At least DOOM can't take the blame THIS time...

[yellowmadness54]

Clonehunter said:

And I would've laughed my ass off.

"Kindergartner Shoots and Kills Several Other Students by Accidentilly Dropping Gun and Causing it to Discharge"

how does dropping a gun release the hammer?

Especially a pistol. I doubt the kid knew how to chamber the round.
Even then, dropping it would have to release the striker, cause the slide to go back to chamber the next round, etc.

I've seen people drop guns. Yes it tenses you up, but I've never seen one go off while doing so.

Did it describe what sort of pistol it was?

[Technician]

The situation seems kinda far-fetched, I'll admit.

[yellowmadness54]

How could the projectile have hit his foot, split off and magically hit two other kids? Especially if those kids were hit at higher places?

So your saying the boy dropped the weapon with enough force to both chamber the round and fire it, shoot straight and hit the kids foot, bounce off somehow breaking and hit two others?

None of this makes sense at all.

[Blastfrog]

So what, are we making conspiracy theories now? Talking about a "magic bullet", and how none of it adds up? What's next, it was all propagated by the media to make a news story of it or some shit?

[yellowmadness54]

Im sure thats what it is. There is no way this story is true.

A child can not have the knowledge to chamber the round
Dropping the pistol will not cause it to go off that way

None of it, I mean absolutely none of this adds up. Bullets cant even fragment if they hit a limb, it will lodge its self into the skin or bone, let alone break off and hit two people in two places.

This is physically impossible.

[Blastfrog]

ITT: retarded conspiracy theorists

Seriously, why would the media set this up? Idiots.

[Chopkinsca]

Sodaholic said:

ITT: retarded conspiracy theorists

Seriously, why would the media set this up? Idiots.

It's all to cause the prices of tin-foil to skyrocket.

[yellowmadness54]

Sodaholic said:

ITT: retarded conspiracy theorists

Seriously, why would the media set this up? Idiots.

Even if not a conspiracy, this is still physically immpossible of an event.

The media has done stuff before, many odd things has been done to cover other odd things.

The Media Nazies might come to my house now!
noooo.

But with all seriousness, these events dont make sense.

[Maes]

yellowmadness54 said:

how does dropping a gun release the hammer?

yellowmadness54 said:

Even if not a conspiracy, this is still physically immpossible of an event.

No it's not.

It just does. Anyone with a moderate experience in firearms will tell you it's not a wise idea to subject weapons to shocks. Dropping a chambered and armed weapon is just about the worse thing you can do other than putting them in an oven, as the sudden deceleration can cause the mechanism to move just enough so that the hammer can be released (check out some exploded diagrams of mechanisms and see how even a 1 mm movement is enough to cause a hammer release).

Surely, better quality and/or specially constructed weapons are more resistant to this. E.g. the US Army has specific "no discharge under shock" specs for its issued rifles, pistols, shotguns etc. but even those are something like e.g. not discharging if dropped from 2 meters height onto hard concrete.

yellowmadness54 said:

Especially a pistol. I doubt the kid knew how to chamber the round.

Really? With the "TA-CLAK" slide-arming being a Hollywood staple? Anyone watching TV for 15 minutes can learn how it's done by simple mimickry.

yellowmadness54 said:

Even then, dropping it would have to release the striker, cause the slide to go back to chamber the next round, etc.

If it is a revolver, you'd be right, but it was probably a semi-auto. Once a shot goes off, it, as the name says, auto-loads the next round using part of the energy of the discharge, and if the shock and vibrations are enough, the cycle can continue. The WW II "Sten" SMGs were particularly prone to runaway firing if dropped.

Even better made weapons, e.g. the G3A3/A4 assault rifles we used in the army, could accidentally arm themselves if dropped from as little as 0.5 meters right on their butts and even if simply brought to a ground resting position too vigorously, due to their inertial/blowback bolt.

[yellowmadness54]

Maes said:

[his stuff]

Doesnt explain how the bullet magically went up and 2 people, after lodging it self into the kids foot (which would've totally messed it up beyond repair)

and still, he is six, to pull the slide back, well you first have to consider
a. a pistol is like, half the size if not more than a 6 year olds torso.
b. if he had managed to chamber the round, wouldn't he have most likely shotten it off before hand?

You corrected some things, still leaves others open.

[Maes]

yellowmadness54 said:

Doesnt explain how the bullet magically went up and 2 people, after lodging it self into the kids foot (which would've totally messed it up beyond repair)

The news report I read talked about "bullet fragments", which is totally plausible. And in order to "lodge itself" into the kid's foot, the kid would have to be made out of pine wood, which absorbs kinetic energy. Bullets go through human flesh like a hot knife through butter, instead, especially that of a 6 yo. I've seen air rifle pellets penetrating and exiting the calf of some poor kid like it was a jelly bag, so a full-fledged handgun can surely do "better".

yellowmadness54 said:

and still, he is six, to pull the slide back, well you first have to consider a. a pistol is like, half the size if not more than a 6 year olds torso.

You'd have a point if we were talking about a very runty, weak, and sickly 6 yo. Any healthy 6 yo with normal development and coordination can punch quite hard and work with tools such as hammers, vices, pliers etc. You also seem,to have no idea of how much force it takes to cock back a semi-auto. Unless it was an unused, unlubricated, large-caliber one, cocking a handgun is perfectly feasible by a single child.

yellowmadness54 said:

b. if he had managed to chamber the round, wouldn't he have most likely shotten it off before hand?

He could have, by pulling the trigger or dropping it before the accident. He likely carried it around with a chambered round and a cocked hammer, which made accidental discharge an accident waiting to happen. There's a reason why this sort of carry is discouraged even to trained adult shooters, unless you need to have the gun in your hand ready to fire (and pointed at a target) at all times, but NOT when you want to holster it in your pants.

The TL; DR version:

Kid walked into kindergarten with a loaded and armed gun, dropped it, it discharged (and BTW it seems it was just ONE shot and the damage was mostly due to bullet fragmentation, rather than a full power, direct hit), and it hurt itself and two of its friends. End of story, no big mystery, no conspiracy, no technical impossibilities.

[Blastfrog]

yellowmadness54 said:

Doesnt explain how the bullet magically went up and 2 people, after lodging it self into the kids foot (which would've totally messed it up beyond repair)

and still, he is six, to pull the slide back, well you first have to consider
a. a pistol is like, half the size if not more than a 6 year olds torso.
b. if he had managed to chamber the round, wouldn't he have most likely shotten it off before hand?

You corrected some things, still leaves others open.

He did say it was likely a semiautomatic, meaning it automatically loads another bullet. Perhaps when dropped it could have fired, oh, I don't know, multiple times? Of course 1 bullet doesn't hit 3 places, so it probably went off multiple times.

EDIT: Maes knows more than me, ignore the above.

a. Really? I don't think it would be that big, but I could be wrong.
b. It doesn't have to have done so. Maybe it was already chambered before the kid got a hold of it? Oh, and "shotten" isn't a word.

[Maes]

Sodaholic said:

He did say it was likely a semiautomatic, meaning it automatically loads another bullet. Perhaps when dropped it could have fired, oh, I don't know, multiple times? Of course 1 bullet doesn't hit 3 places, so it probably went off multiple times.

A single bullet can do "distributed" damage if it breaks off or it strikes a "shrapnelable" surface that can crack, splinter etc. If the gun was loaded with jacketed hollowpoints such as this one:



and the muzzle smacked on the floor when the gun discharged, the bullet can easily break up and send small fragments fast enough to cause injury in several directions, and let's not forget the shrapnel from the damaged floor itself. Think of it as a mini-explosion, if that helps picturing the dynamics better.

That's very easy to do even with a measly air rifle, by shooting a steel pellet point-blank onto a very hard but breakable surface: the bullet might stay in one piece, but the surface will likely lose some specks of material, which will be ejected as shards and be hazaround for anything near the impact point.

[Clonehunter]

yellowmadness54 said:

Did it describe what sort of pistol it was?

Luger

[yellowmadness54]

Clonehunter said:

Luger

A luger?

man I dont even know how to chamber one of those beasts.
Thats way different than a slide. And where could a six year old aquire a luger?

And luger rounds, well any round, will NOT fragment upon hitting human skin, and if it did, the bullet will travel through, and the fragments would not.

The kinetic energy of the round will also decrease while traveling through, and not even nearly enough energy to fragment upon hitting the ground.

And doubting its an FMJ round that was fired, that means the projectile already would've been partially compressed down upon entering.

And even if not including those, bullet fragments are small, and very hot. But the ammount of damage from them will not be considerably large.

[Mithran Denizen]

Its a good thing we have a hoplologist like yellowmadness54 here to explain these things to us.

[Mithran Denizen]

yellowmadness54 said:

I know guns can go off if dropped, however for this to have happend like it did, the gun would've had to go off at an angle, which would be in mid-flight.

Unless it bounced, or hit the ground with the barrel at an angle. And why would it need to be at an angle to hit his foot anyway? Your rantings make no sense.

[yellowmadness54]

Mithran Denizen said:

Unless it bounced, or hit the ground with the barrel at an angle. And why would it need to be at an angle to hit his foot anyway? Your rantings make no sense.

to hit his foot and the ground, it would need to be aimed down at his foot.

If it went off when it hit the ground, it would've, at best, went sideways and hit his foot, in which case would have most likely gone through the foot, across the other side and eventually hit the ground, but no way near with enough energy to create fragmentation to that degree.

I'm not saying its conspiracy, just saying the events are very, very unlikely to occure like they did.

[Lizardcommando]

bytor said:

ordnance

Really? Huh... Odd, the spellchecker on Firefox said ordinance was a correct spelling too. Alternate spelling, perhaps?

Oh, lol. Ordinance is a completely different word. My bad!

[toxicfluff]

What the moralpanik brigade would do to go back to the days of Doom now eh? The righteous pounding of hellspawn looks positively edifying compared to, say, Postal 2.