While in the left seat of an Airbus cockpit as the pilot-in-command, Captain Butterfingers decided that the approach into Charlotte would be a dandy time to play with his FFDO issue handgun, a H&K USP. Failing to keep his booger hook off the bang switch of a loaded handgun, he managed to put a .40-caliber ventilation hole into the left side of the fuselage.
That’ll be fodder for the hoplophobes…they’ll whine about how dangerous guns are in general, and on airplanes in particular, if we can’t even keep the guns of federally-trained pilots from going “boom” at 8,000 feet.
And no, it didn’t just “go off”. First of all, a pistol like a USP doesn’t go bang until you pull that trigger, unless you have a very rare and highly unlikely mechanical malfunction that involves the simultaneous failure of no less than three built-in safety mechanisms.
Second, nobody with any sort of gun knowledge and common sense will support the “rare mechanical malfunction” theory when you look at where that bullet went, which will tell you where the gun was pointing when it discharged. Captain Butterfingers was handling his pistol, plain and simple.
blame TSA policy:
http://www.crimefilenews.com/2008/03/gun-accident-in-airliner-cockpit-was.html
BTW, anyone ever tell you that you look like a young Rutger Hauer?
No, that’s a first.
Oh, and the article about that TSA policy? It’s dumb, I agree, but the holster they use has a slot for the lock. You can lock and unlock the weapon without ever removing it from the holster, and the holster is designed so that the bar of the lock (or the handcuff, for cop use) goes behind the trigger, not in front of it.
The pilot in question removed the weapon from the holster and manipulated the trigger, that’s all. It didn’t discharge by accident while he was trying to lock or unlock it. I’ve sold a few of the holsters in question, so I’m pretty confident about how they work.
I would think it’s possible for the gun to be slightly unseated in the holster, so the lock could have passed in front of the trigger instead of behind it. It’s not implausible.
“The pilot in question removed the weapon from the holster and manipulated the trigger, that’s all. ‘
I have no doubt. I’m just wondering (and I admit that I am unfamiliar with that holster) if the padlock did the manipulating. From the image, it looks possible.
Regardless, the TSA policy involves far more handling of the weapon than necessary (which is to say, unless he’s drawing to shoot a bad guy, any handling of the weapon is unnecessary).
What ever happened to not having a round in the chamber as a safety precaution? In the event of an emergency where the pilot did need to draw his weapon, wouldn’t he have sufficient time to cock it?
joated,
That’s a good way to get dead, unless you always practice racking the slide when you draw. Even then it increases your chances of not surviving the encounter.
The only time that it is a viable alternative is when you are carrying a SAA or other single action revolver as your primary defensive weapon.
That picture looks like a joke somebody came up with in Photoshop when presented with the concept of “trigger locks”.
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