(courtesy khan.com)

“A police officer at the University of Texas at Austin accidentally shot himself yesterday. Cory Morrison was standing outside a patrol car, talking to fellow officers, when his handgun went off and sent a bullet into his right leg, a local TV station reports. Police did not say whether Morrison was handling the weapon at the time. Officers are trained to keep a round in the chamber when their guns are holstered.” – News item from The Trace email blast.

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68 COMMENTS

  1. Finally, we’ve found one of those much talked about but rarely seen guns that “just go off.”

    • They will now be pulling all service weapons and moding triggers to a 18.75lb pull to prevent guns from just going off randomly.

      • A tactical pry bar will then be issued to officers to facilitate firing their duty weapons.

      • I know you are hoping but the mostly likely cause of the ND is that his uniform shirt was slightly untucked and got a piece it stuck in the trigger guard disabling those three internal safeties that make Glock a safe action pistol.

        • Yup, I’ll go with Glock also as my first guess.Odds on favorite given how many police departments purchase them, probably due to Glock’s aggressive marketing and low low every day prices!

  2. You can almost hear the swishing sounds as they try to sweep this one under the rug after realizing it doesn’t fit their narrative.

  3. “Officials didn’t say if he was handling the gun at the time it went off” I’ll bet there is a 99.999% chance he was handling or otherwise manipulating the gun when he shot himself.

    • “Cory Morrison was standing outside a patrol car, talking to fellow officers,…”

      In other words, just showing off for his friends when he had a ND…

    • My guess is he pulled it out to show it off, then tried to re-holster with his booger-hook still in the fun-ring!

  4. It “proof” that UT’s upcoming policy for campus carry about not keeping a round in the chamber is “true”.

    • The timing and location certainly are, shall we say, peculiar to say the least.

      I would like to know the exact nature of the leg wound. Did the bullet graze his leg and create no significant pain/damage? If so, I could only wonder if Officer Trigger Happy intentionally inflicted a grazing wound on himself to bolster the currently proposed University of Texas policy that requires concealed carriers keep their chambers empty on their handguns.

      Seriously, what are the odds that a cop just happens to shoot himself at a time when the University is possibly prepping for a court battle over empty chambers?

    • “Officers are trained to keep a round in the chamber when their guns are holstered.”

      So apparently he un-holstered his “gun” at which time the training no longer applied and he removed the round from the chamber – loudly.

  7. In other news Colt owner John Smith reports his pistol held up the local 7-11 last night while he and his wife were at Bible study.

  9. same thing happened when I was in college once too, pulled it out and it just went off while I was talking LOL

    • …then she pointed at it, laughed, put her clothes back on and left. And you were never able to get a date with any of her friends after that…

        • I’d recently read a comment that pointed out NDs are NDs, and while your penis might accidentally discharge, your gun never does.

          Then I saw your ‘it just went off’ joke, and…

  10. I never have understood how lying about an ND wasn’t treated as a Giglio violation…some agencys are just looking for a reason to Giglio officers just to get rid of people they don’t like, but they don’t seem to mind “adjusting the narrative” over a blatantly obvious lie about a really clear mechanical function. It’s not like anyone (who isn’t intentionally ignorant) is confused about what makes the gun go off, or any room for “interpretation.”

    I mean I can see an agency cutting a guy they like some slack, because it happens all the time. So, say you lied about being drunk in your off-duty shooting, and they never bothered to test you, so there is no proof you were drunk, so they sweep it under the rug. But if you lied about pulling the trigger during your ND, and you got shot, the simple fact the gun went off is proof SOMEONE pulled the trigger. It not like they can say “there wasn’t really any evidence of that” and pretend it didn’t happen…the gun went off, there’s only one way for that to happen.

    How the hell does a officer, or in this case the whole agency, have any credibility (or ability to testify) after they lied about simple mechanical physics in the friggin’ press release?

    • a) it makes the department look bad and b) the public seems to take everything presented to them by the media as unquestionable truth.

      • The public and the media doesn’t have anything to do with Giglio issues…I’m talking about the courts. What prosecutor in his right mind (oxymoron, I know) would take a case from an officer, much less an agency that is on the public record as demonstrable liars. Its just amusing how wrapped around the axle they get about cops shooting armed criminals, but don’t seem to have a problem with the agency itself publically lying, then relying on the same agency for legal testimony.

        It’s not like any of this is actually surprising…

  11. If the holster has the expected powder burns, I’d say the admonition about booger hooks and bang switches goes double for that moment when you’re shoving the pistol into the holster.

    Remember Marshal Idiot at the El Paso federal courthouse?
    Was disarmed upon entry, had to check his gun. Retrieved his sidearm to leave, grasped it in the fedcop normal way with finger on the trigger, shot himself in the butt while reholstering (superficial, missed the brain), and gave a BP officer a disabling foot wound.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr49Q0vBfxw

    http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/law-enforcement-military-homeland-security-discussion/55281-negligent-discharge-courthouse-deputy-u-s-marshal-merged.html

    • Finger, trigger

      Fewer letters to type, one less syllable to pronounce, less likely to make one sound like a cretin, doesn’t reflect poorly on people of the gun.

      Try it.

  12. Is the tired old empire getting too easy to even bother making fun of it anymore? Or is it just me?????

  13. Red flashing horn blowing bullshit alert meter here. They department originally reported he was checking to see if the weapon was loaded at the time, as was reported in several local outlets. Now they don’t know if he was handling it?
    Please, TheTrace, tell me how he was checking to see if it was loaded while not handling it.

    • How else is “the narrative” supposed to inform the ignorant masses that guns are evil, sentient talismans, that will cause destruction and mayhem all by themselves?

    • All they had to do was do a GSR test to see if his hand was on the gun when it went off by itself…. ‘Cept they don’t want any evidence.

      • That’s just it, the campus police already released that his hands were on the weapon. They already said he was checking to see if it was loaded. (The answer was yes.)

  14. Unsubstantiated reports indicate that some of these types of accidental discharges are often followed immediately by other types of accidental discharges…some urine related.

  15. When did they transition to Nambus?

    Anyway, there goes high-integrity, infallible law enforcement again. And I say that as a former fed. Golly, if this can happen to a cop how can we let joe citizen have those icky gun thingies???

  16. “Police did not say whether Morrison was handling the weapon at the time.”

    They didn’t have to say it, because he was, period. No other way for it to fire.

    Or did his “whistle lanyard” pop off a round, completely and totally outside of his control? Quick, somebody get Farnam in here to do an after-action report that completely absolves the cop of any responsibility for his own stupidity…

  19. Surprised they didn’t say he should be issued 1 cartridge to be kept in his pocket like the late great Deputy Fife. Oh wait, he was a cop so it doesn’t fit the narrative.

  20. Off course they’ll write the article in a way to disassociate the human interaction with the trigger that made it ‘go off’.

    If they can get enough people to think that guns just ‘go off’ and repeat it enough so that people don’t realize that the trigger was pulled, then that would be a win in their book.

    • ^^^ This.

      Isn’t it interesting how coordinated all these reports are, everyone in the industry seems to have gotten the very same memo, and orders to comply.

      In this short little report there are 4 references to ‘goes off’ or accident not including the headline that says ‘goes off’. 9 Paragraphs and 240 words and they get this lie in there 5 times.

      And not even the slightest hint that this may have been negligence instead of a freak accident.

      It’s almost like the media and the police (the state) are all colluding together. That can’t possibly be.

    • I just had to explain that this weekend….to an Iraq War veteran no less, during a conversation regarding this exact subject – the round in chamber policy at UT.

      After accepting that these NDs are in fact the result of people putzing around with their guns and pulling the trigger, he calmly said, “well that wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t a round in the chamber.”

      It took me a while to recover from that, but I replied, “anyone careless enough to pull the trigger on a loaded weapon by accident, is careless enough not to know if they do or don’t have a round in the chamber. A policy mandating an empty chamber just lays the ground work for misplaced confidence that the gun is empty, likely increasing the chance that careless people pull said trigger and find out the hard way.”

  22. “Officials didn’t say if he was handling the gun at the time it went off.”

    Officials, you say? Not the Police Commissioner or DPS or anyone specific then? Just “officials?”

    They didn’t say if he was handling the gun? Was the question posed to these “officials” or did they simply not mention it?

    Great investigative reporting!

    • When PDs have Public Information Officers (in other words, tax paid public relations spinmeisters), what reporter needs to investigate anything? (it’s much easier to just let the PIO write the story for you)

  23. Experienced Police Officer seeks full time employment as far from Texas as possible.

  27. I won’t pretend to know what happened here, but I will point out that a cheap, damaged or defective holster can protrude into the trigger guard and discharge a gun while it’s being reholstered.

    Check your gear! If it’s worn out or seems anything less than 100% legit, replace!

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