Stop touching it
I caught about ten minutes of Neal Boortz driving this morning. He was on the radio quite obviously handling a firearm and talking about it. Seemed he unloaded a semi-auto, ejected a round, reloaded it and chambered it a couple of times. What you’ve done here, Neal, is increased the chance of putting holes in something that doesn’t need holes from exactly zero percent to some number greater than zero. Do the handling at the range or in a safe place. The studio, probably not a great idea.
January 4th, 2013 at 12:27 pm
Maybe he was mindful enough to keep his finger off the trigger. It can happen.
January 4th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Snap caps?
January 4th, 2013 at 1:00 pm
Not to mention if it’s an AR, or SCAR etc, the firing pin will start softening that primer.
NFO knows about that one.
In that case Breda, proper booger hook control wont save you.
January 4th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Neil Boortz is an Aggie of the old school, who was a Cadet at Texas A&M back when they did things like explode cats with half sticks of dynamite in each others’ dorm rooms for a joke.
He is semi-retiring from broadcasting, and his shows the last several months have used the tag line, “The Happy Ending Tour.” Most callers to his show start by saying, “Me love you long time,” in reference to this joke.
I write this not in defense of his gun handling on air, which likely was educational. I didn’t hear it. But I suspect the semiauto was one he either wears or one he likely keeps in his vehicle.
January 4th, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Doesn’t seem like Radio offers any chance of knowing whether he followed the three rules… I’d give him grief on that but until he answers “safe direction, finger off, unloaded until ready to use” would still be a question. My office isn’t a range, but the bucket of sand actually makes a safe direction for my 9mm. -Boyd
January 4th, 2013 at 3:35 pm
Doesn’t matter if he was paying attention to his trigger finger.
A loaded gun left alone will not go off.
Simply by messing with a loaded gun, there is a chance something will go wrong, and the gun will go off when not intended.
Therefor, messing with a loaded gun unnecessarily is a wholly unjustifed and avoidable risk.
Now, if he had cleared the piece, removed all live ammo from the room, and substituted action testing dummies, the risk of a noisy error drops to insignificance. (Still not zero — assumption being that ALL the live ammo is gone. . . humans being flawed, however, means that a small risk remains, however low that risk may be.)
January 4th, 2013 at 4:09 pm
I don’t want to see you play with it.
I don’t want to hear you play with it.
Leave it alone.
January 4th, 2013 at 6:14 pm
I do not worry about things like this.. The chances of being shot even handling a gun like this are slightly worse than getting murdered especially when you factor in overall US Population.. About 15800 people are injured yearly messing with guns. 1500 are killed doing the same or killed by others doing it. Start doing the math on that and the Number becomes Infinitely small… .000051 percent chance to be wounded with a .00000484 percent chance of being killed.. My math may be off but not by much.
January 4th, 2013 at 9:43 pm
Your math is off John because many of the people not killed or injured by an AD were not handling a gun. The percentage of people who do injure themselves while handling a gun, as a percentage of those actually handling a gun, is higher.
January 4th, 2013 at 11:08 pm
To be a RISK of any consequence it would have to be HIGHER THAN 1 percent…
January 5th, 2013 at 8:01 am
Not to mention the fallout of someone on air negligently discharging a firearm into…well, anything. Talk about the made-for-MSNBC moment.
I am with Uncle here: Stop. Touching. It.
Seeing folks here talk about the statistical likelihood that various dumb actions may or may not result in bad outcomes tells me some people need to reevaluate the situation. Dumb actions are learning exercises. At least they should be.
Even good people make mistakes. Defending dumb mistakes does not make the world a better place, whether it be guns or voting.
January 5th, 2013 at 11:57 am
In error theory, there are ‘forcing factors’ and ‘side effects’ either of which can lead to a failure, such as a negligent discharge when handling a firearm.
A forcing factor is something outside normal operations that causes an error, such as inadvertently pulling the trigger while picking up a gun. Nothing wrong with the gun, it worked as designed, the operator just messed up and essentially forced the error to occur.
A side effect is something that goes wrong when operations are proceeding normally but a problem occurs that the system cannot overcome. Leaving a finger in a loaded Glock’s trigger guard while holstering the gun will cause the gun to fire, but it won’t cause a cocked and locked 1911 to fire. Thus the 1911 when locked is immune to the side effect that a loaded Glock will always experience.
Boortz was liable to either type of error in his on-air gun handling exercise.
I can’t find an online transcript or audio of his show that includes the segment described above. I hope the lesson he was imparting was useful enough to justify his increased risk through gun handling on-air
January 5th, 2013 at 4:27 pm
“Maybe he was mindful enough to keep his finger off the trigger. It can happen.”
Won’t stop a slamfire. Every time you cycle a round through the action of a magazine-fed firearm, there is a chance, however small, that it will discharge.
What purpose was accomplished by the unnecessary coonfingering of a firearm in this case? Other than jacking around with it for the sake of jacking around with it?
To paraphrase noted firearms safety expert K.T. Clown, “Hey yutz. Guns aren’t Foley props – – they’re for family protection, hunting dangerous and delicious animals, and keeping the king of England out your face.“
January 5th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
John Smith,
“The chances of being shot even handling a gun like this are slightly worse than getting murdered especially when you factor in overall US Population.. About 15800 people are injured yearly messing with guns. 1500 are killed doing the same or killed by others doing it. Start doing the math on that and the Number becomes Infinitely small� .000051 percent chance to be wounded with a .00000484 percent chance of being killed.. My math may be off but not by much.”
True, but I see a minor fault in the premise of this calculation.
For instance, the number of people killed in the US every year by driving a Ferrari into a brick wall at 200mph is close enough to zero as makes no nevermind. This does not, however, mean it is a good idea to drive a Ferrari into a brick wall at 200mph…
January 5th, 2013 at 5:34 pm
You gun nuts are living up to your name. You endangered far more lives while picking your nose while driving to work than Boortz did touching his gun in the studio. And guess what, us responsible drivers have to put up with all your prior restraint “no picking noses while driving laws,” which are already infringing on our liberties. Yet there you go again, adjusting your radio at 65 mph — risking lives AND increasing the odds of even further restrictions on our freedoms.
J/K. Picking your nose; adjusting the radio; nor taking your gun out of your gun safe has ever harmed anyone. And I for one will not blame you for the harm tyrants do to my freedom — even if they claim to be doing it in response to your negligence. The blame rests on the tyrants and the system which gives them power.
January 5th, 2013 at 11:48 pm
Actually that is a flawed Comparison,Tam.. If you would have said that there are people who drive Ferraris to 200mph(IE Dangerous) every year and SOME hit the wall, well that would be a more accurate comparison.
Your comparison precludes a Cause and Effect. People simply do NOT drive their Ferraris into a wall at 200mph to be doing it. They Do however drive their Ferraris at 200mph and hit the On Rare Occasion the Wall..
January 7th, 2013 at 10:17 am
It wasn’t a real gun guys. http://soundfxnow.com/tag/gun-shot-soundboard/