Disclaimer: I am a total idiot and deserve the ridicule but I thought there was a lesson to be learned here. Call me stupid if you want, you certainly have the supporting evidence. Flame on.
So...can you tell something is wrong here? That is a .45 caliber hole in my 1/4 scale dry fire target.
It was not put there on purpose.
It was put there about five minutes ago. Nobody is hurt, my ears are still ringing and I'm still wondering how I could be so dumb. The bullet was absorbed in the mass of unwanted textbooks in my basement and a concrete wall lies behind the textbooks, so it wasn't a total fuckup. But a fuckup it was.
My dry fire routine typically involves the use of "dummy cartridges" to simulate weight in the magazine to make my practice reloads similar to live fire. I typically made them myself out of an expended case without powder or primer or bullet. See where this is going?
An old reloaded round was laying next to the dummy round on my desk. Picked up my "dummy rounds" and loaded them into the mag, I failed to verify that one round in the bunch was in fact a live round. Probability provided the circumstances that led to it being the topmost round. Practice an unloaded start and SUR-FUCKING-PRISE.
Boom. The unexpected loud noise.
I cleared my firearm, set it down, examined myself for holes, found the bullet in a book and said "fuck". Also noticed that my dog was fine and didn't even seem to be alarmed that I had just discharged my firearm in the house. Lazy bum.
So. Incident report is completed. Summary of suggestions is as follows.
1. Dummy rounds are NOT to be made by me on the loading press. Just buy the snap caps. Dummy rounds should NOT look like real ammo.
2. Live ammo is to NEVER be left loose on the table, near the dummy rounds or accessible when dry firing. Should be a given. It wasn't the case. That was a mistake.
3. I practice with a backstop. It was effective at stopping the travel of the bullet. I shudder to think about what would have happened if not. DRY FIRE WITH A BACKSTOP.
4. Probably shouldn't dry fire late at night when I'm tired and my focus is decreased. practice will not be good.
This was not a "didn't verify the gun was empty" gun accident. I intentionally loaded aimed and fired the gun...it just wasn't dry fire.
I subscribe to a notion or a "Swiss cheese model" in that there are holes in a stack of Swiss cheese that line up and let bad things happen if enough are aligned. I had enough holes in model for a shot to be fired. Not enough holes for the bullet to cause injury or travel through the walls or my home. Thank God for that.
Any other suggestions on how to be safer, criticisms of my vast idiocy, concerns about further holes in my model, jokes about the stopping power of .45s or laffs about my shot placement (I mean...A zone hit tho right?) are welcome. I'm thinking dry fire maybe just be totally empty mags? I'm a little nervy about inert cartridges at the moment.
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