Made A Mistake

Alright here's the story, my nephew comes up to visit for 2 weeks almost every summer, when he is here his friend usually comes over. Normally when the younger kids come over and see a gun in the gun cabinet they wanna see it, and usually I just bring out the airsoft to teach them safe handling practice before letting them shoot a .22 with their elders permission. Well my nephews friend was holding an airsoft rifle i told him finger off the trigger at all times and safety on, here's the mistake, I turn my back for maybe 2 seconds to set down the airsoft rifle and I hear the one he is holding go off, he was aiming at my nephew when he pulled the trigger and luckily he missed my nephews eye by an inch. What I am wondering is if I should be beating myself up more over this or if I took the right steps.

The main quetion is why was it loaded? Were you engaged in shooting or just showing them guns from the cabinet? How old were they? As least no one was seriously injured.

actually the mag was out but its why i told him to keep his finger off the trigger, i brought out the airsoft rifles because giving them a real gun even unloaded would of been a bad idea since he aimed at someone after telling him not to. anyways gonna be gone for 2 days so ill post more on it then.

There seem to be two mistakes, but neither one is serious.

#1 was allowing just taking the airsoft away from the nephew's friend. IMHO it would have been better to give him the "I can't trust you because what you did was unsafe. If you want to re-earn the privilege of holding anything, let alone firing it, you are going to have to <insert conditions here>" lecture.

#2 was not sending him home immediately after "the lecture". Maybe tell him he can come back tomorrow, but for today he is banished. Explain to the nephew that it is not safe for him or for you to allow the friend to remain today.

Yes, it's harsh, and it also ruins part of te nephew's day. But it allows you and the nephew to have a tomorrow, and it emphasizes for everybody the severity of the unsafe behavior the friend committed. Better learning the hard way with a 1-day banishing than living the rest of his life knowing he put out his friend's eye or shot (possibly maimed/ paralyzed/killed) his friend.

A suggested recovery would be to inform the friend the next time he comes over that he needs to <insert conditions> before he will be allowed to touch/use the airsoft or .22 again.

stay safe.

ApacheBunny do not beat yourself up, it is clear you instructed them correctly in safe and properly handling, he choose to ignore not only the fact of placing his finger on the trigger but pointing it someone and doing so as soon as you turned your back.

To me this youngman has lost his access for a very long time to where I feel a certain maturity level is reached to where he can be trusted.
Take the nephew out with you and shoot, leave the friend home for now, advise his parents of it as well, they need and have the right to know.

Keep working with your nephew.

As for his friend? ONLY if you have someone else available to stand over him. Best case would be ONLY with one of his parents there, as he does not seem to "have" it. In fact, it would be wise to never let that young man around you or your nephew with the airsoft without one of his parents there. That way, if something DOES happen that causes injury, there will be NO doubt in their mind what transpired.

Always clear your firearms, just cause you took the mag out doesnt make it unloaded. Adult supervision is just that. Never turn you back when someone is holding a firearm. Even Adults.

Some people dont get second chances. There have been alot of report of eye injuries due to the lack of adult supervision. Some are saying dont beat yourself up over this, I say you got lucky and I hope you learned something from this.

http://injury.findlaw.com/personal-injury/personal-injury-a-z/airsoft-guns.html

I know it is a different era now but back when i was growing up my dad went though all the gun safety conditions with me and he would have beat my ass if i had done something that stupid.

I hope there was some appropriate restrictions/dicipline metted out for this incident.

Schlepnier said:

I know it is a different era now but back when i was growing up my dad went though all the gun safety conditions with me and he would have beat my ass if i had done something that stupid.

I hope there was some appropriate restrictions/dicipline metted out for this incident.

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Definitely a different era, I remember once when I was about 9 and I brought a loaded BB gun back into the garage waving it around. My grandpa grabbed it out of my hands and gave me a good wallop on the back of my head. I didn't shoot again for at least two weeks and only after I was able to explain what I did wrong.

skidmark said:

Yes, it's harsh, and it also ruins part of the nephew's day.

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Punishment has to cause discomfort or (for more serious offenses) suffering, or it's not punishment. If he doesn't want his day ruined again, maybe he'll behave properly the next time.

airsoft is different from a normal fire arm, you cant actuate the bolt without having to fire it to clear it, so taking the mag out and putting the safety on is the best bet and trying to teach them a lesson about safe handling, even told him it was loaded. I probably shouldnt of put the safety on infront of him, though telling you guys now they both learned a lesson from this incident, finger off the trigger at all times, except I havent been practicing that safety precaution very much lately since I have been doing trigger exercises with a routine breach check with each exercise. We didn't send him home after the incident and he felt pretty bad about it so sometimes lessons are learned hard.

Much sensible advice here.
I know nothing about airsoft, so will have to accept your explanation of the 'best you can do' to make it safe while in the kids' hands.

But yeah, if the safety was on & you'd told him never to point it at anyone, & he toook off the safety & pointed it at your nephew, it's entirely his fault (not yours) and he did it deliberately. If you're willing to work with him, come up with those conditions for him to be able to earn back the priviledge.

Very glad there were no worse injuries.

Re: finger off the trigger
I just got the newest issue of the USCCA magazine a couple days ago, & there's an article talking about this. Simply telling someone "don't do this" isn't as helpful as saying "do this instead".
So "finger off the trigger until ready to shoot" should be accompanied by "put your finger here instead".
At the range yesterday, I paid attention to this & found that putting my fingertip on the breakdown lever just above the trigger (not really a lever, but that's the closest I can come up with) worked well.

A course I took stressed "finger in register." And, it was stated that way to avoid saying "finger" and "trigger" in the same sentence, for similar reasons as those you state.

"Finger in register" was defined as the index finger placed directly parallel to the slide and/or barrel, and not inside the trigger guard at all.

wrightme said:

A course I took stressed "finger in register." And, it was stated that way to avoid saying "finger" and "trigger" in the same sentence, for similar reasons as those you state.

"Finger in register" was defined as the index finger placed directly parallel to the slide and/or barrel, and not inside the trigger guard at all.

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Yes, one must definitely learn the proper use and placement of the finger. Otherwise things can go very wrong

How old are these kids?

As a parent, I view this from a different perspective. I've been teaching my 5 year old firearms handling using airsoft since he was 4. The primary rule is that the adult is always responsible. It's easy to talk about training and punishment and lessons learned, and while that covers the effect it doesn't cover the cause. Without correcting the cause, the problem will never be resolved.

With kids it's easy to overestimate their ability and level of understanding. Not being there and only having what you've said to go on, the first problem is that you gave a loaded weapon (Airsoft not withstanding) to someone who's ability you did not have full knowledge (neighbor kid you're around infrequently). It's not enough to say "you cant actuate the bolt without having to fire it to clear it, so taking the mag out and putting the safety on is the best bet." The best bet is that you take the necessary steps to ensure that the firearm is clear - regardless of how inconvenient it is for you at the time.

The second problem of course is that you turned your back on them. With kids, you can't ever use this as an excuse. It doesn't work. I liken it to speeding. You speed down a roadway every day for year and nothing happens. Does that make it ok? No, it makes you lucky. It's still wrong and it still has consequences.

The third problem is that you didn't have the proper safety equipment. You can't say, "we're just practicing handling" or whatever so we'll take this short cut. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. When kids are doing something, they should ALWAYS do it the precise way. For Airsoft, that means safety glasses on when handling the firearm.

If you would have addressed any one of these problems, none of this would have been an issue.

The bottom line is that kids don't do "what they're supposed to do" because they don't understand consequences - it doesn't matter how many times you tell them. As such, you have to take the extras steps to maintain safety. You can't blame kids for being kids, so don't blame them for your mistake. Analyze what you did wrong and learn from it.

ApacheBunny said:

Alright here's the story, my nephew comes up to visit for 2 weeks almost every summer, when he is here his friend usually comes over. Normally when the younger kids come over and see a gun in the gun cabinet they wanna see it, and usually I just bring out the airsoft to teach them safe handling practice before letting them shoot a .22 with their elders permission. Well my nephews friend was holding an airsoft rifle i told him finger off the trigger at all times and safety on, here's the mistake, I turn my back for maybe 2 seconds to set down the airsoft rifle and I hear the one he is holding go off, he was aiming at my nephew when he pulled the trigger and luckily he missed my nephews eye by an inch. What I am wondering is if I should be beating myself up more over this or if I took the right steps.

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Yes, you made a mistake. At least one mistake was not clearing the chamber of the Airsoft toy. Never hand a loaded *anything gun-ish* to another person. You can clear an Airsoft gun with a small dowel pushed from the muzzle.

Please go attend NRA Home Firearms Safety as soon as possible. Take your kids with you.