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Ah yes. Another gun that somehow “went off.” As the local yokels who toil in Philly’s media milieu put it, FBI agent shot in leg when weapon accidentally discharges at Philadelphia courthouse. We’d title that story a little differently in the interest of accuracy. Something like, ‘FBI agent wounded after negligent discharge in Philly courthouse.’

Anyway, the feds’ finest continue to shower themselves in glory. As Philadelphia’s local ABC affiliate phrases it . . .

An FBI agent was injured Monday morning when a gun went off in the loading dock area of the federal courthouse in Philadelphia.

Uh huh. ‘I dunno what happened! I was just walking along and BOOM! The gun just WENT OFF! Honest, boss!’

Get this line that was written by a “journalist” and approved by an editor . . .

It was not immediately clear if the agent shot himself, or if another agent accidentally discharged.

Another agent “accidentally discharging” isn’t a mental picture we really wanted on a Monday. Thanks for nothing, 6 Action News.

Not that it should be necessary to say this, but however this happened — whether the wounded agent was d!cking around with his pistol and shot himself or a fellow agent did it for him, this wasn’t an oopsie type of “accident.” In all probability it was a negligent discharge resulting from someone mishandling a firearm. Modern guns don’t just “go off.” But you already knew that.

Rest assured, however . . .

The FBI is now investigating the shooting.

Can you remember reading seven less reassuring words strung together in a sentence lately? Anyone? Bueller?

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68 COMMENTS

  1. He was probably taking a dump when the gun went off. Seems to be a reoccurring issue for some law enforcement. The FBI and the Press Lie.

  3. Disband, reassign, and rebuild.

    The FBI has joined the ATM in my mind and has outlived its usefulness.

  4. Given the recent stories about ATF visiting citizens without warrants and Illinois State Police removing weapons from expired FOID card holders (gun permits). with no due process involved points to only one behavior for gun owners. If they have no warrant ask them to leave and if they don’t leave call local law enforcement to make them. The more resistance the better. Don’t make it easy for them to break the law. Get a name and badge number so you can take them to court if you so choose to do so. Don’t give in to intimidation, fight back.

  5. I’m surprised the FBI even allowed this to be reported, I figured they would classify this as an ongoing investigation and then hope it never gets spoken of again.

  7. Sound like some top notch shootists right there. I bet that the atf and the 87,000 new irs agents are even better.

  8. My favorite aspect of these stories is how the phrasing makes the perp sound like a victim.

    The bank customer found his had in the vault.
    Her date found his penis in her vagina.
    The drivers vehicle was found in the homes living room.

  9. I was privy to an argument between a relative noob shooter and a very experienced instructor. Noob was taking an advanced class after finishing his basic firearm safety class. The noob was arguing that “his instructor in his other class” said that such things were “accidental discharges”. The instructor finished it off with, “The only f***in’ accident was letting an untrained, unqualified moron handle a gun!”

    What he said.

    And then we have our favorite DEA agent – an evergreen:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfONckOPyaI

    See, dacian the demented, MajorStupidity, crap like THISW is why we laugh uproariously when Leftist idiots like you argue about government-mandated/specified training being necessary for us sillyvilians to carry guns. ONLY the DEA, ATF, FBI, etc. are qualified to carry guns, amirite????

    • To simplify things, someone posted that miner/albert/dacian shall hereforth be known simply as ” mad “, since they are all the same poster with different personas… yosemite sam, benny hill, and alfred e. newman.

      • Depends on what personality is triggered by the pharmaceuticals. Both prescription and recreational, often mixed together and with other substances.

    • I did not watch the whole thing but something inside me thinks : I hope he shot himself in the leg.

    • This absolutist viewpoint you folks take is juvenile.

      No reasonable person thinks gun training and safety classes will eliminate negligent and accidental discharges.

      The idea, just like every other law requiring training, is to reduce the number of dangerous incidents.

      Speed limit laws do not eliminate drivers speeding on our highways, but they do greatly reduce the incidence of unsafe speeding.

      It’s the same with seatbelt laws, conservative Republicans fought against seatbelt laws as “unconstitutional”.

      “Michigan Rep. David Hollister received a letter likening him to Hitler. Civil liberties advocates railed against the proposed bill. A fellow state legislator said a vote of that kind was a recallable offense.

      What was the proposal that the Lansing Democrat was trying to pass? A seat belt law.“

      https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/30/michigan-seatbelt-law-anniversary-air-bags-takata/30242557/

  11. The likelyhood of being accidently shot by federal law enforcement is literally 10,000 times more likely than being shot by an ordinary armed citizen. I posted the figures yesterday in the missing army m240 article.

  14. The agents were probably fondling each others ‘guns’ when one of them had an unintentional discharge. He should talk with his doctor – there is medication for that.

  15. From the article: “It was not immediately clear if the agent shot himself, or if another agent accidentally discharged.”

    Those FBI circle jerks sound dangerous…

    • We should warn dacian, MinorIQ, jsled, and Prince Albert about that. It would be a shame of one of them shot themselves (he says, snickering).

  18. If it had been a traffic crash it would never have been mentioned. A lot of people handling firearms. What do you think is going to eventually happen? I don’t care who it is. You guys never been on a range?

    • Gadsden,

      I’ve been “handling firearms” since is was seven (I won’t even tell you how long ago THAT was!!!), and I have never, not once, had an ND. I was present a couple of times when others did, and I learned that a day at the range wasn’t worth the risk of an idiot with a firearm in the adjoining lane. I’ve packed up and walked out of ranges at least twice when idjits weren’t properly handling their weapons, and the range boss didn’t correct them.

      I find it amusing that the very people that MinorIQ, dacian the demented, and Prince Albert contend are the ONLY ones qualified to carry weapons (or evaluate the necessity/quality of mandated, government-controlled training). Some LEOs are decent shooters; most are not. An instructor I had shot fairly often with a couple of HRT guys, and said they were excellent shooters. My youngest son’s high school girlfriend’s father was an LA County deputy sheriff who proudly stated, several times, that he had never taken his gun out of his holster except for the qualification shoots.

      Being an LEO does NOT equal “qualified shooter”. There is certainly some overlap in that Venn diagram, but a lot less than most people think.

      • “Being an LEO does NOT equal “qualified shooter”.“

        Correct. Just as:

        Being a POTG does NOT equal “qualified shooter”.

  19. FBI = Fake Bad Investigations. FBI used to be a world class law enforcement organization, before Obama.

    • “FBI used to be a world class law enforcement organization, before Obama“

      Can you cite a specific example of Obama’s actions that reduce the effectiveness of the FBI?

      Or, are you still butt hurt about a black man with a brown name being in the White House?

  20. Reholstering a striker fired handgun into a holster, usually concealed has been the cause of hundreds of negligent/accidental discharges many of which have resulted in catastrophic arterial injuries.
    There is no list of these but every federal agency has had multiples. The same goes for major metro/state departments.

    • @Ranger Rick

      Law enforcement uses a lot of striker fired handguns. They tend to have their fingers in the trigger or almost in the trigger guard when they draw or holster and its because of the way they were trained or developed by ‘immediate use’ occasions and the ‘urgency’ they tend to use in their training and use when they draw and holster. For example, if they have their firearms out and pointed at a suspect, when that suspect submits they move in to cuff them quickly and re-holster their firearm and in that ‘urgency’ they start concentrating on the cuffing and forget to remove their finger from the trigger guard area when they start to re-holster or still have their firearms out with finger in the trigger guard with firearm pointed at the suspect even though the suspect is compliant and under control by other ‘officers’ and is not armed.

      Their firearms training for most of them, basically, tends to focus more on, basically, a ‘check the square on a qualification checklist’ hitting a target or gaining an ‘immediate advantage’ over the suspect with the brandished firearm to be ‘ready’ to fire, and as long as they do that successfully and ‘pass’ the little things like a finger placement is somewhat overlooked. And firearms safety, although touched on, is not ingrained in that training to make it a natural practice part of the firearms handling like it is mostly in the civilian firearms use. In other words they are basically trained to be ready to shoot rather then not shoot, and that is foremost in their minds and their safety factor use outside of training is not critiqued until they actually accidentally shoot someone. So when they start handling their firearms their constraints for safety as part of the handling procedures for this small but very important thing doesn’t really exist as ingrained because their use and training is more objective results based and this small thing is largely ignored for being trained and practiced into them.

      Its not that they don’t get some form of firearms safety training but overall compared to the rest of the training and use its more broad strokes and ‘briefing’ and as long as they meet the expected end result requirement the little things are often overlooked and ignored like that finger placement.

      There are thousands of police cam and other videos which show them doing this, coming out of the holster and gun up with finger on the trigger when it doesn’t need to be. As an example; The local area ATF here contracts to use a local range, the local gun people here, and I, have observed them during their training and qualifications and their own personal use of the range and everyone of them we have seen at least 90% of the time have their fingers in the trigger guard or on the trigger when the gun starts coming out of the holster or when they go to re-holster and during their training/qualifications their ‘instructor/trainer’ never says a word about it. I’m sure somewhere at some time an ‘instructor/trainer’ may have said something about it, but overall its not a normal thing.

      Their timing for these acts is such they don’t separate their finger position into two distinct steps – they tend to draw then finger to trigger guard area while drawing instead of being indexed solidly along side the slide above the trigger guard. Re-holstering the finger is still the same way as the gun is placed in the holster. Its the same sometimes for the civilian area police departments that use our range except most of them tend more towards indexing properly but they still tend to put fingers in the trigger guard under stress.

      This is not to say that each and every one of them do it. But most do if even for a brief second and that brief second is all it takes and if they are distracted with something else or in the moment of ‘urgency’ they tend to, mostly, over aggressively pursue in training or handling or use and it tends to become the ‘normal’ for them when they touch their firearms and increases the chances of an accidental shooting as many times more likely.

      So its not that the firearm is ‘striker fired’ but rather their own handling procedures. It just seems anecdotally related to striker fired because that’s a lot of the firearms in use by law enforcement.

      • For all firearms under legal physical possession control of the civilian populace the incidents of firearms accidental firings are less than 0.0002%. For all firearms under physical possession control of federal law enforcement populace the incidents of firearms accidental firings are more than 2.3% which is ~10,000 times more likelihood than the civilian populace.

        The civilian populace (or even another member of federal law enforcement) is ~10,000 times more likely to be accidentally shot by, and is in more danger of being shot accidentally shot by, federal law enforcement than they are by any ordinary citizen legally possessing a gun. Society is literally safer with ordinary citizens legally possessing guns than they are around federal law enforcement possessing guns.

        When federal law enforcement accidentally shoots someone its an ‘non-public records internal agency investigation’ (like the FBI is doing here now) and over 98% of the time they are ‘cleared’ of any wrong doing (and have ‘qualified immunity’ if they shot someone else). But in the civilian gun community an accidental shooting where someone else is shot its basically a ‘criminal investigation’ and the gun owner can be held liable for manslaughter and can become a convicted felon, or if its self inflicted its still criminally investigated in some aspect initially, and its plastered all over the news and becomes public record.

        • “For all firearms under physical possession control of… “

          Your comparison is somewhat flawed, in the course of their daily duties, LEOs handle their firearms much more than any civilian, leading to more opportunities for NDs.
          Many civilians leave their gun in the bedside table drawer, or in their purse or under the seat of the car, for weeks, months or even years without handling the firearm. Cops and all their firearms at least twice every workday.

          Probably a better comparison would be between LEOs and civilian hunters during their time in the field.

      • another issue with law enforcement in general for accidental shootings is that they tend to view everyone as a potential threat.

        Years ago when law enforcement used mostly leather thumb break holsters or snap straps, on traffic stops it was a trained and routine thing and accepted practice to undo the thumb break or snap when approaching the driver. They viewed the driver as a potential threat. It could be understood, I mean drivers sometimes do dangerous things that endanger the officer so nothing wrong with being ready. But I offer this as an example of that ‘everyone is a threat’ mentality so very much ingrained in law enforcement and its understandable to some extent because law enforcement does approach a lot of dangerous or potentially dangerous people in context with their duties.

        But the problem with it is that its not always appropriate for the situation to have that mindset because it leads to a ‘confirmation bias’ view of looking for the slightest thing that fits the confirmation bias. For example, a guy (and one was recently shot), unarmed, running away had a cell phone in his hand but in the officers view the officer ‘feared for his life’ because he thought it was a gun because that’s the way his ‘confirmation bias’ made him see it because only a guilty person would run away and thus was a threat so the officer has ‘qualified immunity’ and will not be held responsible.

        Another example, the recent article posted about the ATF confiscation attempts for solvent traps without a warrant: In the video the ATF agent tells the home owner to remove his hands from his pockets and the home owner basically tells him its his property and he can put his hands anywhere he likes. And the homeowner was correct because there is no warrant and the ATF is actually trespassing on private property not to forget is acting illegally to begin with because any time law enforcement enters a private property uninvited or without warrant or probable cause they are performing an unlawful search according to SCOTUS decision. The homeowner has no obligation to ‘obey’ law enforcement in that situation like he would on public property. But the mentality of the ATF agent is to perceive the home owner as a possible threat (or try to create a threat situation justification) because hands are in his pockets – the perception of possible threat was completely unjustified as the home owner was polite but insistent upon protecting his rights and that is not a threat but in the minds of the ATF he was a criminal and possible threat where no justification existed for such a view for if it had the ATF would have been able to get a warrant and they did not have one.

        We allow law enforcement to have a lot of latitude in their assessment of a situation, and that’s understandable to an extent. But then we let law enforcement use that as an excuse for their own mistakes and blunders by giving them ‘qualified immunity’ because that latitude in their assessment of a situation includes an ability to make ‘mistakes’. Where comparative, for example, in nature on the civilian side if we brandish without the threat being real and imminent we can go to jail.

  21. It would be interesting to know what kind of weapon he had in his holster????? I am willing to bet it was a striker fired weapon that had no manual safety.

      • @dacian…

        Plus, It would have made no difference if there was a separate other manual safety or not. Federal law enforcement carries with such manual safety in the fire position.

        • @dacian

          Plus, strker fired firearms in use by federal firearms do have a “manual safety” aside from what is inherent in the firearm design keeping the finger off the trigger is also a “manual safety”.

          If you had any real knowledge of firearms you would know all this and not be making such unqualified stupid statements.

        • Which is why he is a pathological liar — he continues to lie even when he knows that we know he’s lying.

          Ask him about the three types of safety built into a Glock. Not one is a manual safety.

          EDIT: As .40cal pointed out, the Glock actually has four safeties, counting “keeping your finger off of the damn trigger.”

    • “The underlying problem with these pistols is a short trigger pull and the lack of an external safety. In real-world encounters, a short trigger pull can be lethal, in part because a significant percentage of law enforcement officers — some experts say as high as 20% — put their finger on the trigger of their weapons when under stress. According to firearms trainers, most officers are completely unaware of their tendency to do this and have a hard time believing it, even when they’re shown video evidence from training exercises.“

      “Bob Owens is the editor of BearingArms.com. He is an alumnus of Gunsite Academy, a rifle marksmanship instructor with Project Appleseed and the author of the short ebook “So You Want to Own a Gun.”

      https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-owens-glock-accidents-20150508-story.html

  22. And of course, it was the gun at fault. Funny how I’ve carried the same 1911 for more than 40 years and have never had an accidental discharge.
    But, of course, I’m just an old Army grunt. Not a highly trained government agent.

  24. Firearms equal accidents -alway have and always will simply because familiarity breeds contempt. THe fact that a single incident brings it to this column’s attention tells us how rare it is as well. How many armed Agents does the FBI have on it’s payroll? A few thousands I’d guess, and it would be easy to check, but one accident does not surprise me in the least and I’d bet there are considerably more than that that go unreported.
    As an ex- Sergeant smallarms instructor in the Royal Air Force great emphasis was placed on handling and safety but accidents happen I and I very nearly became a victim myself of an accidental discharge from a Sterling Sub-Machine Gun, The guy doing the shooting was probably the most experienced on that particular shoot. Just like I said FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT

    • @Albert Hall

      “THe fact that a single incident brings it to this column’s attention tells us how rare it is as well.”

      Its not rare at all for federal law enforcement, its rare it makes the news.

      For all firearms under legal physical possession control of the civilian populace the incidents of firearms accidental firings are less than 0.0002%. For all firearms under physical possession control of federal law enforcement populace the incidents of firearms accidental firings are more than 2.3% which is ~10,000 times more likelihood than the civilian populace.

      The civilian populace (or even another member of federal law enforcement) is ~10,000 times more likely to be accidentally shot by, and is in more danger of being shot accidentally shot by, federal law enforcement than they are by any ordinary citizen legally possessing a gun. Society is literally safer with ordinary citizens legally possessing guns than they are around federal law enforcement possessing guns

      When federal law enforcement accidentally shoots someone its an ‘non-public records internal agency investigation’ (like the FBI is doing here now) and over 98% of the time they are ‘cleared’ of any wrong doing (and have ‘qualified immunity’ if they shot someone else). But in the civilian gun community an accidental shooting where someone else is shot its basically a ‘criminal investigation’ and the gun owner can be held liable for manslaughter and can become a convicted felon, or if its self inflicted its still criminally investigated in some aspect initially, and its plastered all over the news and becomes public record.

      “familiarity breeds contempt”…

      What are you blabbering about? You obviously don’t know what that phrase means.

      “As an ex- Sergeant smallarms instructor in the Royal Air Force great emphasis was placed on handling and safety but accidents happen I and I very nearly became a victim myself of an accidental discharge from a Sterling Sub-Machine Gun, The guy doing the shooting was probably the most experienced on that particular shoot.”

      Another load of BS from you. We already know you are lying about such experience. Your past posts have revealed a distinct lack of knowledge for even the most basic understanding of firearms and how to use them AND even in the context of actual UK mitary training and use. But if your contrived situation now were real its too bad he missed.

      • Familiarity breeds contempt:

        “The more acquainted one becomes with a person (Albert), the more one knows about his or her shortcomings and, hence, the easier it is to dislike that person (Albert).

    • Well, Albert the Poncey, Fake-Brit, Fake-Military,

      You subject never had the benefit of the late, great, Col. John “Jeff” Dean Cooper (U.S.M.C. ret.) and his just famous “Four Rules.” Nor the experience of growing up shooting guns, regularly and often. So your fake “expertise” is . . . a load of codswallop. Experienced shooters do NOT get casual about owning, maintaining, or using firearms. Sloppy ones do, that’s why karma exists, chump. Anyone too stupid to follow the Four Rules probably needs to remove themselves from the gene pool, anyway.

      As for “familiarity breeding contempt”, in your case it is CERTAINLY true . . . the more you post, the more contemptible you are. Have a nice day wanking to your poster of the Queen, you fake-Limey poofter.

  25. Remember this story, when the FBI, or ATF commit an Unconstitutional search of a law abiding citizens home, and said homeowner is shot. Negligent discharge sets off agents while performing a search of law abiding citizens home, and the homeowner is shot dead in the melee. They will say the homeowner shot first, and they will conduct a full investigation to show that the government did nothing wrong. They will say this person with no criminal history is a MAGA Supporter, and had made comments about how the FBI, ATF, or DOJ can no longer be trusted because they have become a corrupt political organization. End of story.

  26. Between the DEA, FBI, and the IRS who somehow manages more accidental discharges than deliberate ones, it is abundantly clear that there are far too many guns in the hands of federal agencies. Along with canceling any expansion of these agencies for at least a decade, we need to reduce the number of agents allowed to carry firearms significantly.

    Has everyone forgotten our favorite break-dancing FBI guy?
    https://youtu.be/DdWfRIlYfjg

  27. Bahahahaha!! This is just as funny as the AFT guy who shot himself in the foot in a public school classroom.

  28. A non-gun owning friend once asked me, “Aren’t you worried about one just ‘going off’?” I suggested we put a loaded gun on the coffee table and just sit and wait to see what happened. He didn’t seem to understand the joke.

  30. All negligent discharges (ND’s) are accidental discharges (AD’s),
    and most accidental discharges (AD’s) are negligent discharges (ND’s). Some people say all AD’s are ND’s, but there’s at least one type of accidental discharge that’s not a negligent discharge. I call it a “premature discharge” because it’s a lot like premature ejaculation!

    It’s when you’re at the gun range, your gun is pointed downrange, pointed at the target, but as soon as you touch the trigger, the gun goes off too early because the trigger is much lighter than you thought it was (such as shooting a revolver SA when you’re used to shooting it DA), or you pressed too hard on the trigger before being centered on the bullseye. Whenever this happens, I say, “Shit, I ruined my score,” because although my gun was pointed at the target, it wasn’t yet centered on the bullseye. But having an accidental discharge (AD) where you say, “Shit, I ruined my score,” is a helluva lot better than having a negligent discharge (ND) where you say, “Shit, I accidentally shot someone!”

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