Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — Guns Discharged Without Caps. [ARTICLE]

Guns Discharged Without Caps.

It seems almost impossible that a gun should be discharged without the presence of either cap or flint; yet a wellauthenticated case of the kind seems to have occurred, recently, near Napa, as narrated by the Register, of that place. It seems that Benjamin Bergrin, being out with some companions duck-shooting, had just fired one barrel, and hearing the shot loose in the other turned up the gun into his left hand to take out the charge, taking the precaution to first remove the cap. Notwithstanding the absence of the cap, the gun went off and made a bad wound in his left hand. It seems almost incredible that a gun could be discharged after the cap is removed, but the phenomena is accounted for by experts on the hypothesis that the percussive quality of the cap had—the weather being damp—adhered to the nipple of the gun and been sufficient to explode it on being jarred, incident to shaking the charge out, the hammer being down. That this theory is a correct one is confirmed by a similar accident which occurred a few days previous to one of the Asylum apprentices who had been shooting, and having both charges left in his gun thought to save them by leaving them in till next day, when he would go out again. To this end he removed both caps, let one hammer down carefuljy and was lowering the other, when it slipped from his thumb on to the nipple and discharged the barrel. The othej- barrel went off at the same instant, as is supposed, by the shock of the first one, both discharging their contents up through the roof. The youth had a narrow escape, and the two accidents confirm'the theory of the total depravity of guns, “ dangerous without either lock, stock or barrel, because a man once whipped his wife to death with a ramrod.’’.— Pacific Rural Press.