Talk:Safety (firearms)

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[edit] An unusual safety failure

I didn't find a good place to insert this into any Wikipedia articles yet, and don't know enough about firearms to write one, so I figured I'd drop a reference in here for some more firearm-savvy editor to use. Here's a case wherein a Colt 1991 A-1 pistol fired while its thumb safety was still engaged on account of the powerful magnetic field inside an MRI machine pulling the firing pin out of its normal position: Beitia, Anton Oscar; Steven P. Meyers, Emanuel Kanal and William Bartell (2002). "Spontaneous Discharge of a Firearm in an MR Imaging Environment". American Journal of Roentgenology 178: 1092-1094.  Bryan Derksen 03:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow! What an interesting case. Reading the hypothesis of what happened and why, I think that they are exactly correct in this reasoning.

This was not a result of any highly egregious negligence, but rather a series of unfortunate conditions lining up. I think that there needs to be standardized protocol at MRI sites for checking weapons at the door, and keeping them secured until pickup—the same sort of protocol that courthouses already have in place to serve the many police officers who come in and go out each day. The biggest challenge here is that courthouses already have guards on-site, so the "keeping secured" part is not a problem, whereas it'd be expensive to keep a guard around at every MRI site. However, I'm not sure that not bothering is an option, when you consider how many patients could be police officers or CCW civilians. (Could be 1-4 of every 100 patients I would guess). One more piece of the healthcare expense mountain, but not really an avoidable one, it seems to me at the moment.

As for where to cite this in Wikipedia, it doesn't require a lot of words, maybe just a section in Gun safety called "Environments requiring protocols for weapons-check at the door", with "courthouses", "hospitals", and "outpatient MRI" being bullet points beneath that heading. I think I will go add that as a subhead under "Gun safety for firearms not in use". — Lumbercutter 17:50, 1 April 2007 (UTC)