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How An Accidental Shooting Occurred by John T. Slovenz In 1965, the 82nd Airborne Division deployed to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on a peacekeeping mission. Sometime around April 1966, a soldier shot and killed a 7-year-old shoeshine boy, while on Guard Duty. Everyone assumed he pulled the trigger. Charges were brought against the soldier for negligent homicide and he was pending Court-Martial. His only defense was, as stated: "he had a magazine in his rifle, but did not have a round in the chamber, the bolt was locked to the rear, and did not have his finger on or near the trigger and, did not pull the trigger". Immediately after the shooting, the M16 rifle was impounded by the Military Police (MP’s). As a weapons inspector and a small arms technician, I did not have immediate access to the rifle. An Army Captain who was assigned as the soldiers Defense Attorney, asked for my opinion as to the possibility of the shooting to have occurred in the manner stated. Initially I said it could not. (Unfortunately, all too often we assume what we perceive to be the truth.) I went on to explain that first a round would have to be chambered by releasing the bolt and then someone would have to pull the trigger. However, he requested that I examine the rifle. With the approval of the Defense Attorney and the Officer assigned to the preliminary hearing, I went to MP Headquarters to examine the rifle. I was not authorized to remove the rifle from the office! However, I was permitted to open it up and look inside the firing mechanism. Based on a visual inspection, I determined the rifle was properly assembled and had no broken parts. However, I noticed a small piece of an Army fatigue jacket button stuck in the lower receiver, which seemed to cause the trigger to bind a little. Although this could contribute to the rifle accidentally discharging, it could not have caused a round to be chambered. The button was only part of the puzzle! Therefore, I had to prove that if nothing was wrong with an M16 Rifle (any rifle) it could not accidentally discharge, even with a round in the chamber. Yet, I had to figure out how a round could get in the chamber if no one put it there! Then prove that if a round was in the chamber it could not accidentally discharge. Using a test rifle, I found ways that a round could be accidentally chambered with relative ease (possibly without awareness). Nevertheless, I was unable to find a way to make the rifle discharge without pulling the trigger. In fact, in a test performed in the presents of the Court-Martial Officer, (with a live blank round of ammunition in the chamber) I smashed an M16 rifle; butt first, into the concrete floor with such force that it rendered the rifle unserviceable. The rifle did not discharge or fire the blank round. The second phase of the evaluation proved to be somewhat more complex. Based on the fact that an object (in this case a piece of a button) was stuck in the lower receiver and caused the trigger to bind, would it be possible for a rifle to fire if the bolt was somehow released and chambered a round, and in effect, cause some kind of chain reaction. Once again, using a test rifle I tried placing various small objects in the lower receiver in approximately the same location the button was found. After numerous tests, I was able to duplicate the problem and cause the trigger to bind with just the right amount of resistance. However, how did the button affect the function of the rifle? To solve this part of the puzzle I began running dry test (without ammunition) with small objects stuck in the lower receiver. Once I found a way to make the rifle function (fire) without ammunition, I went to the range and tried the complete cycle with live ammunition. It worked. I got the rifle to load itself and fire, without pulling the trigger. In fact, this type of accident could have occurred even with the Selector Switch set in the Safe position. Furthermore, it was determined that had the Selector Switch been set on Fully Automatic at the time, the rifle could have fired several rounds. However, this is not quite, what happened in the accidental shooting and does not explain why the rifle did not fire when I was evaluating it in the MP’s office. Upon running a few unrelated tests with the different oils used on various weapons, I realized I needed to use different oil(s) for different test, which was sometimes based on the time of day and temperature. Early in the morning, on the day of the evaluation in the MP’s office, it was very cool. Had the rifle been taken outdoors, and had I had waited for the temperature to go up a few degrees, with a round in the chamber the rifle would have soon discharged. In my final report, I explained that in this particular case, pulling the trigger probably would have been one of the hardest ways to fire the rifle (because it would have caused the trigger to bind even more) and in all likelihood, the round was accidentally chambered long before the rifle discharged. The soldiers rifle most likely discharged because of a change in the temperature when it warmed up. Because of my evaluation, charges were dropped, because I proved that the accident happened just as the soldier had described. Through many years of exposure to small arms and the M16 in particular, I learned there are many hard to believe facts about weapons, especially the M16. During the course of many routine inspections, I would find a large group of weapons improperly assembled all in the same manner. Furthermore, I learned that while there are many ways to improperly assemble the lower receiver of the M16/AR15, there is one way that would serve as catalyst for a malfunction to occur which is very similar to what occurred with the fatigue jacket button. However, bear in mind that unless someone is in front of the muzzle at the time the weapon is discharged, in all likelihood the incident would go unnoticed and unreported as a malfunction. Someone would naturally assume he or she had pulled the trigger. Nonetheless, if someone was accidentally killed, unless a very knowledgeable technician was to take a very close look at the weapon, the shooter, may not be believed. In another set of circumstances, I found that some rifles, about 5%, would fire two rounds, one when the trigger is pulled and a second when the trigger is released. This malfunction is hard to reproduce because it can happen on a perfectly good rifle, even though there is nothing wrong with it. However, after many years, I found the cause: trigger pull (the way a person pulls the trigger). Nevertheless, suppose someone accidentally pulled the trigger and fired their rifle. It happens all the time. Furthermore, suppose someone was standing in front of the rifle at the time. The first reaction of the Shooter would be an involuntary movement of the rifle caused by the recoil, then releasing the trigger fires the second round. (The first shot hits the victim in the chest and the second in the head.) It looks like murder, but is it? For the most part this document deals primarily with the M16/AR15. However, most Military weapons have many things in common. For example, the AR-15 is little more than a modified M16 and has an identical firing mechanism. Although the old M79 Grenade Launcher is a very different type of weapon, I was an eyewitness to an accidental shooting in Vietnam when a soldiers’ M79 discharged and fired a round into a group of five-men. The soldier did not pull the trigger. In fact, he had the M79 at sling arms. The list goes on, too much for this document. The incident in Kosovo last July involved a M249, (a weapon I am not familiar with) but the article I found on the Internet by: Melissa Eddy, Associated Press, dated March 8, 2001 contains an overwhelming number of indicators that the incident was not the fault of the soldier. John T. Slovenz
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