Confess your accidental discharge here:
Yeah this is the elephant in the room with a buncha shooters during a jawing session over coffee or possibly a beer or two. We pretty much in the past years may have had an accidental discharge along the way.
I am sure that none of us are proud of it and we may not want to discuss it but at least for me it was a real strong wake up call about gun safety.
I was 12 years old and I had been allowed to utilize my dad's .22 for two years already. It was a Savage Model 23 bolt action rifle in .22 lr with a 5 round magzine. This was not a lightweight gun at all. It was well worn when I got my paws on it and I must have fired 10,000 rounds thru it from '55 to '61.
One day a pair of friends and I decided to go to a nearby neighbor's field to bag a woodchuck or two.
My older friend was allowed to drive his dad's '55 Ford SW and we all piled in on the way to the field. I had a round chambered and 5 more in the magazine and the safety was engaged. During the ride the bolt was jostled a mite open and when I noticed that I pushed it closed. The rifle fired and I about made a mess in my pants. Good fortune smiled as the snout of the rifle had been pointed up and now we had a hole in the roof to explain. We found some glue and mixed it with some rough sawdust and formed a plug to fit and formed neat repair. A little black paint on the roof and we were good to go. We stuck a piece of masking tape over the hole in the headliner and it matched the color of the fabric. My friend's dad was only about 5' tall and the roof was higher than his eyes. We swore ourselves to secrecy and kept on with our lives.
Further examination of the rifle reproduced the malfunction again and again. So I learned that this rifle must never have a round in the chamber until you are ready to shoot. I pretty much never ever carried a loaded rifle inside a vehicle again. And I never had another AD again.
Many years later a friend was showing me his colt .25 ACP when he mishandled it and it fired a neat hole in his floor. We found the slug in the basement spattered flat on the concrete floor about 3 feet away from his wife who was washing clothing. We had a few exciting minutes there and he had some serious fence mending to do.
I am sure that some of also might have an interesting tale of woe.