I guess mine is an almost mistake. I had just started shooting handguns and headed over to a buddies to shoot. His glock 21 was laying out, no mag, all the rounds from the mag were laying on the table. I picked up up and was looking if over, racked the slide, and out flew a round. That drove home the point to really check every firearm I handle even when you "know" one isn't in the chamber.
Well I guess this thread is as good as any. I may have hinted at this in the past, but I'll spill the beans here:
Like OP, I tried cleaning a gun with a round in the chamber. My dad had just died roughly a month prior, and my mom and I were going through some of his firearms. It was a Glock 17, so you have to pull the trigger to take apart the slide. I racked the slide, ejected a round, pulled the trigger, and BOOM! The shot went off, and my mother yelled "I've been shot!" I shot my own mother in the effing leg. Blood was pouring out, my sister and wife were in full panic mode, and the paramedics were on the way. Needless to say, S had HTF. To make a long story much shorter, she ended up not being shot, and instead, she was hit by the round as it ricocheted off the concrete floor. It hit her in two different spots on opposite sides of her shin, making it look like it was threw and threw. But after examining her leg in relation to where she was standing, the floor with the bullet mark, and the shrapnel from the round, there was no way it could have gone through and through.
Now, you're wondering how a round managed to go off, even though I racked the slide. Well, stupid me forgot to drop the mag. It was the gun my dad kept loaded in the safe, so it had a magazine full of Hornady CD HPs. THANKFULLY there were HPs in the gun when it went off. I believe if there would have been FMJ, the wouldn't have fragmented, and the chance of her taking the full brunt of the 9mm would have been much higher. Instead, she got hit with a couple pieces of shrapnel.
She was able to workout a couple of days later, and the week after we went to Cedar Point. She was about as well off as you can expect for having been shot. She still have a scar on either side of her leg, a couple pieces of shrapnel left in her leg, and a hole in her basement floor. I have the constant jabs from my entire family that I shot my mom. Seriously, they make fun of me all the time. But, lesson learned. I now check every gun multiple times before pulling the trigger, and if someone else is in the room, I show them an empty chamber as well.
Do I win this thread?
Uh.....so far.
Yay. Hey, lesson learned. ANYONE with a ND could have had the same thing happen, most just end up shooting a hole through an inanimate object. Mine took a turn for the worse.
Tried to teach my wife how to shoot.
Three years. THREE YEARS you have waited to make you first post. And that's what you went with?!