Customer shoots himself in head

[Bill]

True story, last week. He had his 1911 loaded, hammer back, laying on the table, knocked it off and it went bang. Ricocheted around the room hitting him in the arm and in the head where it then fell to the floor. He was not injured, he has much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

[KD5NRH]

True story, last week. He had his 1911 loaded, hammer back, laying on the table, knocked it off and it went bang. Ricocheted around the room hitting him in the arm and in the head where it then fell to the floor. He was not injured.

How fast did he have to run to not be injured by everybody else in the room?

Also, what was determined to be the reason for the discharge? IIRC, the difficulty of making a properly maintained 1911 go off even cocked and unlocked has been pretty well covered.

[txinvestigator]

Series 1 1911's do not have a drop safe feature.

[Texican_gal]

Glad he is OK.

Was the thumb safety engaged, or not? Would this matter?

[kauboy]

... hitting him in the arm and in the head ...
He was not injured...

Was this Superman?
Am I missing something?
How do you get hit with a ricochet in the arm and head, and receive no injury? were they just tiny fragments?

[NcongruNt]

... hitting him in the arm and in the head ...
He was not injured...

Was this Superman?
Am I missing something?
How do you get hit with a ricochet in the arm and head, and receive no injury? were they just tiny fragments?

The same way this guy got hit in the head with a .50BMG ricochet and was uninjured:



Enough of the bullet's energy was expended that it didn't hit him hard enough to injure hiim. My guess would be that it ricocheted and probably bounced off his head and hit his arm, or vice-versa. It simply wasn't going fast enough by the time it got to him to cause an injury.

[HighVelocity]

Any time there are bullets in the air, there is risk involved. I am glad nobody was hurt.

Just a few weeks ago, while scoring at an IDPA match, a bullet from the competitors gun came back from the backstop and hit me in the foot. I was a good 30 feet from the backstop and it hit me with a good bit of energy. Luckily, not enough to penetrate my shoe.
I bent down, picked it up and it was hot so it was definitely not just debris from the backstop.

[NcongruNt]

Any time there are bullets in the air, there is risk involved. I am glad nobody was hurt.

Just a few weeks ago, while scoring at an IDPA match, a bullet from the competitors gun came back from the backstop and hit me in the foot. I was a good 30 feet from the backstop and it hit me with a good bit of energy. Luckily, not enough to penetrate my shoe.
I bent down, picked it up and it was hot so it was definitely not just debris from the backstop.

The same kind of thing happened when I took my girlfriend shooting for the first time. There was a fellow shooting steel at about 15 yards next to us, and one bounced back and hit her in the leg. It left a little purple bruise there, but no real injury.

[KD5NRH]

Series 1 1911's do not have a drop safe feature.

But even those don't go off *that* easily; the last set of tests I saw showed they needed about eight feet of drop, muzzle first, on hard concrete with a stock firing pin spring to detonate even a soft primer.

I'm not dropping mine on concrete, but I've dropped it on low-pile carpet a few times with a primed hull chambered, and it hasn't failed yet. Of course, the test isn't valid for me anymore, since I changed to the Wolff heavy firing poin spring just in case, but I'd estimate a dozen drops from 6ft before swapping out the 50yr old spring it had.

[Bill]

Series 1 1911's do not have a drop safe feature.

I suspect this was the case as it is Argentinian made. I though he said he had the hammer cocked but now that I think about it, it was probably not

[Wildscar]

Any time there are bullets in the air, there is risk involved. I am glad nobody was hurt.

Just a few weeks ago, while scoring at an IDPA match, a bullet from the competitors gun came back from the backstop and hit me in the foot. I was a good 30 feet from the backstop and it hit me with a good bit of energy. Luckily, not enough to penetrate my shoe.
I bent down, picked it up and it was hot so it was definitely not just debris from the backstop.

Yeah that was pretty crazy to walk back and have some one tell me that I had a souvenir from that stage. I still have it too.

[WarHawk-AVG]

True..I saw pictures of a guy that dropped a brand spankin new Springfield 1911 out of his backpack on his motorcycle going 70 mph, it bounced and skidded all over the freeway, bent the frame, tore the grips off, road rash all over the pistol, picture still was cock and locked!

Springfield Armory even rebuilt the pistol for him in almost perfect condition too!

[SigM4]

I think what we may be forgetting though is that no test is every 100% reliable. Yes, these drop test may show the same result 99,999 times, but there is always that 1 time that something did happen. Maybe the gun hit just right that it set it off, who knows. I for one am always pleased to see these result, but I always remain mindful of bad luck.

[tex45acp]

I have been shooting handguns for over 35 years and have been careful to not do anything unsafe or otherwise that could cause any bad situations to arise.

I had gone to my local outdoor gun range with my with my new Browning Buckmark Target pistol. I had bought some high dollar target grade ammunition to really find out what kind of accuracy the gun was capable of and started shooting at 100 yards from a bench. It was incredibly accurate, so I decided to do some fun shooting with some hollowpoint ammo at swinging metal disks at the 25 yard mark. The disks are about 6" in diameter and are attached to the frame with chain. I started shooting at one of these rapid fire and was taping it pretty good. I decided to get a little more precise and decided to pick a dark spot in the center of one of the discs to aim at. I fired one round and felt something hit me in the chest right above the right nipple. It felt like someone had thumped me with their finger and I looked down to see a drop of blood forming on my white t-shirt.........! My heart started to beat like a schoolboy after his first kiss and I started to shake, I got weak kneed and sat down. I was with a buddy, who happens to be a paramedic, that immediately came over and realized that something was wrong. We pulled up my shirt and found a very small laceration that was bleeding. He said I can see something just into the laceration and I said, in a very shaky voice, "pull it out" fearing the worst. It was a very small piece of lead from my .22 bullet. He really looked me over and to make sure that was all that was wrong and after I quit shaking, we walked down to inspect the metal disk I had shot at. The spot turned out to be the bullet dent from a .45 caliber bullet. I had missed the dent with my shot with all but about 25% of the slug, per the lead splash. The 25% left a clearly visible trail where it followed the dent into one side, across the raduised bottom and back out the other side heading my way. That 25% was what was loged into the laceration. Then I really started to shake. Whats so bad about this is that I wear all the proper equipment to protect my eyes and hearing, even shooting the .22, but I never thought I could do something like this, that none of that equipment would protect me from.

tex45acp

[Thane]

... hitting him in the arm and in the head ...
He was not injured...

Was this Superman?
Am I missing something?
How do you get hit with a ricochet in the arm and head, and receive no injury? were they just tiny fragments?

I've been hit by a ricocheted .45 slug without injury. Out in the desert, it bounced off a rock on the hill we were using as a backstop and hit me in the shoulder. It was about like getting hit with a paintball; the bullet probably traveled about 100 yards downrange and the same back, so it wasn't going very fast by the time it hit me. I've still got that bullet in a drawer somewhere. I've seen similar slugs hit hanging steel targets and drop to the ground. If it expends most of its energy on the first (or second) thing it hits, it's quite possible to avoid injury.

What I have a hard time believing is that a properly functioning 1911 could fire like that. I'd have that pistol checked over thoroughly.