Recent article from Police Mag that says we should stop using the term “negligent discharge”:
https://www.policemag.com/651367/dont-call-it-a-negligent-discharge?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&u tm_campaign=20221206_1683:638fcc67b04b486ac7091d42t_nl-pol-tuesday-20221206&omid=1000341058&cid=632c90909319ba27c10da 7ad
Instead of my unfortunate habit of knee-jerk posting, I’ll ponder before I post.
Thoughts on the article’s premise?
Formerly known as xpd54.
The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect the opinions or policies of my employer.
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"If we don't call it negligent, then we don't give lawyers a free hand to sue us for our officers negligent discharges. Weasel Words Work!"
Gringop
Play that song about the Irish chiropodist. Irish chiropodist? "My Fate Is In Your Hands."
Opening the linked article I was prepared to be super angry at “protect the blue line” or some otherwise biased information. reading the article I can’t help but agree.
Negligence/Negligent has a legal connotation. As such, one must be careful in using that word. I have a lot of experience dealing with issues involving unintentional discharges (which I think is a great “general” term to describe a gun going off when not intended). Most of the time, it is some level of error by the user. Is any error negligent?
Some might say yes, but would they say yes in a legal sense?
We make errors every day. All of us. None of us are immune, and none of us are perfect. There was a time when a car crash was an “accident”, and now it’s a “traffic collision”. That’s because someone’s at fault, but that doesn’t necessarily mean negligence, and I think we need to distinguish “fault” from “negligence”.
If you’ve loaded your AR hundreds of times with no issue and on time 101 your finger slips from your BAD lever (like I’m aware happened last weekend) and hits the trigger, sending a round off unintentionally but in a relatively safe area... are you negligent? You’re definitely at fault... because you did it. But does it rise to the level of negligence?
I don’t think so.
I think in some ways we’re (maybe gun owners but not at all so much as cops) too easy on each other, and at the same time unforgiving.
Most of the time an unintentional discharge is the fault of the user in one way or another. Sometimes it’s negligent because there was an intentional or egregiously unintentional deviation from basic firearm safety. Sometimes it’s a mistake in the moment like what causes many traffic collisions.
Ultimately we need to say it for what it is. Is someone at fault or was it beyond control/anticipation? If so, is it a mistake, negligence, recklessness, or intentional? These are truly legal terms that carry significant ramifications and some dude decades ago telling us stuff is not the god I’m going to worship.
I have long suggested "unintended discharge" as the umbrella term, and then negligent as a subcategory. Not all UDs are NDs. If you were trained poorly but following your training, are you negligent? Is a mechanical malfunction negligent? If you get in the trigger a little sooner then you meant to and put one in the dirt in front of the target, is that negligent?
They are all unintended, regardless if negligent, accidental, or mechanical.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Given proper training, I agree with the term "unintentional." For those agencies who refuse to train, I tend to entertain the notions of "negligent" and "deliberate indifference."
But I'm sure someone, somewhere, will differ in opinion - given their zero (relevant) experience with police firearms training and policy.
Last edited by gtmtnbiker98; 12-07-2022 at 06:57 AM.
I agree with SoCalDep and BBI.
I differ with the article regarding origins. IIRC, and I could certainly be wrong, "Negligent Discharge" did not come from the military, but came to be because any unintentional discharge was at the time referred to as an accidental discharge. I believe that it was an attempt to make the shooter(s) take ownership of their mistake, in a broad-brush sense. I think in part it was shaming shooters into being less cavalier in their gun handling. but the article is right, in that negligence does have a real legal meaning that we should be mindful of, and reserve the term for when it truly applies.
"It's surprising how often you start wondering just how featureless a desert some people's inner landscapes must be."
-Maple Syrup Actual
Originally Posted by SoCalDep
Yeah, I agree with this. I am old, so I remember this shifting from "AD" to "ND", with a brief stopover at "UD". My take has always been you need to break more than one of the Four Rules to do something negligent. There are four rules instead of one rule for a reason, no need to jump right to a legally pejorative term unnecessarily.
I think some people in our gun nut subculture want to be sanctimonious pricks that think they are infallible, strutting around like Church Lady, asserting that everyone but themselves are negligent fornicatiors under the influence of Satan.
For reference I will out myself. Once I inadvertently (new term?) shot my Americase shotgun case (that cost more than a lotta shotguns) in the process of "clearing" my MKIII, this in an underground basement with no other people there. I still feel stupid when I look at the case, but not sure I did anything that would hold up in court.
So I had an unintentional discharge the other month. It was with a Glock, go figure. I was shooting and the gun locked up. I was not sure if it was failure to eject or failure to return to battery. I tried mortaring the gun open, slamming it against the bench with the muzzle and the optic, and could not get the slide to open up and unlock.
After repeatedly slamming it against the table, and getting nowhere, I smacked the back plate and slide a number of times to get it fully closed, and I pointed the gun down range and pulled the trigger. Click, no bang.
OK, good. It was a failure to eject because I returned the gun to battery and tried lighting it off, and it did not fire.
You can see where I am going with this.
I then went to try and take the slide off, and you guessed it, bang.
I never had the muzzle pointed in an unsafe direction, and when it went off it was pointed down range, but I had made a fundamental judgment error in assuming my check to distinguish between failure to return to battery and failure to eject was good enough.
It turned out that the stepped case in the aftermarket barrel tends to stick more when dirty compared to a regular Glock barrel, and I did not realize this in my decision making.
In the nomenclature, I didn’t consider it negligent, since I had gone through a few fairly reasonable, problem-solving steps. I made an erroneous judgment, thinking that my trying to light off the primer with a gun smacked back into battery was sufficient to rule out a live round, it wasn’t.
It also wasn’t accidental because I deliberately pressed the trigger. Unintended seems like the best description for this kind of discharge.
Agree with BBI that unintended can have accidental and negligent as subsets.
For myself, I've had a couple of SD's- 'Stupid Discharges' with my ancient High Standard Duramatic. The bad one was when I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I tilted the action up to have a look at the breech without taking my finger off the trigger, and put the round into the range ceiling.
I found out later that it's very possible for my grip to very slightly engage the crossbolt safety with my grip. When the trigger is pressed, the striker is released, but caught by the safety. Taking the safety off fires the gun. That was another unexpected loud noise on the range, but that one went down the range.
I now have a Beretta 87 for getting my .22lr on. It doesn't do that.
A Stupid Discharge is where we get an unexpected loud noise, and afterwards realized we did some stupid, stupid things that we damn well knew not to do in order to get it.
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
Modern Sporting Discharge.
no one sees what's written on the spine of his own autobiography.
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