There are no firearms ‘accidents’

Today is Friday the 13th. I’ll admit to being a little superstitious earlier in my life, but I eventually figured out that rubbing a rabbit’s foot charm, wearing lucky (and usually unwashed) underwear week after week or eating the same meal before that week’s game really didn’t affect the outcome, but my efforts during the game did!

So all you folks avoiding walking under ladders or refusing to hold a mirror today are off the hook, unless you choose to put yourself there to begin with.

Over the last month or so, I’ve mentioned the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Hunter Education Program several times. In order to legally participate in many of the different hunts available statewide, you need one or more of the three different course certifications offered in this program. However, there is one major reason besides being legal why you might consider taking a course — you might learn something that will save your life.

Earlier this week, I read an account of how an 11-year-old boy in western Alaska was killed while hunting with a 9-year-old girl for snowshoe hares and ptarmigan for his mother for Mother’s Day. The two kids were family members and were hunting about three-quarters of a mile north of the village of St. Mary’s.

According to the account, the boy spotted a hare they could shoot and as the girl was handling a shotgun, she fell and the gun discharged. The shot struck the boy.

The girl tried to give the boy first aid and then ran back to the village for help. Troopers were notified that evening of the incident. According to a trooper spokesperson, foul play is not suspected and family members had been notified. An autopsy was being done as part of the investigation.

Alaska law requires a child under the age of 16 to have a parent or guardian’s permission to possess a firearm. The trooper spokesperson stated in the account that rural Alaskan children commonly hunt without adult supervision and that, in this case, the boy actually was an experienced hunter for his age group.

No doubt, this was a horrible tragedy for that mother and the entire family and the village of St. Mary’s. But was it truly a “hunting accident” as was reported on the television news? I don’t think so. Here’s why.

According to the trooper spokesperson, the shotgun was “a heavy gun,” at least for the 9-year-old girl, to be handling. The girl was standing on some tussocks and apparently lost her balance as she was positioning herself for the shot. The muzzle of the shotgun was pointed at the boy as the gun discharged. The outcome, given those circumstances, is unfortunately all too predictable.

I’ve been involved in the hunter education program for about 20 years and am certified to teach all three of the course topics offered. The two courses dealing with firearms repeatedly stress four safe-handling firearms rules: treat every firearm as if it is loaded, keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire, never point the muzzle of the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy, and be sure of your target and what is around and beyond it.

At least two, and perhaps three, of these rules were not followed in this particular situation and a child died.

I have heard from the program coordinators that most of the rural villages in Alaska aren’t too interested in hunter education as the program exists, but are almost desperate for a safe gun handling course that can be taught to their children. A typical one-day course spends a few hours on safe gun handling, but also involves hunter ethics, hunter responsibility and wildlife management concerns. The often subsistence-based villagers are not generally interested in those parts of the course.

Certified instructors are scarce in rural Alaska and travel to bring an instructor out to a village to teach a course is costly and the logistics are a major hurdle. As a result, hunter education classes in rural villages happen once in a blue moon. Online courses exist and offset some of the stated problems a hands-on course has, but the firearms safety portion is still just a chapter in a book. If kids don’t learn proper firearms safety at home or from a neighbor, they tend to handle their hunting firearms in an unsafe manner and “accidents” occur on a regular basis. Just follow news reports over time to confirm this.

That little girl will live with this tragedy for the rest of her life and I have sympathy for her. However, she was negligent in the way she handled the firearm, probably because nobody had ever shown her some of the proper and safe ways to handle that gun. If you strictly follow the four rules cited before, you will never be involved in an injury or death related to a so-called firearms accident. You may experience an accidental discharge with your firearm, but if the muzzle is always pointed in a safe direction, no damage other than to your pride will occur.

I’ve personally experienced two accidental firearms discharges, both of which related to the gun malfunctioning. I was present when my father also had an accidental discharge when his thumb slipped off the hammer of a lever-action rifle he was uncocking. None of these incidents resulted in injury because the muzzle was pointed in a safe direction.

There are no such things as firearms accidents if the proper safety rules are strictly followed. In my 20 years of teaching hunter education, I have challenged every class to describe a firearms accident scenario where all of the firearms safety rules are followed. Nobody has come up with one yet.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.