Around 11 people are killed each year because their handguns lacked a magazine disconnect, according to a massive 4,600-word special report by NBC News, which was released Friday.
The story’s title tells you all you need to know about the content: “A simple device could help curb accidental gun deaths, but most firearms don’t have it.”
“Since 2000, at least 277 people have been killed in gun accidents in which the shooter believed the weapon was unloaded because the magazine had been dislodged or removed, an NBC News investigation found. That total – based on federal data collected from states, as well as media reports, lawsuits and public records – is likely a significant undercount since many states only recently began reporting their data, and information on the cases may be incomplete. NBC News found 41 cases that weren’t captured in the data,” the story claims.
Most of the story focuses on those allegedly killed by a handgun that was improperly used – pointed at an innocent person and the trigger pulled.
“In Kansas, a college football player lost his leg after a teammate fired a weapon in 2018 that he thought was unloaded. In Michigan, a pregnant woman was accidentally shot and wounded by her husband, an Army soldier. And earlier this year, a customer inside a crowded Florida gun show was shot in the foot when another man unwittingly fired off a live round,” the story states.
While any firearm-related accident is horrific, the story makes a lot of its numbers, but by comparison, dogs kill nearly three times as many people per year, around 400 die annually from accidental electrocutions, and texting while driving kills thousands more people every year.
According to their story, the NBC reporters tried to ask more than a dozen firearm manufacturers about whether they would incorporate a magazine disconnect in their modern handguns. None replied to their questions, other than Larry Keane, general counsel and chief lobbyist of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“If the magazine gets dislodged or damaged and you can’t function a firearm in a life-or-death situation, using a firearm for self-defense — that’s a significant problem,” he told the NBC reporters.
Keane is correct, of course. Besides, whether or not a firearm has a magazine disconnect, no one would have been harmed had the accidental shooters assumed that every gun was loaded and kept the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.
Gun Violence Archive
In their second-to-the-last paragraph, the NBC reporters admit where they got much of their data for the story, from the Gun Violence Archive, or GVA.
According to GVA’s executive director Mark Bryant, every day his researchers consult “a mass of about 7,500 sources. They are law enforcement Twitter, law enforcement Facebook, law enforcement police blotters and then we have media sources. The easiest is to grab media sources. Law enforcement is clinical. The media looks more subjectively at an incident.”
The bottom line: GVA’s data is extremely suspect.
Using the GVA data debunks any serious point the NBC journalists were trying to make, because anytime four or more people are shot and even slightly wounded, the small but influential nonprofit labels it as a mass shooting, and politicians, gun control advocates and the mainstream media treat their reports as if they’re gospel even if their data is wildly inaccurate.
For example, according to Bryant’s all-inclusive definition, there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses a much narrower and more realistic definition.
While the GVA collects and publishes several different types of shooting data – mass murders, number of children and teens killed or injured, officer-involved shootings, defenses gun usages and more – it is their inflated mass shooting numbers that are cited most often by the mainstream media, given its penchant for sensational headlines.
In a 2021 interview with the Second Amendment Foundation, Bryant defended his broader definition, and the higher body count it yields.
“It doesn’t parse,” he said three years ago. “It gives an accurate picture of the number of times more than four people were shot, whether in a drive-by or a shooting at a rap concert or a country music concert.”
In the interview, Bryant deflected blame for the media’s overhyping and misuse of his data.
“If the numbers are misleading, the journalist didn’t do their homework, you could make that argument. The media zeroes in on it, not us. At one point we wanted to take mass shootings out of the loop, but the phone started ringing on a daily basis. It’s important to me that we’re not misinterpreted. We’re not anti-gun. Look at our staff, over half are gun owners. I intentionally do not hire from the (Gun Violence Prevention) community. I want researchers – period. We wanted to have an honest set of data, and you can use it how you want,” Bryant said.
Bryant’s database is being used by anti-gun politicians, the gun-control crowd and their supporters in the mainstream media. Keep in mind they cite GVA’s data as proof that our rights need some infringing. If Bryant honestly believes in an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, he’d shutter the GVA.
New Design
Fabrique Nationale’s new 21st Century High Powers lack magazine disconnects, which says all most shooters need to know about the old-fashioned safeties.
“One component removed from the reboot is its antediluvian magazine-disconnect safety, meaning that the hammer can be dropped and the gun fired with its magazine removed,” NRA’s senior executive editor Kelly Young wrote in a review of the new High Powers.
Antediluvian means “belonging to the time before the biblical flood, or ridiculously old-fashioned.”
This story is courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support the project.
Removing the magazine disconnect is the first modification I do to any weapon that comes with one.
I just picked up a Walther p22 and removing the disconnect will be one of the first things I plan to do when I do a disassembly and deep clean. Stupidest thing is I can’t even decock the silly thing without the magazine inserted. Since I only own one magazine I need to unload the magazine or use a loaded magazine to decock the weapon after I unload and check the chamber. This silly “safety feature” is actually making me less safe.
Who owns a modern auto and only ONE mag. That is even dumber than “media looks more subjectively”.
He just got the gun? Maybe thats the reason he has only one mag. Guess he was unaware too that the magazine police were gonna be after him or surely he would’ve magged up
The S&W Shield 1.0 (CA model) requires an empty magazine to be inserted just to remove the slide for cleaning. The Shield Plus does not, and is more like a GLOCK in that respect. CA requires all sorts of dumb things.
ditto. If nothing else, it makes taking the weapon down for cleaning harder. It does nothing to improve safety of the gun. Never has, never will.
John Browning devised the magazine disconnect for the Hi-Power because it was the time when people were transitioning from revolvers to semi-auto pistols. Many thought after they dropped the magazine the pistol was unloaded, forgetting the round in the chamber. At least that is my understanding. It was one of the few poor ideas John Browning had. Engineering can not always overcome lack of knowledge and training. It’s an answer looking for a question. I removed the magazine disconnect from my Hi-Power decades ago.
He did it because it was a requirement in the contract. The HP was also designed by him to be a striker fired weapon and not a hammer fired weapon.
The GP35 mag safety also had the unfortunate design where it had to drag itself against the front of the magazine, spoiling what would otherwise be a great single action trigger. Newer versions are designed to not alter trigger pull, but they still interfere with dry fire practice.
I saw a picture of a prototype 1911. It looked like the finished issue gun, but no safety whatsoever, unless you count the halfcock notch.
My thought at the time was that Browning knew the military would want to fiddle with it no matter what, so he just left it undone. The military requested a grip safety, and a thumb safety, and a great design was finalized.
If only someone could invent a simple series of rules (I don’t know, maybe 4?) that if followed would keep people from negligently shooting another person because they thought the gun was not loaded.
An idea so crazy it just might work!
Screw safeties. My safety is my trigger finger. And while I’m at it, it’s time to rethink ‘standard capacity magazines’. The 2 homeowners in Aurora, CA could have used a 40+ magazine in an AR when 14 TdA thugs invaded their apartment last night.
h ttps://www.foxnews.com/us/aurora-colorado-police-detain-14-connection-armed-home-invasion-kidnapping
It’s the fault of a lack of disconnect!!
It’s not because I didn’t clear my gun or because I pointed it in an unsafe direction or because I pulled the trigger. NO! It’s because the manufacturer didn’t design and produce the firearm with a magazine disconnect!!!!
Obviously.
“Around 11 people are killed each year because their handguns lacked a magazine disconnect.”
No, 11 people are killed because of ignorance of fundamental safe gun-handling procedures.
That’s 11 people that should have owned revolvers.
That’s 11 people that should have owned a revolver.
Alec Baldwin says ” Hold my beer “.
That’s eleven people who should have owned a loud whistle instead of any kind of handgun.
I won’t buy a gat with a magazine disconnect. Kinda simple🙄
for the last 2 decades, thats the only handguns a person could by in the oh so free state of california (Just ask Gaven). If it were up to him, only he and his close friends and guards would be allowed guns at all. For our safety.
….criminals exempt of course.
Oh most firearms the mag safety can be easily removed. It’s a minor gunplumbing job anyone should be able to accomplish on their own unless they are mechanically inept. Unfortunately there are a lot of inept fools out there who can’t disassemble their firearms beyond a basic cleaning field strip and some who can’t even manage that.
11 out of 400 MILLION isn’t even a number.
Well, technically it is. Just very very small (2.75e-8). It is however well qualified to be statistically insignificant.
Actually 11 is just the number of deaths associated with ND’s where a lack of a mag safety MIGHT have prevented it. It doesn’t include ND’s that simply caused an injury or didn’t result in any injury at all. The sadest part of the statistic is that some of those 11 were not the individuals who broke the 4 rules while handling a weapon and were instead innocent bystanders.
The real solution is to teach basic firearms safety as required instruction in every public school in the country as part of graduation requirements like learning to swim. No student should be graduated until they show proficiency in the the Four Rules and understand how to safely handle, load, unload and clear all common modern firearm types.
Actual NDs, or “I’m about to have a ND, get out the cleaning kit” NDs?
“based on federal data collected from states, as well as media reports, lawsuits and public records”
well, there’s the problem right there especially the “media reports”.
lawsuits against a gun manufacturer or another person or for their client are notorious for making claims that ‘influence’ in court but don’t tell the whole story. and that ‘influence’ version is what is decided.
the same with public records where its mostly what ‘he/she’ said happened.
the federal government doesn’t keep records on firearms that ‘fire cause no disconnect’ so that part isn’t even true.
and relying on media reports? are you serious? especially the nyt relying on media as an authoritative source for this after predicting Kamala was gonna win …is not very convincing at all. all you guys do is participate in a massive slant and bias of data you accept as fact when its the media that made it up or begin with. find another source besides yourselves.
any goober can say ‘I took the magazine out and it was unloaded but it went off when i pulled the trigger’ and not mention their own finger pulled the trigger knowing full well it was loaded to avoid a lawsuit or other legal issues so yeah the motivation is there to blame it on ‘darn gun doesn’t have a mag disconnect, not my fault.’
277 over 24 years? How many people die to lightning strikes each year?
roughly 600 according to chatgpt. Guess we should outlaw lightning.
Comparing the magnitudes and laws involved we may have to ban going outside in the rain.
Perhaps it’s Thor’s fault. But is he a protected minority?
would be curious about how many people sie from adult toys. bet it is comparable.
The number 11 is comparable to global paper cut deaths.
NBC once rigged a gas tank to explode so they have zero credibility. I can do without a grip safety or a mag disconnect, a loaded chamber indicator is OK as is a manual safety. For Glock types if the slide does not lock open there’s a high probabity there is a round in the chamber. When the trigger is forward on Glock types there’s a high probability it’s loaded, trigger parked to the rear on Glock types indicates a high probability it is not loaded. Loaded or not the weapon is never pointed in an unsafe direction or is it ever fanned across an unsafe area, etc.
Gun is in your hands means it is your job is to verify safe, once the firearm is in the hands of another even if they watched you verify safe it is their job to spend a moment to verify safe.
Good news is questionable, not so mechanically inclined Gun handlers are easy to spot…hang around them at your own risk.
At least 270 people were killed while wearing their seatbelts.
At least 270 people were killed while wearing thier motorcycle helmets.
At least 270 people were eaten by sharks while wearing a life jacket.
However it is a proven fact, government intervention can reduce your chance of dieing before death by 2%.
Your PSA of the day :
Sam I Am is an anagram of MIASMA.
(google it if necessary.)
“Sam I Am is an anagram of MIASMA.”
Excellent. Had not recognized that.
Still, if the magazine disconnect saves only one…..
Something all law should be judged on. We gotta work to remove all dangers to humans in order to consider outselves civilized.
And the founders were deficient in not declaring that freedom from individual harm is the highest principle proclaimed in the DOI, and the Constitution.
The question of whether a technical change improves overall safety is interesting. Any one got an idea of how much automation is included in airliner design on the the theory that technology is needed to protect passengers fro human errors?
We put our trust (and lives) in features that keep air travel safe/safer, but refuse to consider that adding safety features to firearms is useful/necessary.
(MCAS, yes, I know) but the flying public is safer than any time past.
Pilots are not the only people who need safety items to protect pilots from themselves.
Are we really happy to retard efforts at firearm safety features, all the while the “world” is speeding toward fully automated passenter aircraft?
More cream. Less coffee.
“More cream. Less coffee.”
Nah. More gin for more martinis.
You folks behind enemy lines in Washington state: Now Washington Will Use Other Citizens to Disarm You.
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUAbiWIORms
I was interested to read more about this, but the video has been removed from you tube. Any help?
Its hasn’t been removed, I just checked
copy the whole url, removed the space from ‘h ttp’ and make it ‘http’
“Since 2000, at least 277 people have been killed in gun accidents in which the shooter believed the weapon was unloaded because the magazine had been dislodged or removed”
More than 480,000 deaths annually (per CDC) (including deaths from secondhand smoke) from smoking. Sooo… since 2000, (accounting for variances per year and rounding) at least 11,000,000 people have been killed due to tobacco smoking incidents. Smoking deaths are 41,000 times more likely to happen than a ‘magazine disconnect’ related accident/injury/death.
Considering flying on commercial airline aircraft safety wise in terms of death/injury, as an industry the risk of injury/death is low. But when its considered that (mostly) every time a commercial airline aircraft with passengers crashes there is either mass-injury or mass-death or both. So in context of “Since 2000, at least 277 people…” for the ‘hand waving freakout NYT’, comparatively in terms of odds, a person flying on a commercial airline aircraft loaded to near capacity with passengers that crashes is over 100 times more likely to be injured or killed than a person is due to not having a ‘magazine disconnect’ on a gun.
Just about any thing commonly used or present in a house hold to maintain the dwelling is over 100 times more likely to result in injury/death for kids under the age of 10 than a gun without a ‘magazine disconnect’.
In 2023, nationwide, there were over 14,000 murders committed by ‘immigrants’ in the country illegally directly due to the Biden-Harris ‘policies’ for an intentionally open and insecure border (1% used a stolen firearm). All of the perpetrators were known to have been convicted of violent felonies of rape or murder (or both) in their country of origin (but like a lot of countries did, their origin country started decreasing their own incarceration numbers and sending dangerous criminals to the border). So in terms of the ‘hand waving freakout NYT’ “Since 2000, at least 277 people…” a person is more than 1,000 times more likely to be killed by the Biden-Harris admin border ‘policies’ than they are to be injured or killed due to their gun not having the ‘hand waving freakout NYT’ ‘magazine disconnect’.
Yep, Biden-Harris the greatest mass-killers using a single ‘weapon type’ (the illegal immigrant and the stroke of a pen), in America history. Maybe a brain-reconnect feature for democrat voters and the NYT is needed.
correction and clarification for :
“In 2023, nationwide” > should have been “In 2022-2023, nationwide…”
“there were over 14,000 murders committed…” > this is only the ones that have been caught and prosecuted. its estimated that into 2024 more than 6,000 remain at large amd have not been caught and prosecuted, and more than 22,000 rapes were comitted by another 18,000 illegal immigrants.
“More than 480,000 deaths annually (per CDC) (including deaths from secondhand smoke) from smoking. Sooo… since 2000, (accounting for variances per year and rounding) at least 11,000,000 people have been killed due to tobacco smoking incidents.”
Based on all those stats, all the more reason we need laws that protect people from themselves. Individuals have only one life to live. It should be the purpose of government to ensure everyone gets to live a full life.
NBC’s Terrible Journalism Blasted Over Magazine Disconnect Story.
h ttps://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2024/12/17/nbcs-terrible-journalism-blasted-over-magazine-disconnect-story-n1227175
Gun Store Thief Gets Sweetheart Deal From Biden’s DOJ.
h ttps://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/12/17/gun-store-thief-gets-sweetheart-deal-from-bidens-doj-n1227179
Former Sheriff’s Captain Receives Jail Time for Role in California Carry Scandal.
h ttps://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/12/17/former-sheriffs-captain-receives-jail-time-for-role-in-california-carry-scandal-n1227177
The only gun I have never been able to remove a magazine disconnect safety is on the Bersa BP9CC. The way it’s designed I’ll have to design and fabricate a replacement part. If anyone has ever been able to actually do this please let me know or post a YouTube video.
A few of the pistols I have purchased have had the mag disconnect. They are relatively simple to remove which in my opinion makes the firearm safer, not having the disconnect. There is no mechanical device that can beat just safe handling practices.
Slapshot. and a tanfoglio gt26.
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