Safety First
My former boss at my previous company used to be a police officer in Euless, Texas. Several years ago, when Glock handguns were just becoming popular with law enforcement, he was living in an apartment complex where he was a community officer (cops were given free apartments in return for security services within the complex, basically). This meant that he had a master key to access any apartment if he needed to.

He told me this story about a year ago.

One day, he was bored and had just received his newest duty weapon. There is a unique safety feature on Glock handguns that seemed rather trivial to him. So he decided to play with it a bit. He tried to pull on the edge of the trigger and see if it really would fire or not. Somehow, the edge of his thumb caught the trigger safety and the gun (which was pointed at the ceiling) went off, firing one round into his ceiling, which was also the floor for the elderly woman living above him.

Luckily she wasn't at home.

So he unlocked her apartment and attempted to fix the problem the same way I tried to...

Cut forward 3 or 4 days and here I am with my new Sig Sauer P229 .40 caliber handgun standing in my second-floor bedroom in my father's house. This gun does not have the same safety feature as the Glock. But that wouldn't have mattered anyway.

So anywho, I had just come off a 21 hour shift at work, I had been awake for about 30 hours straight and I was completely sleeptarded. So of course, this would be the perfect time to play with my new "toy"!

There is a scene in the movie "Training Day" where Ethan Hawke's character ejects a round from the receiver of his Beretta 9 millimeter and catches it in his hand. I should mention here that rounds/cartridges eject very erratically from the receiver of most handguns. So of course, I was certain that I would NEVER be cool until I learned that nifty trick!

So I started to practice...with a live round. And it actually worked. I learned the trick so quickly, that I didn't feel as though I had really accomplished anything. So I figured, I should try to learn to do it FAST! Then I'd be SUPERcool!

So of course, the gun goes off and I blow a hole through the floor (which is the first-floor ceiling), and through 3 walls downstairs. After the initial shock (which lasted a good 15 minutes, during which time I actually convinced myself at one point that I was dreaming the whole thing!) I headed downstairs to check the damages. I will just say this...if there had been anyone else in my house at the time, they likely would have been sitting on the couch watching TV when a bullet would've flown through the wall about a foot above their head out of nowhere and they probably would have effectively filled their pants with poop!

So I grabbed a tube of toothpaste and started to spackle up the holes! But it wasn't working too good. And I knew I might've shot through something important (water line, gas line, etc...) so I figured I was had. So I called my old man and fessed up.

Oh and I found the bullet in the garage!

CHEERS!
- posted by The Outlaw @ 9:51:00 AM