• Object@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    He took off his shoe and threw it at the bug to kill it, but a revolver he had hidden in the shoe fell to the ground. Upon making contact with the floor, the gun discharged and the bullet hit the victim in the foot.

    That’s even more bizarre; how does one hide a gun in their shoe??

  • anon6789@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I was very skeptical about this story playing out as told. When looking for a more complete article, this exact story is published from 2019 from multiple sources.

    While I don’t think it is a requirement all guns sold in the US need to pass the SAAMI Drop Test, I can’t imagine anything being sold that wouldn’t pass it, especially a revolver where the design likely hasn’t changed in 100 years. The drop test covers drops at various angles from 4 feet high, higher than a person sitting and taking off a shoe. Revolvers also need to have the hammer pulled back before firing or have extremely long and heavy trigger pulls.

    I’m calling both fake news and if this story did happen, I can’t see it being anything but a negligent discharge from someone assuming it wasn’t loaded or just being a fool putting a finger where it didn’t belong.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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      3 hours ago

      But does the drop test take into account an external hammer when thrown at high velocity in a shoe?

      If so, they really swung for the edge cases on that one. Their manager would have been upset they wasted productive hours on that until this happened.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Lol they got to leave some wildcards out there to fill out the surprising news section.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      I took a concealed carry course ages ago, and it helped to instill a healthy level of paranoia about unintentional discharge.

      My takeaways were:

      • fuck semi-auto pistols. Many working parts means many points of failure; carrying with a round in the chamber is dangerous as fuck, especially combined with a hair trigger; even if you don’t think there’s one in the chamber, there’s no good way to verify visually without opening the chamber, and even then people tend to give themselves a false negative and carry hot thinking they’re carrying safely; if you don’t carry hot, you have an extra step to perform under panic-levels of anxiety, aka you fumble with a gun-shaped brick for a couple seconds while your assistant proceeds to murder you; and blocky shape = blocky imprint = you’ve made yourself a target before a potential altercation even begins.

       

      • Revolvers are the way cuz ^that. And the imprint is more varied, making it conform better to your pudge and not stand out through your clothing. But even among revolvers, fuck any that have an external hammer, which can get snagged on clothing or something, pulled back partially, released, and strike a round causing it to fire without even touching the trigger.

       

      • Internal hammer, double-action-only is the way, cuz ^that.

       

      • Load one round fewer than the cylinder’s capacity, then close the cylinder with the empty chamber on top / in line with the barrel. Your gun is now only physically capable of firing by fully engaging the trigger. You can drop that fucker out of an airplane, and when it hits the ground it goes thud, not bang. Also, since the back of the casing seats further back than the back of the cylinder, there’s a gap that you can look into to visually assess whether or not there are any rounds loaded; and where or not the individual chamber in line with the barrel is loaded (hot).

       

      Absolute safest way to carry. Only downside is you only have 4 shots to work with, but if you need more than that, you’re probably dead anyway.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        I largely agree, but less so with the empty chamber/hammerless points. Anything modern is going to have a transfer bar blocking the firing pin from reaching the primer without a full trigger depress. For the hammerless, I don’t know if you could drop that thing in any way from any height where the internal hammer would get enough inertia to overpower that trigger spring. Anything to do that would advance it to the next chamber anyway and come back on a loaded one.

        Even so, having people be extra cautious is better the extra careless. You should always do not just what is safe, but also whatever you are comfortable doing after understanding your own personality.

        • anon6789@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          The majority are, but ones made really small (think sterotypical tv/movie detective with ankle holster or shoulder holster) typically hold 5 to minimize overall size.

          Even larger guns can either have 7, 8, or 10 shot if they’re made for really small cartridges for relaxed target shooting, or 5 if they are one of the modern uber magnum bear defense types.

      • Machinist@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Take a look at double action semiautos like the Ruger LCP. I think it’s the best of both worlds.

    • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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      17 hours ago

      Preamble: My parents divorced when I was young, my dad died a few years later, and I never really got to know him. Plus I have childhood trauma and ADHD, so I don’t remember a lot of my childhood. My parents weren’t great people, and life was pretty rough and tumble growing up.

      When I was in my early teens, I found a newspaper clipping from before I was born in some scrapbook or memory box. It was a short little crime blotter story that indicated my dad had accidentally shot himself in the face, because he had mistaken a snub-nose pistol for a lighter while drunk.
      I do remember that he had a big scar on his face, but I sort of assumed it was because he liked to get in fistfights for fun.

      My mom, a serial liar, confirmed the story, and it’s what I and another one of my sisters have believed for decades.

      I mentioned the event in passing to my oldest sister a few months ago and she balked, and immediately began laughing. After she composed herself, she explained that she was home when it happened. The real story is that my dad had ripped someone off in a drug deal, and they did a poor job of trying to kill him. The whole drunk/lighter thing was to avoid additional questions by the police.

      So, you know. Gun in a thrown shoe. Sure.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        I love these tyoes of family secrets! 😂

        Probably not too many ways to create a narrative where you look intelligent for getting shot randomly.

        • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 hours ago

          Oooh, boy.

          Shortly after my parents divorced, my mom both fell more heavily into drug use and moved us (me, and two of my sisters) halfway across the country to the magnificent town of Throckmorton, Texas.
          My mom found a dealer, who became her boyfriend, and they wound up spending a lot of time together. So much so that sometimes they’d take us to abandoned houses and leave us there for hours before they came back. My mom was going through a phase - she wound up dyeing her hair so much it somehow looked orange in the sun and green in the shade. But she also was sort of falling off being around the house. Sometimes it was just a day, then a day or two. We learned she lost her job, which was a problem - the house we lived in was provided by her employer. One Friday she left.
          When Monday rolled around, we didn’t go to school. The school called that afternoon, and we were honest with them. Our mom was gone and we didn’t know what to do. By Wednesday, they had managed to contact our grandma, who had extended family nearby, and they swooped in before CPS.
          We were eventually mustered back “home” to where more immediate family lived, and we floated for a long time. Not quite a year, but long enough that we moved up a grade and we celebrated NYE at my grandma’s.

          My mom emerged from wherever she’d been. She convinced my family to bring us back to her, to come live in a battered women’s shelter in Abilene - not far from where she’d disappeared. She was in AA, and NA, and even briefly went back to college.

          She never told us believable or consistent stories about what happened. It was always a tale of woe and coercion. Once she told us her drug dealer was an FBI agent that was using her to conduct sting operations and threatened to put her in jail if she stopped helping. In another, it was kidnapping. It was never that she got strung out and tried to run away.

          And that may not have been it either. Because after my mom died a few years ago, my sisters, who stayed close to the places we mostly grew up (I fled half a country away), found a weird creative writing exercise: A mother’s letter to a son she gave up for adoption. Odd, but my mom was odd and increasingly tried to get into more creative pursuits as she aged. But then they found a police report that said she got arrested for attacking her boyfriend. The report indicated that she was pregnant. Then they found paperwork from a hospital - standard pregnancy stuff, dating to the time period she was in the wind. The last thing they found was another police report, this time from him assaulting her, indicating she was about 6 months pregnant.
          And that’s all we know. We don’t know if this pregnancy came to term - my mom had 6 miscarriages that we knew about. We don’t know if an adoption took place or is she left the kid with her drug dealer - who is now apparently a church alderman (one of my sisters looked him up from the info on the police report).

          My mom was both very prideful, and quite racist. Our working theory on why she took this secret to her grave is that it reminded her of her failings and, you know, that she boinked someone she was racist against.

          • anon6789@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            I can’t imagine what it must be like for adults that live lives like that.

            My childhood wasn’t great, but nothing on this level and I know it did a number on me. I hope things are better for you now.

            • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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              2 hours ago

              Thank you. Things are definitely better. I can’t say I’m normal. I mean, I trauma dump on strangers on the internet in the name of interesting anecdotes, but I think I threaded a needle that few manage to thread. I’m more or less financially stable, with a solid career, comfortable prospects, and a good home life with someone who grew up under equitable circumstances, and also managed to escape the cycle, so we have a good understanding/acceptance of each others foibles.

              • anon6789@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                Well that sounds good to me! It’s hard to undo the only stuff you’ve ever known, but it’s important for people to see it’s possible.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        The Ruger was a bit of a surprise. The Taurus was not. They have a pretty bad history for this. Both are striker fired semi autos, which are more mechanically complex than a revolver. The only revolver recall I saw this millennium was for a Rossi, which is also owned by Taurus. If there wasn’t a plant in Georgia, I’d think they’d have been banned from import by now from the massive PT series recall.

        Also “article of clothing” isn’t the best holster option, and likely increases the odds of injuring one’s self much more than even the worst pistol to make it out the factory door.

        I could be wrong of course, but if I had to put money on either him shooting himself and making a corny excuse vs even the cheapest gun on the market going off from a 2 foot fall, I’d feel very confident putting my money on his index finger. The gun in a shoe and then forgetting about the gun in the shoe don’t paint this guy as the safest character.

    • jackyard@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      He did not. Read the article.

      Police said that the victim, a 50-year-old man who uses a wheelchair, was attempting to kill a cockroach with his shoe.

      He took off his shoe and threw it at the bug to kill it, but a revolver he had hidden in the shoe fell to the ground. Upon making contact with the floor, the gun discharged and the bullet hit the victim in the foot.

      • jackyard@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        He did not. Read the article.

        Police said that the victim, a 50-year-old man who uses a wheelchair, was attempting to kill a cockroach with his shoe.

        He took off his shoe and threw it at the bug to kill it, but a revolver he had hidden in the shoe fell to the ground. Upon making contact with the floor, the gun discharged and the bullet hit the victim in the foot.