A 15-year-old Brooklyn boy shot himself in the penis Sunday after fumbling with a gun that had slid from his waistband, authorities said yesterday.
Khamir Grant was then arrested for reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon — the same charges levied against Burress, who shot himself at a Manhattan nightclub in 2008, law-enforcement sources said.
Grant told cops that he was walking home from Amersfort Park at East 39th Street and Avenue J in East Flatbush around 1:30 a.m., when the gun began to fall into his pants, sources said.
When Grant grabbed for it, he accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet right through his penis.
Grant staggered home and told his mom what had happened, sources said.
They took a livery car to Kings County Hospital, where Grant was released after treatment and then arrested by police.
Older shooters like myself think semi-automatic pistols should have real honest-to-God safeties, not mere trigger safeties, and believe that in an emergency it’s the fellow who takes his time and aims, not the fellow who sprays and prays, who wins.
I’d say that the claim that “I don’t have time to click off a safety” is absolute nonsense. Ruffed grouse take off quickly, and generally startle you when they do, but I never heard any brush-torn grouse hunter propose carrying his shotgun with the safety off, because he just didn’t have time to use a safety.
If a finger, or something else, winds up accidentally contacting and depressing the trigger, it is overwhelmingly likely able to be contacting and depressing the little trigger safety lever, too, and then, bang!
An Oregon man who was in line at a supermarket Sunday accidentally shot himself in the groin while showing off a handgun and just missed hitting his femoral artery, a report said, citing police.
The Oregonian newspaper reported that police said Nicholas J. Ellingford, 29, accidentally pulled the trigger of the Glock 9mm while putting the firearm back into his pants. The shot reportedly entered through his groin and exited his thigh.
Police said the incident occurred inside a McKay’s Market in Lincoln City, Fox 12 reported. Ellingford was showing the gun to a friend, police said.
He was taken to an area hospital and then flown to a Portland hospital for further treatment, the Fox 12 report said.
“Ellingford did not have a concealed handgun license and his act was found to be reckless since it placed several people in danger,” police said, according to Fox 12.
This video shows a nearly fatal accident which occurred in the course of the ceremonies celebrating the 700th anniversary of the founding of the city of WaÅ‚cz in western Pomerania in 2003. One sees a sign reading “WaÅ‚cz 700 years 1303-2003” atop a kiosk at the end of the video.
The salutes were being fired by the honor guard (“kompania honorowa”) of the city of WaÅ‚cz. The city’s coat of arms can be seen on the lower corner of the flag.
Some commentators blame the thick gloves worn by the city guardsmen for the rifle firing prematurely. Others blame lack of proper training.
The pink polymer framed Taurus 738 TCP is chambered in .380 ACP has a six-round magazine and weighs only 10.2-ounces (.289 km.)
Guns and Ammo forwarded a cringe-inducing report. Earlier this month, on August 9th in Chandler, Arizona, 27-year-old Joshua Seto was attempting to secure his fiancee Cara Christopher’s pink Taurus .380 in the waistband of his trousers, before stopping in a Fry’s Food Store to make a purchase.
The unfortunate Mr. Seto, at the time under the influence of prescription drugs, accidentally discharged a round which struck him in the penis before proceeding through his left thigh.
The bleeding started immediately and was heavy, according to police dispatch recordings released Sunday.
“He is still conscious, there is just a lot of blood,” Christopher, 26, told 9-1-1 operators and dispatchers.
One operator told Christopher to apply direct pressure to the wound with a dry towel or T-shirt, but to avoid looking at the wound.
“I did look at it,” Christopher said. “It’s pretty bad.”
There was talk in the Arizona papers that Mr. Seto might even be prosecuted as the result of his accident.
The local police also proceeded to advise gun-owners to use holsters for carrying sidearms.
Ouch!
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My own opinion is that semiautomatic pistols offer a real advantage over revolvers for concealed carry in being flat sided and basically rectangular. They tend to have fewer protrusions and tuck up against the body more comfortably.
I myself look with disfavor on the trend in recent decades toward double-action semiautos, lacking a safety because they are philosophically intended to be treated as if they were revolvers. I own one such semiauto, a .357 SIG, and if I were carrying it, I’d carry it with an empty chamber, and simply assume that I would inevitably have adequate time to rack the slide if I ever needed to shoot anybody.
This accident was obviously a fluke. The victim was evidently impaired by drugs. But we are all impaired some of the time. Advancing age and illnesses impair everybody sooner or later a bit. We all occasionally take prescription drugs and some of us drink.
It is probably a little safer to use a holster, as the cops suggested, but I read regular reports of users of DA autos shooting themselves in the leg while putting their gun in the holster. Tex Grebner managed to do the same thing with a regular Model 1911 variant as a consequence of confusion induced by a push-button-release holsters. Grebner pushed the safety accidentally.
If you aren’t Jeff Cooper, it may be a better idea to carry that semiauto in Condition 3, magazine full, chamber empty.
Thanks to commenter T.C. Carney (I have the best commenters!), we now know that Derek “Tex’ Grebner shot himself in the leg in the video I posted on July 7th, not with a pistol featuring a Glock-style trigger safety.
He was using a Kimber Pro Carry II, a premium adaptation, incorporating some of the features commonly found in customized upgrades, of the classic Colt Model 1911 chambered in .45 ACP.
Mr. Grebner experienced a “negligent discharge” (personally, I think there is a very strong association between these kind of f**kups and the mentality which emphasizes and places overreliance on pretentious jargon) while attempting to draw and fire his Kimber from “defensive retention” out of a 5.11 ThumbDrive Holster.
It was one of those “tactical,” black, kydex, ultra-macho-military klunky holsters that grips the gun, and has a button catch you have to push to release it.
The unfortunate Mr. Grebner was clearly a bit distracted, and was trying to perform a fast draw involving pushing on a holster retention button as well. It just might be that the 5.11 ThumbDrive Holster is not the optimal choice for many conventional automatic pistols, because that retention button happens to be located on the left side of the pistol right next to the safety on the Model 1911 (and many other pistols). So the hurrying Mr. Grebner apparently failed to release his Kimber from the holster, instead he clicked off the pistol’s side safety when he fumbled for the holster button.
The gun failed to release, and Mr. Grebner tells us that, as he pushed that button again, his finger “curled into the trigger guard, and [he] ripped a bullet into [his] leg.”
Ouch!
It must have hurt like hell, and Mr. Grebner was actually very lucky that the bullet penetrated at such an angle that it missed his femur and major blood vessels and then exited without causing a lot graver injury.
Accidents happen, of course. Mr. Grebner’s experience provides a warning to us all that guns are dangerous and we need to be alert and scrupulously careful in shooting at all times.
I personally do not like synthetic materials like kydex. I think kydex knife sheaths and holsters are both tacky and clunky, and I wouldn’t ever own one.
Tex Grebner explicitly declined to blame the holster, but obviously if you are going to try to draw fast, I’d say choosing a holster with a button release you have to push to get the gun out is a suboptimal choice. A retention button placed where it has some probability of being confused with the gun’s safety is also not a desirable feature.
The holster, of course, didn’t shoot Tex Grebner in the leg. He did it himself. Whatever problem one has getting the gun out of the holster, you still have to pay attention and be conscious of where your trigger finger is and what it’s doing. If your fast draw technique results in your finger inadvertently “curling into the trigger guard” and doing things you don’t know about, you are definitely doing something wrong, and can expect exactly this kind of thing to happen.
I would also say, that though it may be fun to develop a fast draw, who draws faster matters in general in Western movies and not in real life. In real life, it is far, far more common for anyone who ever needs to use a gun to have all the time in the world to draw carefully and take deliberate aim.
Tex Grebner, I think, deserves a lot of credit, though, for his forthrightness and considerable courage in releasing both videos, openly exposing a extremely embarrassing mishap, in the cause of making the rest of us think twice about gun safety. Best wishes to him for a quick recovery.
My experience is that the Glock pistol is surprisingly easy to shoot, but it also has—in my opinion—some very objectionable features and can be dangerous to an unskilled user. A lot of police are accidentally shooting themselves in the leg with Glocks these days.
Crack DEA agent Lee Paige tried suing the government over that video. The Smoking Gun:
A Drug Enforcement Administration agent who stars in a popular online video that shows him shooting himself in the foot during a weapons demonstration for Florida children is suing over the tape’s release, claiming that his career has been crippled and he’s become a laughingstock due to the embarrassing clip’s distribution. …
According to the lawsuit, Paige was making a “drug education presentation” in April 2004 to a Florida youth group when his firearm (a Glock .40) accidentally discharged. The shooting occurred moments after Paige told the children that he was the only person in the room professional enough to carry the weapon.
The accident was filmed by an audience member, and the tape, Paige claims, was turned over to the DEA. The drug agency, he charges, subsequently “improperly, illegally, willfully and/or intentionally” allowed the tape to be disseminated.
As a result, Paige–pictured at left in a still from the video–has been the “target of jokes, derision, ridicule, and disparaging comments” directed at him in restaurants, grocery stores, and airports. Paige, who writes that he was “once regarded as one of the best undercover agents, if not the best, in the DEA,” points to the clip’s recent airing on popular television shows and via the Internet as the reason he can no longer work undercover. He also notes that he is no longer “permitted or able to give educational motivational speeches and presentations.”
Alas! Mr. Paige shot himself in the foot again, Lowering the Bar reports the case was dismissed. Getting back into the news means, of course, that more people will see the video.
[T]he judge granted summary judgment on the grounds that (even after many depositions) Paige could not prove how the video clip had gotten out, and even if he could have, the leaked information was not “private” because the incident took place in front of 50 parents and children (who at least did learn an excellent lesson in gun safety). Case dismissed.
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There is no “Glock 40,” by the way. Mr. Paige shot himself with a Glock Model 22 or 23 chambered in the .40 Smith & Wesson cartridge.
On January 19th last, this unfortunate blogger, mistakenly believing his Model 1911 to be empty, dropped the hammer on a loaded chamber thereby putting a Federal Hydro-Shok 230 grain jacketed hollow point .45 ACP bullet right through his thigh and then right through his calf.
He is sharing this painful and embarrassing experience as a public service, hoping to remind the rest of us always to assume that they are loaded.
