Talk:Unintentional discharge

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Chiming in here... The video cited is set to private on Youtube, therefore it is unverifiable. I'm not sure how long it has been going on for, but it should be removed as a source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.137.7.2 (talk) 12:15, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Copyright status

This article was temporarily deleted because an editor apparently noticed the same text in a copyrighted book.[1] It turns out that that book was published in 2012, after most of this article was written, and that its authors copied this article rather than the other way around. It's an easy mistake to make. That book, an almanac of legal issues, probably contains other material copied from Wikipedia without attribution. Rezin (talk) 17:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Merge from Negligent discharge

It seems to me that there's no clear distinction between accidental and negligent discharges and so it'd be best to cover them in one article. I'm not sure which title should be used however. The two article have roughly the same number of incoming links from other articles. However the Google Ngram search shows "Accidental discharge" is a significantly more popular phrase, so this seems like it might be the better target. Does anyone have any views on the matter? Rezin (talk) 18:07, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• Traffic stats say that negligent is 30 times more popular than accidental. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 18:21, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

That's probably a useful metric, but you made a mistake as I'm sure you can see.

Arbitrarily picking August 2014: Accidental_discharge=1453 while Negligent_discharge=1162. Those are in the same order of magnitude, so not much help. Going back a month earlier I see a big spike for 'negligent.[2] Google news has various entries for that period, some of which may be the source for the sudden interest.[3] (For the matter of the merge, it's worth noting that Google apparently conflates the two terms). The October results are Accidental= 1514 versus Negligent=580.

Both of these terms are used for issues besides firearms - while researching I found references to discharges from mental facilities as well as chemical spills. That complicates this kind of decision. Rezin (talk) 21:07, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

This is true. I'd recommend that both articles be merged into a new article which is named "Unintentional discharge (firearm)". Both "accidental" and negligent are subsumed under the rubric of "unintentional". Trilobitealive (talk) 00:49, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

While "Unintentional discharge" doesn't seem as common as either 'accidental' or 'negligent', it may well be a neutral term which encompasses both of those, which would make it a more suitable title for an article which will probably compare and contrast those terms. I'd be fine with that. I don't think it's necessary to redo the templates to reflect that option as they point to this discussion already. Let's wait a week or so to see if there's any further input. Rezin (talk) 02:03, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Whilst the term "Unintentional discharge" is not so common – WP is an encyclopedia and so long as accidental and negligent redirects to this suggestion name - then I think it is preferable. After all, if you negligently caused a firearm in your control to discharge (which frightened the living daylights out of all those around you), would you not prefer to use the term accidental - as though it wasn't really your fault and you could not have foreseen it – but an encyclopedia should be neutral and tell it like it is. Unintentional can easily encompass all possible reasons and legal definitions (which in this case are few ) all in one article. So I support Unintentional.--Aspro (talk) 18:29, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

So you see my point? There are also other varieties of unintentional discharge such as "doubling" and "slam fire" which could be added to an article on "Unintentional discharge (firearm)" in addition to these two needing to be merged articles. Trilobitealive (talk) 01:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Once we merge this content with that from the 'negligent' article it'll be time for an overhaul. There's a lot more info in sources about this topic. Rezin (talk) 18:01, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

More justification for an "Unintentional discharge (firearm)" article instead of one of these two includes mention of Cooking off and Sympathetic detonation. Lest I continue on like Bubba and his shrimp recipes I will stop. Trilobitealive (talk) 00:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

FYI, I've complete the merge and rename. It might actually be better at "Unintentional discharge (firearms)", for reasons which somebody explained somewhere else. Anyway, I'll soon start working on a source-based rewrite unless someone else gets there first. Rezin (talk) 19:56, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, I fixed my move mistake. I've parked three books in the "further reading" section until they can be used as references. They're all high-quality sources whose relevant material is viewable in Google books. It'd be nice to supplement them with something giving the military angle. Rezin (talk) 22:37, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion for Unintentional Discharge

This is just of the top of my head. I'm wondering if it would make the different distinctions easier for a reader to understand, if we provided a Flowchart. For instance. The diamond shaped 'conditional' box in the flow diagram could ask “was it due to mechanical failure -yes or no?” If it was yes, the next 'conditional' box could ask “was the firearm regularly seen by a qualified gunsmith? If it had not been seen by a gunsmith since Great-Great-Grand-papa brought it back as a souvenir of the Civil War, then that suggests negligence to me. If it was a well maintained firearm on the other-hand, “ was it of a type with known design shortcomings – yes or no”. That could bring in 'slam fire' and whether 'good practice' was being adhered to etc. There is also that rifle whose name I forgotten that will fire with the safety on if it gets dropped. That would (I think), enable a reader to see at glance the whole picture. The text could then fill in the fine details as to the legal ramifications of each category. It would help to educate the reader, that fire arms are not the least bit dangerous – rather it is the idiot or uninformed in possession that are the problem. So if the reader has come to Wikipedia because they have noticed their young son or daughter drooling over a gun magazine (or even experienced a UD already) – a flow chart gives them a quick in a nut-shell picture. The 'See Also' section can obviously then direct them to other necessary stuff to know.--Aspro (talk) 22:01, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

If such a flowchart already exists then that'd be a great resource. But I'm afraid that if we created one of our own it'd violate WP:OR. More broadly, I don't know that the distinctions are so clear that we could create one from existing definitions. Also, I get the impression that the distinction is of legal or bureaucratic importance to military or law enforcement users. So we'd need to be careful to go beyond what reliable sources say. Rezin (talk) 22:11, 23 December 2014 (UTC)