As the subject of negligent and unintentional discharges has been rather hot lately, I felt that it was incumbent upon me to address not only the ND, but the often promoted, but failed solution or “fix” to those who have experienced negligent discharges.
Desert Shield/Storm NDs
When my unit arrived in Saudi Arabia the first week of September, 1990, it had been one month since Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and claimed that country as his own. Iraq, then with the fourth largest army in the world, massed troops, armor, and artillery on the Saudi/Kuwaiti border.
The situation was tense. Though not admitted in public, we all knew that the Saudis and the small number of US troops in the country at that time couldn’t stop a cross-border invasion from Kuwait. Saddam could have taken Riyadh with only a minor annoyance put up by the coalition forces at the time. And so, the situation being very real and threatening, we were all issued live ammunition immediately upon our arrival. Not surprisingly, what followed were numerous negligent discharges.
NDs were rampant. Some were injured and some died due to the errors of their fellow soldiers and Marines. A man in my battalion was asleep on his cot when the man next to him negligently fired his M-16A2 and killed him. On a personal note, one of my teammates fired a pistol next to me and the bullet missed my head by inches. He stated later that he thought the chamber was empty so it would be okay to press the trigger. Fortunately for me, he was taking aim at the sand.
All throughout the area of operation during Desert Shield, negligent discharges were common. One gate sentry fired his M2 .50 BMG machinegun into a hummer coming though the gate. The bullet passed through the passenger’s shoulder and he was fortunate to survive.
Our commanders were struggling to find a solution to the rash of NDs. We were in a war zone, so they couldn’t justify taking away our live ammo. The typical knee-jerk reaction was to threaten the men with more severe punishment for having negligent discharges. The other was to have NCOs spot check the men’s weapons to be sure the chambers were empty. No one had the courage, at least not where I could hear or see it, to say that it was the cold range training and the reflexive trigger snapping that had set up the situation.
Back then, the only time troops were allowed to have live ammunition was on the firing line. The moment you left the firing line, you had to show a cleared weapon and the rules for the clearing barrel procedures required troops to press the trigger on their weapon as part of the process. The military quite literally built reflexive trigger snapping into the subconscious behavior of their troops. In short, they set them up for failure.
You can’t have men treat weapons as if they’re always empty and then magically expect them to behave contrary to how they have been conditioned. The few of us who had experience carrying loaded guns off of the training ranges were in a far better position.
NDs from a Law Enforcement Standpoint
Many years ago — probably twenty — I read an article by a respected firearms trainer, cop, and military veteran. The title was something akin to “We Cannot Punish Away Negligent Discharges.” The author, as a trainer and captain of a law enforcement agency, made the case that threatening punishment or increasing the level of punishment for the act of having a negligent discharge had no positive benefit whatsoever, because negligence is a “lack of due care,” not a malicious, purposeful, or deliberate act. Punishment can be used to minimize deliberate acts, but not those where the person didn’t mean to do it. That’s not to say it was an “accident.”
The author of that article, John Connor, stated that the only way to truly minimize negligence to the greatest extent possible was through serious and dedicated training and following Rule #1 in the strictest of fashions. The more intense and dedicated the training, the higher the level of competency which should lead to reduced negligence.
However, there must be a serious mindset to accompany that. It wasn’t good enough to be some kind of “great shooter” if they handled firearms as though they were “unloaded” or treated them in a non-serious manner. People who view guns as props for a sport rather than deadly force tools fall into the aforementioned “non-serious” category. I could find no fault with John’s thinking.
Much later, I read the book “Fire Force” by Chris Cocks, a veteran of the Rhodesian Light Infantry during the Bush War. The story is a fascinating one and while the descriptions of the training and fighting were the prime drivers, there was another lesson I took from the text.
The author told the tale of having a negligent discharge with the pistol he had been issued while in base camp. No one was injured, but he couldn’t hide the sound of gunfire. Cocks was charged and tried for the ND and sentenced to 30 days in a military prison. Yes, a prison. Such was standard punishment for an ND where no one was injured. If a person were injured or killed the penalties were much more severe. Cocks described the behavior of the sadistic guards and the physical abuse and humiliation he suffered while incarcerated.
Imagine that for a moment. The members of the RLI knew that the minimum penalty for a negligent discharge was 30 days in prison, not 30 days extra-duty or 30 days of base restriction…actual prison. And yet, despite the severity of the punishment, negligent discharges still happened.
Why? Because NDs aren’t purposeful or malicious, they were a result of many things; being tired and losing focus, substandard training on a weapon and the institutionalized stupidity of forcing soldiers to mindlessly and thoughtlessly snap the triggers on their weapons when they cleared them.
Real Solutions
If threats of severe punishment can’t stop troops from having negligent discharges, what can? If we’re going to be intellectually honest and examine the situation, we need to address institutionalized training and how it can purposefully ignores Cooper’s four rules of firearms safety.
Forcing personnel to carry empty weapons and forbidding them to have live ammo off of the firing line obviously doesn’t work. You can’t trick your own psyche. During Desert Shield, those troops had spent their whole time up to that point carrying unloaded guns and treating them that way. Then, overnight, they were expected to alter their mindset and do the opposite.
How about the unload/show clear process where we force shooters to snap the trigger? We made them do it over and over until they snapping the trigger became an unconscious reflex. Then, some time later, when that unconscious reflex creeps up and the gun goes bang, we act shocked and surprised.
From a personal standpoint, we at Student of the Gun University always go over the Four Rules plus One before all live fire classes. All of the students nod their heads and agree to follow the rules. Yet during a pistol class, a student walked over to the dirt berm during a break to manipulate his handgun and BAM. The man had an ND into the dirt.
No one was injured, but we needed to figure out what happened. When we broke it down, we discovered that the gentleman, a legitimately good dude, was a US Navy small boat team veteran. You might have already guessed it. Part of his ingrained training was to snap the trigger when clearing weapons.
He had been forced by institutionalized stupidity to develop a reflexive trigger-snapping habit. It was ingrained into his subconscious. It didn’t matter that he agreed to follow the the Four Rules, including never putting your finger on the trigger until you have made the conscious decision to fire the gun. The military had set him up for failure.
Solution: STOP forcing people into a situation where they are snapping the trigger reflexively. No, pressing the trigger is not a part, and should never be a part of clearing a firearm. Cold range training, where we trust the troops to have a gun, but not ammunition, leads directly to men ignoring Rule #1 and instead defaulting to It’s okay, the gun’s not loaded. No one ever had an ND and said, “Damn, I thought the gun was loaded.”
We can be honest and address the problem of institutionalized stupidity or we can just go on acting surprised when good people do dumb things and launch bullets when they shouldn’t do so. It seams like an easy choice.
Paul G. Markel is a combat decorated United States Marine veteran. He is also the founder of Student the Gun University and has been teaching Small Arms & Tactics to military personnel, police officers, and citizens for over three decades.