Be careful with shotguns

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:31:29 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Ignoramus19864 quickly quoth:

What, Cheney is out with his friends again?

That looks like it might hurt a bit. Jayzuss...how do you shoot your leg out from under yourself?

I also cannot imagine how it could "accidantally" have happened. A good reminder to us about gun safety.

I can imagine an easy way to do that. Stumble and drop your shotgun. Or lean it on a fence post and climb through instead of unloading it and placing it on the ground where it cannot fall any further.

Or worse, would be to be the bystander/victim when the guy holding the gun stumbled and dropped it.

From what I could see, that image represents several hours of cleanup work having taken place. Like as not a picture of the affected foot prior to the cleanup would probably not put folk off their food near as much as it would not be recognizable as a body part.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Nasty wound. Which just goes to show you that it makes sense not to break the basic rules of firearm safety. Obviously this guy failed rule #1: Never point the muzzle of a gun at anything that you don't want to destroy. That's what you call learning the hard way. My question is what kind of recovery can one expect from that kind of wound? Is that guy going to have an amputation? Or can they do a good job fixing something as bad as that? Anyone know what degree of recovery one can expect from that bad of a wound?

Hawke

They can put in a section of metal, wrap it with a mesh, install some live bone material from another area of the body and it will start growing a new layer of natural bone. The hard part is getting the marrow to continue down into the new section.

A woman room mate of mine had something similar done after a motorcycle accident that pulverized a section of her leg. Powdered it.

She now walks well enough, with some limp.

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years . It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

Its likely that a significant portion of the damage was from the muzzle blast itself.

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years . It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

True enough. I sometimes forget that there are folks who havent seen the grittier sides of life and death. Most in fact.

And the smells.

Sorry for my apparent callousness.

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years . It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

True enough. It very clean and neat, not like the exploded and burst sausage that it came into the ER looking like.

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years . It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

Friend of mine, ex-Ranger, used to think that. He took Massad Ayoob's LFI shotgun course and after a week of having someone take his shotgun away from him and wang on him with it he decided that maybe destructive capability was not the only issue and traded his shotgun for a 9mm.

Long guns are a liability in close quarters. Once someone gets inside the length of the barrel you are effectively disarmed, and inside a house it is _very_ easy for that to happen.

Now, I suspect that someone is going to make up some "if everything goes right" scenario in which that's not an issue, but the point that such scenarios miss is that if everything was going _right_ you wouldn't need a weapon in the first place, and once one thing goes wrong they tend to cascade.

I think the blood supply would definitely be an issue here ...... coupled with bone and tissue loss. I looks like the pedal artery might have made it but the supply to the sole of the foot ????. I had a patient who took a 12 gauge in the top of the foot as he was getting the gun out of his trunk ... He kept his foot but with a lot of pain and difficulty with gait. I personally think that pictures like this should be given in a color booklet to all who purchase firearms ..... it would do more that that stupid billboard on the barrel about reading the manual.

Take care all .... Tom PT from Belle Vernon PA

On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 03:23:31 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, pyotr filipivich quickly quoth:

Consider this: If you hadn't seen the picture or horror before, how well would you do in the case of helping some idiot who had pulled (or been victim of) this same or similar stupid stunt? Now that you're over the initial shock, you can much more easily handle it, right? Once you've seen something like that in real life, it's much easier to turn off the horror and let your rational mind work.

That said, I was both fascinated and horrified when the 10 y/o girl fell off the top of the chain link fence at the Base pool after slitting her thigh wide open from knee to crotch on the spiked wire top. I was around her age at the time and had never seen a person dissected before, especially with a dull scalpel. The muscle mass, the thick fatty tissue surrounding it, the skin layers. Fascinating! Oddly enough, it wasn't fascinating enough to make me want to go into paramedic work. ;)

-- "Menja bé, caga fort!"

On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 04:00:30 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Trevor Jones quickly quoth:

I'm not very familiar with shotguns in particular, but most firearms will not discharge when they're dropped or they fall over. They're carefully designed NOT to.

Y'mean "several minutes of cleanup", don't you?

Yuk! I have not even had my breakfast yet:(

Oddly in the photo though there seems to be little damage from pellets, alongside the central disaster area. And no powder burns of any kind either.

Part of this makes me suspect that the photo is either PM, or the injury from some other cause besides GSW.

There was a photo circulating out there that the motorcycle folks aways showed as evidence 'that you should always wear a helmet.' I think that one however was indeed a self-inflicted GSW. The details of what happened in what photo are easy to lose these days.

Jim

Designed "not to" but all mechanical things wear, and if not proprely maintained... I have seen mention several times of testing adjustments to trigger mechanisms by cocking the unloaded firearm and rapping it solidly against the floor or some solid object to see if it would fire the mechanism. There are lots of guys that have "adjusted" triggers past levels where they were safe to be carried.

No, I expect that to get the foot into the condition seen here took a surgeon quite some time, trimming away those bits that were no longer viable, or which had nothing to join back onto.

"Larry Jaques" wrote: I'm not very familiar with shotguns in particular, but most firearms will not discharge when they're dropped or they fall over. They're carefully designed NOT to. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A friend of mine was hunting, and he stepped up on a boulder in order to get a better view of a deer he thought he saw. He intended to rest the butt of the gun on the rock, but it slipped off and landed on a lower rock. It went off. The bullet went throutgh his hand and armpit.

BTW, he was a machinist, a member of NRA and a gun safety instructor. I'm pretty sure his rifle was in good condition. If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone.

That is definitely the case with at least some Kalashnikovs, I tried to get one to drop the hammer by abusing it in various ways, it did not happen. (of course the gun was not loaded). Did not try that with the shotgun though.