Be careful how and where you load your gun!

[popgun pete]

Check out this shocking accident: Miami doctors successfully remove spear shot through teen

More info here: Teen, 16, survives spear through his brain: How?. - NewsFeed Researcher - spear, lopez, doctors, head, brain, doctor, macro, hospital, right, friend, bullock, miami

Frankly I am amazed that the guy survived, if you had said to me that a shaft could go through someone's skull and penetrate through to the other side without killing him then I would have found that very hard to believe, yet here it is exactly what has happened. Certainly a pneumatic gun and maybe one being loaded on land, there is no mention of where the accident happened in the first article. Such accidents have occurred to the gun operator when not using the proper hand loader, substituting an object like a tin can instead which the speartip pushes through once the force reaches a certain level. This accident has to be down to careless operation of the gun, you always monitor where the gun is pointing during any loading operation, or turn away from others in the vicinity. How far the spear actually flew before it struck the victim is not mentioned here.

A nasty accident which will have repercussions for all those involved, hopefully with some perspective rather than a knee-jerk call to eliminate such weapons from public use. Incidentally trigger safeties do not stop "Sten" type rear handle guns firing, they only block the trigger and that does not stop the sear lever moving of its own accord. They are not cam lock trigger mechanisms.

 

[popgun pete]

I have now read a few more of the references and it seems that the victim was standing in front of the gun operator while the latter was loading the speargun. The gun type is not mentioned, but the wishbone on a band gun could have been dropped in on an improperly latched shaft and away the shaft went. Loading a gun out of the water and someone standing in front of it breaks a number of rules for safe gun handling. One reference says the operator touched the trigger, but I cannot see how that happened with both hands on the wishbone to load the band. On a pneumatic gun pulling down with the loader on a 3 foot long shaft and touching the trigger at the same time seems an unlikely scenario. Assumptions made by reporters can distort the actual chain of events.

Usually X-rays of spears sticking into the frontal areas of the skull are self-inflicted injuries from loading pneumatic guns, but another article said the force of impact threw the victim rearwards into the lake where they were both standing, hence my second thoughts about the type of gun being used.

 

[Fondueset]

I was think Pneumo based on shaft thickness and the slide ring.

 

[skygear]

I saw the ER pic somewhere. Yeah, def a pneumo