A gun slips from a holster.

[chi]

Today,I heard on the news of a  policer officer in the southland, being killed as he was holstering his gun. The gun slipped from the holster and went fired as it hit the ground.

How could this be!  

A Glock could not do this.   And I dont think his service weapon was  a 1911.

But what about a SW?   Iam not familiar with that weapon and if anyone could shed some light on this.

I think the police or the news is or was not telling all the facts.    Any ideas?     thanks

[Detlef]

unless you were there to see it, very unlikely w/ *any* police gun. The PD is probably protecting the guy & preparing for a 100 Mio $ lawsuit against the mfctr. *Unsafe gun handling* is with 99.9999999999% prob. the cause....

--Detlef

[EricW]

A virtually impossible occurence with any duty S&W.  Say what you will about S&W's politics, they make a safe gun.

Ditto on Detlef.

E

[ErikW]

or a suicide made to look like an accident so the dependents can collect the life insurance

[Jon Merricks]

Yep its the Police fault again.  You guys F'n kill me.

[EricW]

Who loves ya', baby?

[sfinney]

Remember the women cop in Georgia last year? While doing a "show and tell" at a local school, her Glock "malfunctioned and went off by itself when she dropped it on the ground", hitting a student.

Later it was determined that she had removed the magazine from the gun "to make it safe" and passed it around the classroom - with a bullet in the chamber, no less.  When she went to insert the magazine back in the gun, she had her finger on the trigger, and BOOM! AD. She was then so shocked the gun discharged she dropped it on the ground.

So, yeah, I'm leaning toward operator error for every Police AD I hear about until proven otherwise.

[Steve Anderson]

The though of a chambered Glock going around the room gives me some serious heebie jeebies. That is one stupid person.

SA

[Duane Thomas]

I may have told this story before, but it's appropriate to the topic being discussed. 10-plus years ago I went to a "Semi-Automatic Pistol Transition Training Course." This was one of those "train the trainer" courses where the instructor was teaching police firearms instructors from many local PDs how to go back to their departments and train their officers to fire semi-autos instead of revolvers. You'd figure, these are the firearms instructors for the department, these are probably the best, most gun knowledgeable guys they've got, right? I was attending the class to possibly write it up.

So we get to the part of the class where the instructor's talking about field stripping the guns for cleaning. So he says to the class, "I'd like everyone to unload and field strip their guns, and put them on the table in front of them." And this one guy who's carrying a Glock 17 says, "I'm incredibly embarrassed to ask this but....does anyone here know how to field strip a Glock?" I was amazed. The FIREARMS INSTRUCTOR for the entire PD doesn't even know how to field strip the gun he's carrying.

Oh but it gets better. Of everyone in the room, several more of whom were carrying Glocks, there was only ONE person who knew how to field strip a Glock - and it wasn't the primary instructor. Of course, modesty prevents me from mentioning who that one person was.....

[George D]

Fact of life is that police are usually not interested in guns. They are just something that are a part of their job. We have seen police revolvers that have stuck to their holsters from lack of use. It's no excuse for lack of safety but it's still a fact of life. The police use our range for training and the only accident that has occurred has involved the police. I was walking past one of their training sessions one day and heard their instructor say to them " all right you lot, don't you embarrass me in front of this real shooter". They were blazing away at largely pristine targets at 3 yards.