I get so frustrated by how the media portrays any issue involving guns. Watching Headline news and they are hyping a story they are going to talk about where a flight attendant forgot she had a gun in her purse and it went off in the airport.

If you wait for the whole story, they finally get around to mentioning that it went off when the police were trying to unload it.

They make it sound like guns just "go off" on their own.

Wow!
Do you have a link? I would like to read more on this.
tb

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frontsightnsqueaz

Police: Flight attendant’s gun fired at Philly airport as officer was trying to remove bullets - The Washington Post

This is wrong on many levels. The Stewerdess "forgot" she had a gun in the purse. They found it at the airport and a Police Officer trying to unload it had an ND. I believe she got a disorderly conduct citation.

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Luke 22:36

There was nothing in the article that indicated whether the gun was a semi auto or a revolver. I wouldnt assume either. There are so many different type autos out there, both single action or double, I can see a cop being confused to anything other than what he or she was trained on. Wanting to be a LEO doesnt automaticly say the person was interested in guns to start with.

different article says it was a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson Airweight revolver.

Flight Attendant Tries to Bring Loaded Gun Through Airport Security - Yahoo! News

Philly is a rough town.

You are being very generous in your assessment of the officers abilities there feral-to quote the Tarzan school of firearms safety, "trigger make gun go bang...."

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Even older, even crankier....

Of course it was.

The article also says the officer who accidentally discharged the gun will go get additional training on handling weapons!

Well, that's one way of unloading a handgun....

I have been present at four AD`s that I can remember. Two of them happened to gun knowlegble men that carried them for their careers all their working lives. Never say never.
One time a officer came in to HQ in the middle of the night and out of boredom unloaded his revolver and dry fired at a clock. He blew the clock off the wall! The chief told him had he missed he would have fired him and let it go at that!

There are videos on You Tube of LEOs having an AD. Amen to never say never it can happen to anyone.

I showed a friend of mine a scar I got on my LH thumb courtesy of my Colt Woodsman. I was using a two hand hold and I had my thumb knuckle too high and the slide got me. His exact words were "How can anyone be so dumb"? Less than an hour later he asked me for a bandaid. He told me he had answered his own question.

Apparently about once a month someone shows up at the Philadelphia airport with a gun they forgot. The article I just read said there is a chance she may get the gun back.

The bullet went into a break room where an employee was sitting but no one was hit. That would be a pucker moment for the cop and the person sitting in the break room.

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Luke 22:36

Out of boredom some years ago my wife and I were watching Cops on TV. They nabbed this convicted felon for being an uncooperative and suspicious type (trust me, he was) and lo and behold pull a gun out of his waistband. It was a Star Ultrastar, and for some reason the one officer had a hard time clearing it. He struggled with it for that long I said to my wife "He needs to put that down and let somebody else do it before he hurts himself". He eventually got it done but it looked darned scary for a while. I think the very low rise slide had him baffled.

About 30 years ago a couple of young officers were in the station practicing their "Quick Draw" cowboy style, one shot the other in the gut, the guy was stuck with a colonostomy bag for years, maybe still is.
Steve W.

Was watching Yukon Men last night and they were running a commercial for Alaska State Trooper. They showed one of the troopers empting an AR by racking every round in the mag through the action.
I guess for every good LEO like we have on the forum there is one out there that is a real know it all jerk. Kinda like the Fed a couple of years back that was the only person in his lecture that was qualified to handle a firearm and procedes to shoot himself in the leg.
Larry

With some folks it isn't what they don't know that is the problem, it is what they do know that ain't right".

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Luke 22:36

jay, that could be very true.

"Investigators say a flight attendant forgot to take a gun out of her purse before leaving for work and the gun fired at Philadelphia International Airport as a police officer was trying to remove the bullets."

Maybe he was using an inertial bullet puller.

More often than not AD's can be sumed up by the old saying, " FRAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT".

Flight attendant brings revolver through Philly airport security and gun accidentally fires into TSA break room - NY Daily News

I found this on the MarlinOwners forum............there is some serious spin in the article itself. Apparently the author doesn't knows much about guns except that he hates them, and describes the accident as being caused by the officer trying to put on the safety......on a S&W revolver.

[QUOTE=papajohn428;136722927I and describes the accident as being caused by the officer trying to put on the safety......on a S&W revolver.[/QUOTE]

That was the problem!!! There isn't any safety on a S&W revolver.

Personally, I would be inclined to think the problem was pressure on the trigger. (DUH)

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Luke 22:36

The msm is agenda driven. News is reported through the filter of that agenda. It is exacerbated by simple ignorance. It is about like a person who has never seen a football game trying to explain the action on the field. Just think of Andy Griffith doing, "What It Was Was Football!" ( Andy Griffith Football Story from 1953 - YouTube ). In this case the attendant failed to use good much less common sense.

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<><

As I posted earlier, about once a month someone tries to go through security with a handgun. I imagine that 99% of the time this is actually due to "forgetting" it is in your bag or on you. Folks have set their babies on top of their cars and driven off. Here in NC a few years ago a dentist was taking his small child to day care. He forgot the child was in the car and drove to work and the child died of heat exposure. People forget, it happens. I have a bit of a hard time with the police officer who couldn't unload a S&W airweight revolver. Had it not been for her, this wouldn't have even made the news. Thankfully no one was hurt.

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Luke 22:36

I believe jaykellogg has posted on this about as well as anyone could. I would only like to add that, unlike that police officer, I probably know my limitations. Although I know that dynamite has been worked out to be pretty safe for an explosive, and pretty simple to boot, I just don't mess with it, because I never learned what little is needed to handle it properly. I'm sure that if it were related to my job, I could learn it, but that is not the case. Firearms seem to me to be pretty similar - not very hard to learn about, but a good thing not to mess with if you haven't learned anything about them yet. I'm sure that the owner of the gun could have unloaded it just fine if asked.

BTW, why was that police officer carrying a gun in such ignorance of its operation and safe handling?

Very few officers have been issued or trained on revolvers for at least 20 years now.

Yes, but I think that it is quite reasonable to claim that anyone who cannot handle a revolver safely cannot handle an autoloader safely. But that's not the main point, which is that there is no excuse for playing with a revolver when you don't know what you're doing, particularly when there is a qualified person (the owner) right there. But, really, how smart do you have to be to unload a revolver without firing it? All you have to do is not pull the trigger. Are the police now hiring the (mentally) handicapped?

We can pee & moan, pick this stuff apart and get ourselves excited untill the cows come home. So whats the real answer thats going to work? Negative public opinion and dumb reporters that want to feed the frenzey will always be with us. Maybe E-mails to the reporter that thinks revolvers have safetys might help to educate them. Maybe a E-mail to the city police cheif pointing out that instruction about the workings of revolvers to cops working the airport details where they are encountered might help. Not every LEO in the US gets the same type acadamy training. I suppose there are some villages in the sticks yet that some officers receive NO training! Some of us watch the news hopeing to see something to P us Off! Does us no good unless we do something about it.
I suppose laws and rules have changed since my following story: Back in 1974 my uncle died. He was a batchlor and I was his only family he carred about except for mom and another sister of his. He was in the 82nd with the gliders and saw much action. I ended up with a lot of his souiveniers. Amoungst them was a home made knife he had took off a german solider. It had probable "kill" notchs in the handle. My uncle at various times had gave me the storys to some of his bring backs, guns, patchs, watchs, etc. After the funneral I put some of them together to fly back to california with. I left the guns home for later but had a metal box with some of his medals and the favorite knife. The screener called me over to open the box. They got excited when they seen the knife. Called the old guard over and we made a deal for me to take the knife over to my luggage over to my suitcase that was going in the cargo section. The guard wanted me to hand carry the knife although I had told him it would look better to the public if he did. Now at the time my job was working security for lockheed aircraft. Part of my job was details doing his job. Of course I didnt bother telling him.
Anyway we were quite a spectical, me walking through the crowded airport with a dagger in my hand with that old armed guard escourting me! Actualy, I kind of was enjoying myself!

Lots of times with small J frame revolvers, a person will open the cylinder and hit the ejector rod and dump the rounds into their hand, then close the cylinder without checking it or counting the rounds in their hand. Many times with these small guns a round will not fully eject and will still be in the cylinder when closed. I once saw a 20 year veteran cop do this in his 4 X 4 then aim at the floorboard and squeeze the trigger (he was checking the trigger pull on a new gun that he hadn't fired yet), Kaboom! The round that didn't eject came up when he squeezed the trigger. Good thing he didn't aim at his foot! I was lucky, being outside of the truck. It didn't hurt my hearing, but his ears rang all week long from the shot inside the truck.

Since none of us were in that room, which sounds like a good
thing, figuring out what actually happened is pure speculation.

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Ogy