming the triggers are the same.

[O'Dell]

dumbest mistake I ever made was 46 years ago, when I married my first wife.

yea I know u meant with fireamrs

Yeah Jocko, but did you make the same mistake twice - I did!

[O'Dell]

I'll have to blow the whistle on my son, since I haven't had my ND .....yet.

He was in my office examining my PM45, and dropped the mag, aimed at a light switch about 15 feet down the hall, and you know the rest. That 45 HP blew the switch out of the wall, turned 90 degrees, and exited onto the front porch. He normally shoots Glocks [yes I know, I so ashamed], but since they don't have a mag safety, I can't explain it.

[getsome]

I think I have told this story before but many moons ago right after I first married we lived in a two story apartment...I worked nights and my wife worked days and it was almost time for me to leave for work...I had a crappy old 12 gauge pump shotgun and kept the mag tube loaded but chamber empty...My wifes sister was coming over with her 4 year old son so I wanted to unload the shotgun before I left so as to take no chances...Well in the process of racking out the shells the action broke and jammed with the last live round in the chamber...Try as I might I couldn't get it out and time was getting short so I got the bright idea to just fire the last shell to clear the gun so I got all the phone books, news papers, magazines and everything else I could find and stacked them up and placed the muzzle against the stack and touched off the round...KABLAM!!!........The blast was more like an explosion than a gun shot and I was unable to hear the other noises coming from downstairs (which was probably a good thing) so anyway I shook off the blast and made sure the shotgun was now clear and set it aside and began to pick up the phone books and other back stop material until I got down to the floor level and saw light coming from down stairs...(RA-RO)...Well as it turns out 6 phone books and 6 inchs of newspaper were no match for 12 gauge 00 buck and neither was carpet, pad, plywood flooring 2x4 studs, kitchen ceiling, kitchen cabinet top and door, all my new wife's Corningware she got as a wedding gift and last but not least the kitchen sink...Well when I saw all the carnage in the kitchen I knew it was not going to be a good several months or more for me so I called in sick and did my best to clean up the damage and got a story together that it was all an accident and the gun went off by its self somehow...(Thats my story and I'm sticking to it to this day)...Well needless to say she was supremely pi$$ed...:31:...about it and made me get rid of the shotgun (which I was going to anyway the P.O.S.)...I had to use my overtime money to replace the Corningware and repair all the damage so some good came out of it as I learned how to fix sheet rock, cabinets and holes in floors...The moral of this story is to never under estimate the power of a 12 gauge shotgun fired inside a house and if you do have to fire one at a bad guy be sure you know whats behind him and 7 or 8 more things after that because you're going to hit and make a big ole hole in all of um....

[O'Dell]

A good, well told story GetSome. Despite the carnage, it sounds like a real learning experience.

[getsome]

Thanks O'Dell but if had of been really smart I would have waited until she was in the kitchen to set off that cannon...I'm pretty sure I would be out of prison by now......

[OldLincoln]

Not a "real screwup" but soon after we moved into a log cabin (seriously!) in a christian camp where I was the maintenance mgr, I went bowling in a nearby village with the camp director. When I got back, I open the door to find my pistol aimed directly at me ready to fire held by very shaky hands. In a squeaky voice my wife asks "how do you undo this thing?" I calmly moved it away from her and gently took it uncocked it and set it down. She was shortly in tears and still white as a ghost.

It turns out she heard a bear in our cans just outside the door. No make that a really HUGE bear and she was not going to let it get to our 4 year old son. As we are talking the cans started rattling and she got all excited so I look out the window then show her the 2 racoons in the cans.

As they say alls well that ends well. She's not a mountain woman by any stretch of the imagination and I'm just glad she wasn't mad at me for taking her up to that god forsaken log cabin.

[Rainman48314]

I'm still such a rookie, I have little to tell. I do have two ex-wives.

During my CPL class, a new, not yet broken-in 9mm was failing to reset the trigger. I told my instructor after it first happened and when it happened a second time, during a drill where he was calling my shots (as in 12 o'clock, 4 o'clock on the target), I said to him, "see, its done it again". I was pointing downrange but somewhat high, like into the ceilng, ten feet ahead of both. I pressed the trigger so as to show him it wasn't my technique and Boom, scared the hell out of him. Me only a little since I was holding it.

The gun cleared up after a very thorough cleaning top to bottom and it never failed to reset again. Haven't shot a ceiling since either.