What is considered an "accidental discharge"?

[Olav]

I was wondering what is considered an "accidental discharge".

And where would boundry of the discharge of a handgun be considered accidental.

Where is the boundry for negligent vs accidental discharge vs unintentional discharge?

A couple of examples:

I was at a training course last weekend and the class was doing a drill where we would turn 180 degrees while drawin and fire on the target.

The instuctor told us to do it "dry fire" or "dry" first just to practice the motion of turning and presenting the weapon to the target without firing to get comfortable with the movemet and to make sure we don't sweep any fellow students. Our weapons were hot so we had to keep our fingers off the trigger.

Well, during one of the dry runs a student fires his weapon (His gun was pointed down range at the time). The instuctor calls out and asks who was responsible for the discharge and he was reminded over again that this is a dry run. No shooting!

The rest of the course, which was two days, that student was reminded over again during a dry fiire session that it is a dry run and no shooting!

Is that considered an "accidental discharge"

Another example:

I was at another course and we were all getting ready to take a lunch break. The instructor tells us to download our weapons and make safe.

We were all downloading when a BANG! happened. One of the students was unloading their Glock. Took the magazine out and was pressing the trigger to release the striker but neglected to remove the round still in the chamber. Again, the muzzle was pointed down range and no one was hurt.

Is this an accidental discharge or what?

I was wondering how often these events have occured for other people?

I've been to a quite a few training courses and it's happened twice.


Thanks!

[Jay Cunningham]

Opinions will differ on this; here is mine:

A Negligent Discharge occurs when the gun goes off when you didn't want it to because your finger touched the trigger.

An Accidental Discharge occurs when the gun goes off when you didn't want it to but not because of your trigger finger.

Best I can do, and there are other interpretations.

eta: One time I was doing malfunction clearance drills with the carbine. I "set up" my carbine to have a malfunction (or so I thought) but a round wound up in the chamber. When I pressed the trigger to begin the malfunction clearance drill the firearm discharged. Now, some would argue that this was an AD or ND. I would say that it wasn't because:

I was treating my carbine as if it was loaded.
I was willing to shoot the steel target downrange.
My sights were on target and I was ready to shoot (press the trigger).
I knew my target and my backstop.

So I didn't violate any of the Four Rules, so I didn't consider it an AD/ND. Opinions may differ.

[Cold Zero]

Isn't an Accidental discharge when a guy is not paying attention (due to poor habits and lack of proper training) and puts his boogie picker one time too many inside the trigger guard and then blames his negligent discharge on a mechanical failure of the gun?

Accidental Discharge=Tooth Fairy

[restfortheweary]

General rule from my point of view.

If the gun mechanically malfunctions- Accidental
User error or carelessness- negligent

[Jay Cunningham]

Isn't an Accidental discharge when a guy is not paying attention (due to poor habits and lack of proper training) and puts his boogie picker one time too many inside the trigger guard and then blames his negligent discharge on a mechanical failure of the gun?

Accidental Discharge=Tooth Fairy

What about a cookoff? What about a lanyard getting caught in the triggerguard of a Glock? What about a slamfire?

[Olav]

So, the consensus so far in my two above examples would be considered a negligent discharge?

[markm]

Jeez! Two dumb asses in one class?

Back when we used to have to requal for CCW in AZ. This was the type of dumb ass that you'd shoot with. I've never run into any of these mush heads in training beyond that level though. WOW!

[Robb Jensen]

I would consider a cook off a true AD. Which is why the whole muzzle control thing...

[Jay Cunningham]

In the description of the two different students, I would say that the first one simply didn't understand the drill. He didn't have an ND, he just didn't realized or understand that it was supposed to be dry fire or non-shooting. The second example of the guy "unloading" his Glock is an ND - luckily he was muzzle aware.

[Olav]

In the description of the two different students, I would say that the first one simply didn't understand the drill. He didn't have an ND, he just didn't realized or understand that it was supposed to be dry fire or non-shooting. The second example of the guy "unloading" his Glock is an ND - luckily he was muzzle aware.

The first guy already did a couple of dry runs so was aware of the drill.