I'm glad he was OK.
I shot myself in the neck with a BB gun when I was a kid. It put one heck of a knot on my neck. I had it cocked (of course) and leaned it against the wire fence at Gradma (Mammy's) house, when I stepped up on the fence it fell over, hit a fence post and went off... I'm glad it wasn't a shotgun.
It was a Daisey model 25 which was quite a BB gun, it was a pump gun, one of these:
I still have it, need to get it fixed. I still have my Crosman pump .22cal pellet gun too... it is bada55. Back in the 60s if I pumped it 10 times it would go right through both sides of a 50 gallon galvanized trashcan. I'm glad I didn't shoot myself with it.
That reminds me of another story (you will like this).. I got the Crosman when I was 12 IIRC, for Christmas. We lived about a half mile through the woods to the headwaters of the Ochlockonee River in Moultrie about halway between the hwy 111 and hwy 37 bridges. I LOVED to go back there and would walk the river to the bridges, it was my wonderland. So, it was Christmas, it was cold but not quite freezing, maybe high 30s. After lunch I headed straight back there with my new gun. The water was high and when it got high the whole flood plain turned into a swampy area maybe 100 yds wide with islands and lots of little channels unless it was completely flooded, this day it was just a nice swamp. The only thing I really remember was having to cross a channel about 5 ft wide that had no fallen log. I found a place with a small tree across the water and jumped, I knew I could make it if I grabbed the tree... only problem was the tree, it was dead, had been dead but in winter they all ook the same. I jumped, grabbed the tree and it came right out of the ground and I fell straight backwards into the water... It were COLD. I were WET. I were a half mie from home.. I got home pretty quick. did keep the gun out of the water though,
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Again... what a cool story and with pics of the helmet. I think people used to carry a lot of lead because they didn't use hollow points.
I heard a story when I was younger of a guy in Florida who drove himself to the hospital after shooting himself in the head three times with a .22cal. He was trying to commit suicide. It just wasn't his day to die.
I have an old newspaper clipping I saved from probably 1971. It was a byline just a small clipping but I thought it to be a BIG story. It was also from Florida. A man was working his land with a Cat bulldozer. His grandkid was around but he didn't know it, a toddler. He looked down and saw the Child's feet sticking out from the side of the metal tread, from under the bulldozer. He said it was hard packed ground, thought the kid was dead... he backed off, got the child up, he seemed OK, they took him to the hospital and there were no injuries. I still have that clipping in the Bible I was using back then, at least I think I do. I love strange but true stories like that and like this one. Thanks for sharing it.
One more... nothing really but I remember when I was 8 or 10 years old my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and I were standing on the patio at my parents home and a bullet flew right threw where we were and hit the block foundation of the house, we never heard a shot so it must have travelled miles.
I heard about this last year when I was in Indiana... Yoder shoots Yoder in accident. He shot his muzzleloader into the air after an unsucessful deer hunt, the bullet fell miles away on top of a girls head, also named Yoder. No relation.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/12/amish-girl-buggy-shooting-freak-accident/ J