-Gus
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Breaking News: PTLA guard accidentally shoots fellow guard in pants
While removing his handgun from his holster, a guard lost his grip and, according to reports, in attempting to grasp the weapon, accidentally hit the trigger. The bullet grazed the pants of another guard standing in the same room.
The close call took place inside Protection Technology Los Alamos (PTLA), the subcontractor that provides security services to Los Alamos National Laboratory.
PTLA General Manager Ken Freeman declined to comment on the incident, saying rather than comment, he would defer the questions to LANL public affairs.
“There was an accidental discharge of a firearm,” LANL spokesman Kevin Roark said during an interview Friday afternoon. “There was no foul play and no injuries.”
Roark added that the guard with the gun nor anyone else has not been placed on leave.
“The laboratory is currently conducting a comprehensive internal investigation and will determine if any action needs to be taken upon conclusion of the investigation,” he said.
Roark concurred that his understanding is that the handgun involved in the incident is a Glock.
The safety on a Glock is actually located on the trigger and would not have gone off had the guard simply let the gun fall to the ground, according to a local gun expert.
The names of the guards involved in Saturday’s incident remain undisclosed as the matter is under investigation.
23 comments:
Correct. Had he simply let the pistol fall to the floor it would not have discharged.
Maybe they should adopt the Barney Fife plan: bullets kept in the pocket.
One bullet, to be kept in the shirt pocket.
-Gus
Why keep a bullet in the chamber to begin with? It only takes a second to put one in the chamber in the event of an emergency.
Oh come on, 10:01! What's next, a gun that asks if you're sure when you pull the trigger?
If the weapon was issued to an incompetent operator then procedures need to be corrected and all guards re-screened for proficiency.
The solution is more training! Have they taken their safe walking training? How about hazmat? chemical? and Concur?
Why with the proper LANS training plan before they're issued bullets the guards would be unarmed for decades.
Problem solved!
Watch the Official LANL Gun Safety Training Video here.
This reminds me of the PTLA incident about ten years ago when a guard mistakenly had live rounds in his rifle turning a training exercise. I believe in that incident someone got killed.
From a gun-design point of view this is an enlightening incident. It reveals a flaw in the Glock design for safety.
When a person drops something, it is an instinctive reaction to grab for it, so that it doesn't hit the floor. One can argue that the guard should not have done so, but can that instinct be suppressed via training? I don't know.
Though they have their own safety weaknesses, a "cocked and locked" pistol (eg 1911) or one with a manual safety obviates this particular problem.
"Roark added that the guard with the gun nor anyone else has not been placed on leave, but LANS has recommended that the guard be awarded the Dick Cheney SharpShooter Medal."
Yes, but was he wearing his YakTrax at the time?
There are several safety features on the Glock that make this story less than plausible. They were just fucking off (key job component) and got caught. This is just the Kevin spin
10:01 AM, DOE policy requires that "Semiautomatic pistols must be carried with a round in the chamber. Other duty and auxiliary firearms configurations (loaded or unloaded) must be as specified by the DOE [federal employee] cognizant security authority."
Guns kill people. The people involved here were just lucky that the gun did not want to kill them that day.
We should really try to get rid of all the guns in the world because not all guns demonstrate the same benevolence in how they discharge when dropped. When will we learn???
READY!!
FIRE!!
AIM!!
How many more people have to get hurt before no one ever gets hurt again?
This story sounds a bit fishy. If this is what really happened then this is the first such instance with a Glock.
PTLA has a recruiting ad in The Monitor. Maybe they're staffing up.
Our investigation has determined that a PTLA guard was blinded by a laser last Friday while trying to retrieve thumb drives from a former LANL archivist who was attempting to flee the parking lot at Cheeks in a lab owned Ford Mustang. In the ensuing confusion a patron who had been diligently forwarding needlessly classified emails suddenly discovered he had a family. In his haste to return to his new found family, the man collided with the blinded guard, causing him to bump into a retired Chinese-American scientist, who spilled aqua regia on the guard's pants. Fortunately, a second guard heroically and expertly shot the blinded guard's pants causing them to fall off and saving the blinded guard from inhaling aqua regia fumes.
-- Kevin Roark
Wow...gives me a warm fuzzy when these are the same guards who are walking around PF-4 with machine guns and pistols.....
Kevin, can you confirm if this was the same guard who took himself hostage (a la Blazing Saddles) in the TA-3 SCIF recently?
10:01, you assume that you will have two free hands with which to cycle the slide (or are willing to waste seconds in dangerous, awkward one-handed charging drills). People who carry pistols in earnest do not have the luxury of such assumptions.
No number of engineering safeguards can make up for dangerous habits.
What's more dangerous? A guard with a gun or some hippie tree hugging lunatic that works with nuclear material daily, then turns around and attends anti-war demonstrations? Can you say, "conflict of interest"?
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