this is something I have not yet experienced but I have been told one day it will happen to me. from what I have been reading negligent discharges are do to carelessness, bad trigger jobs and if extremely rare cases catastrophic mechanical failure. Please shed some light on this topic as I practice strict safety and finger discipline and point the weapon at a "soft" target when loading and unloading. do negligent discharges "just happen" (as some say) or do I have to do something stupid to cause one?

Negligent discharge is a more appropriate term than accidental discharge, IMO. Guns do not go off accidentally. They go off because you want them to, or they go off through careless handling, ie., you do something supid.

I had one and I dont THINK it was my fault. It happened at the worst time you can think of..........Basic Training!!! Don't you agree? It was the only time in my life that I have seen a Drill Sargent actually stick up for a recruit also. So.... here's how it happened. We were towards the end of the basic training cycle and we were doing a night fire range exercise. All of a sudden my weapon jams. I check the ejection port and notice the bolt has not fully seated. I am in the prone position and I slam the forward assist several times with no result. Right about then one of the Drill Sargents walk up and starts telling me to hit the forward assist. I follow orders and again no result. So he starts hollering at me and says "Hit the damn thing like ya mean it, boy!" So me, being cockstrong from being held captive by the US Govt for 6 wks, rare back and slam the piss out of the forward assist.

What happened after that was the scariest & funniest thing I have ever seen in my life. After slamming it as ordered. The weapon starts slam-firing on full auto and tracers are lighting up the sky!!!. Luckily I had a good grip on my weapon with my left hand because if I didn't there would have been some serious injuries to the guys next to me. I manage to get my right hand on top of the weapon after it fires about 15 rds and hold on for the rest of the mag. (30rd mag) You know what happened next. About 7 DI's start screaming at me from every direction. Some are running and I am about to shit my pants for the second time that night. But the DI who was instructing me actually stuck up for me and cooled everybody down by telling them I did nothing wrong. The weapon malfunctioned while he was standing there helping me clear a jam. One DI shines his light on my weapon and checks the selector. Sure enough it is on semi-auto and everybody clears out. I am still freaking my nuts off but I do start breathing again. After talking with the DI he tells me to pack it up for the night. The armorer didn't come to the range with us and theres no way to fix the weapon. I never did find out what caused it. That was the last time we fired during Basic and as a gift to the incoming cycle we didn't clean our weapons. Now we knew why they were so damn dirty when they issued them to us. Truly sadistic individuals those people were. What do you think caused the slam-firing? I do know how to clean a weapon by the way!

I was taught to call it an "UNintentional discharge". It's never an accident.

No, I won't. Sgtar15

A few years ago I out a .45 inch hole in the wall of my parents house. Now when I dry fire with a snap cap I check it after every trigger pull to make sure it has not turned into a live round.

Some discharges can be unintentional and unavoidable/unexpected. What about chambering or cycling a round out of the chamber. I have seen this happen on an SKS-- it discharged, blowing a hole through 3 apartments and tearing up the walls and carpet. Faulty gun. Luckily nobody was hurt or even heard it (July 4th weekend-- they thought it was fireworks.) If an internal piece if bad, it could have serious problems as well. A friend of mine was telling me he reassembled his .45, and when he fired the first shot, it emptied the magzine before it would stop... This could have been avoided, but who would have known??? only thing-- he probably did not do a functional check. Also-- what about the RARE cases of leaving a bullet in the chamber, with a hot barrel-- slight chance that you cook the bullet, and BAM.