Use a holster and carry a proper carry gun
Carrying around your single action with a full chamber in a sack is a good way to get shot:
A gun carry permit holder accidentally shot himself inside a Clarksville restaurant Monday morning.
At around 9:25 a.m., witnesses said a man in his 70s entered the restaurant, was going to sit down on a stool and dropped a cloth bag on the floor, according to Clarksville Police spokesman Jim Knoll.
Witnesses heard a distinct “pop.” The man asked for an ambulance. When CPD officers arrived, a customer and Montgomery County Sheriffs Office deputy were holding the man and applying pressure to the gunshot wound to the abdomen, Knoll said.
September 13th, 2017 at 6:33 pm
Reckon he was in a Shoney’s?
September 13th, 2017 at 9:29 pm
The gun, they say, was strapped into a holster (inside the bag) with the hammer down. It wasn’t made clear whether the hammer was strapped down.
I can’t tell exactly the make of the gun. It appears to be a three screw Colt clone. If the hammer was strapped in, in typical thumb break fashion, that would mean the guy had the hammer sitting on a live round, with no transfer bar or hammer block mechanism. Very dumb.
Some holsters however, and I have two types of these, do not have a strap that goes over the hammer to keep it down. In that case the guy may have been smart enough to have the safety-less revolver’s hammer down on an empty chamber.
That doesn’t guarantee safety though. I know a guy who was carrying just like that (hammer down on an empty) and he dropped the gun in such a way that the hammer got pulled back enough to unlock the cylinder, causing the cylinder to rotate, then the gun bounced again and hit the hammer, again, but on the back this time, firing the gun and putting a 44 slug through his hand. That gun, being very basic in design, didn’t have a transfer bar or hammer block either, of course.
If the gun had been a modern action, single or double action, I don’t think that could have happened. A newish Ruger Single Six for example has the transfer bar, so a round cannot be fired unless the trigger is pulled back some distance and held back long enough for the hammer to impinge on the transfer bar.
The old-fashioned revolvers (single or double action; I can’t see as it would matter) must be treated more carefully.
And that raises the matter of modern, idiot-proof guns possibly leading to such an accident. They let you be more complacent, and then you get your hands on an old style gun, and, it goes Bang! when you didn’t intend it.
Magazine safeties and other features designed by lawyers and not shooters come to mind also.
September 13th, 2017 at 9:32 pm
Fortunately he stopped the bullet before it hit someone else.
September 14th, 2017 at 11:18 am
They said a ‘loud pop’. I suspect it was not a BIG gun, say .45 LC. Maybe one of those cheep .22 cowboy guns.
Yea, glad he stopped the bullet and not someone else.