Some sad shit happened in Florida. An officer, who was acting as criminal during a Citizen police academy roleplay, shot and killed a 73-year-old lady, who volunteered for the exercise. Apparently their used real guns during roleplaying, and somehow there was a live round in the cop's sidearm chamber.

http://kxan.com/2016/08/10/police-woman-73-killed-by-officer-in-academy-exercise/

I've only two words. Firearms. Safety. That could have been easily avoided.

During military training, there was a strict rule - if you even point an empty gun at anyone during firearms training, you'd be in immediate trouble. We don't have any kind of "role-playing exercise" involving civilians in my country, but I know they're popular in the States. Did anyone of you participate in them? How were those events organized with regard to the firearms safety?

Edited August 12, 20169 yr by Hastings

Why not using simply replicas, or airsoft weapons?

This country and their guns, I'm getting seriously sick of it... :(

10 minutes ago, ScarletDraconis said:

Why not using simply replicas, or airsoft weapons?

This country and their guns, I'm getting seriously sick of it... :(

I'm sorta doubtful it has anything to do with gun control (police officers are usually armed, and during exercises no real guns are usually used to my knowledge). I'd call it stupidity/recklessness/criminal negligence.

11 minutes ago, ScarletDraconis said:

This country and their guns, I'm getting seriously sick of it... :(

Usually I agree, but this was an exercise and you need to exercise with real weapons. A mistake happened, and this time it was fatal which is extremely tragic. 

I'd like to remind everyone here that we have a gun control / debate topic where such topics should be discussed: http://www.lcpdfr.com/forums/topic/65895-official-gun-control/

 

43 minutes ago, ineseri said:

Usually I agree, but this was an exercise and you need to exercise with real weapons. A mistake happened, and this time it was fatal which is extremely tragic. 

I didn't really plan to discuss gun control issues (in my view gun control is more about weapons circulation among general population, not weapon usage by police and the army -- and my bad if I'm wrong:( ), more like training tactics.

With regard to this, why would anyone need to bring real weapons to an event involving civilians, much less point weapons at them? Even in the army or the police, during training events with professionals, you never point anything real at anyone. I love guns, but you the only occasion when you need a real gun during training is when you need to shoot the target.

Accidents happen, but plenty of accidents can be prevented. This falls under that category.

15 hours ago, Riley24 said:

Accidents happen, but plenty of accidents can be prevented. This falls under that category.

Well said.

On 12.8.2016 at 11:19 AM, ineseri said:

Usually I agree, but this was an exercise and you need to exercise with real weapons. A mistake happened, and this time it was fatal which is extremely tragic. 

 

"Authorities didn’t immediately say how a gun with a live round came to be used at Tuesday evening’s demonstration, noting blank rounds are typically used in such classes."

Also:

"Punta Gorda Police Lt. Katie Heck said officers in such demonstrations normally use “simunition guns,” which are real-looking weapons that fire a non-lethal projectile with reduced force."

You don't need real weapons for all excercises. Range time? Sure, but this? Obviously not.

Edited August 16, 20169 yr by Olanov

1 hour ago, Olanov said:

"Authorities didn’t immediately say how a gun with a live round came to be used at Tuesday evening’s demonstration, noting blank rounds are typically used in such classes."

Also:

"Punta Gorda Police Lt. Katie Heck said officers in such demonstrations normally use “simunition guns,” which are real-looking weapons that fire a non-lethal projectile with reduced force."

You don't need real weapons for all excercises. Range time? Sure, but this? Obviously not.

May have been a bit unclear on what I said, so I'll clarify that no, you don't need real live weapons for all exercises but for some of them. 

 

I don't know about the States, or anywhere else, but when I was in bootcamp for the CAF, we used a mix of real weapons and simulated weapons. Although the simulated weapons were mostly used for ceremonies, parades, etc. There is nothing quite like the feel of a real weapon, a simulated weapon doesn't feel nearly the same as a real one. It's something we were taught in order to simulate actual battlefield conditions, the weight of all of your gear, the weight of the gun, etc all in various conditions. 

This incident seems like a "shit happens" accident, one that could of obviously been prevented, but that is hindsight for you and that is the case for a lot of accidents. 

On 8/12/2016 at 3:19 AM, Hastings said:

I'm sorta doubtful it has anything to do with gun control (police officers are usually armed, and during exercises no real guns are usually used to my knowledge). I'd call it stupidity/recklessness/criminal negligence.

When I volunteered to help role play for the in-house academy cadets at my police department, they used real guns because of the feel of a real weapon. However, they all had to stand and have their weapons inspected including checking the magazines and chambers for ammunition.

Im Dutch, we barely have guns here and even I know that its not that hard to cock a gun before you shoot.

On 8/16/2016 at 3:08 PM, Solidefiance said:

I don't know about the States, or anywhere else, but when I was in bootcamp for the CAF, we used a mix of real weapons and simulated weapons. Although the simulated weapons were mostly used for ceremonies, parades, etc. There is nothing quite like the feel of a real weapon, a simulated weapon doesn't feel nearly the same as a real one. It's something we were taught in order to simulate actual battlefield conditions, the weight of all of your gear, the weight of the gun, etc all in various conditions. 

This incident seems like a "shit happens" accident, one that could of obviously been prevented, but that is hindsight for you and that is the case for a lot of accidents. 

For the United States Army we also receive training for a variety of weapons. The first thing we learned was weapons safety. Treat every weapon as if it's loaded. Don't aim at anything you don't intend to shoot. Keep your finger off the trigger unless you're preparing to take down a target (which would only be at the range in position preparing to fire,under our circumstances), be aware of your targets surroundings, basic principles of weapons safety. Then we went through simulated, video game type training sessions, and finally we hit the range with live rounds. Indeed the feel of a simulated weapon is not the same as a real weapon. Even when it's a real weapon and there's no magazine, once that magazine goes in, my entire mindset changes. In training before we could use life rounds, when we simulated shooting we had to shout "bang!" while the weapon remained on safety. Accident that could have been avoided, as others have said. 

This is so sad.

On 11/18/2016 at 11:58 PM, S0berDrunk said:

Im Dutch, we barely have guns here and even I know that its not that hard to cock a gun before you shoot.

Errmmm... That's not what happened here. The wrong type of ammunition was loaded into the gun. When there's already a round in the chamber (which is how duty weapons are typically carried), it wouldn't have needed cocking.

9 hours ago, AlconH said:

Errmmm... That's not what happened here. The wrong type of ammunition was loaded into the gun. When there's already a round in the chamber (which is how duty weapons are typically carried), it wouldn't have needed cocking.

Should they cock it before loading in the new ammo?

3 hours ago, S0berDrunk said:

Should they cock it before loading in the new ammo?

If by "cock" you mean to rack the slide, then yes. If you mean to cock, then no. Cock would be to pull the hammer back on the weapon, so that it's ready to fire.

 

When loading the new ammo, typically you'd first inspect the ammo to ensure it's the correct type, then remove the magazine and rack the slide, pushing the slide lock up so that it's locked back. You'd then inspect the chamber to ensure there's not a round presently loaded (possibly of a different type). Once it's empty you load the new ammunition into the magazine, insert it into the weapon and then disengage the slide lock, allowing the slide to move back forward and load the new ammunition. 

 

Reading the article, it's unclear exactly how the accident occurred. It's one of many possibilities that I can think of:

• The new ammunition was not checked, and was loaded with the belief that it was blank/sim-munition when in actual fact it was real ammo.
• The new ammunition was checked, but there was already one live round in the chamber that was not removed, thus making the first bullet real and the rest of the ammo sim-munition.
• Real firearms weren't supposed to be used in the exercise, but the shooter took one in by accident.

Edited November 20, 20169 yr by AlconH

36 minutes ago, AlconH said:

If by "cock" you mean to rack the slide, then yes. If you mean to cock, then no. Cock would be to pull the hammer back on the weapon, so that it's ready to fire.

 

When loading the new ammo, typically you'd first inspect the ammo to ensure it's the correct type, then remove the magazine and rack the slide, pushing the slide lock up so that it's locked back. You'd then inspect the chamber to ensure there's not a round presently loaded (possibly of a different type). Once it's empty you load the new ammunition into the magazine, insert it into the weapon and then disengage the slide lock, allowing the slide to move back forward and load the new ammunition. 

 

Reading the article, it's unclear exactly how the accident occurred. It's one of many possibilities that I can think of:

• The new ammunition was not checked, and was loaded with the belief that it was blank/sim-munition when in actual fact it was real ammo.
• The new ammunition was checked, but there was already one live round in the chamber that was not removed, thus making the first bullet real and the rest of the ammo sim-munition.
• Real firearms weren't supposed to be used in the exercise, but the shooter took one in by accident.

Yeah I ment rack the slide, I didnt know the correct term. Thanks for clarifying.

The Four Rules.

 

She failed.