That 3 million sue seems ridiculous, its like if I am shooting a potato to the street but a car passes and the potato hits the car, ricochets and hits my eye and I sue the driver.
Im just reading this sticky for the first time and it makes me want to share a similar but less extreme accident that happened about one month ago. By the way, I feel really, really sorry for you man.
I was messing with my pos marker gun and when I clicked the trigger it didnt fire. I automatically assumed that all of the air had leaked out. About 15 seconds later, I looked down the barrel and coincidentally, the piston which was jammed, slammed back and shot the 4mm ball bearing into my eye. I couldn't see anything.
after about 5 mins I regained vision and my parents took me to the E.R. Every thing was fuzzy. The doctor sent me home telling us to come back the next day to see a specialist. The specialist said that I had internal bleeding of the eye.
I had to miss one week of school to let it recover and he said that if I moved around too much their was a large chance that the wound may never recover
Luckily, here I am with it fully recovered telling you guys this as a warning. Never look down the barrel of ANYTHING even if its as small as a marker.
I was EXTREMELY lucky. First of all, the bearing missed the cornea by 2mm!! second of all, it was a round bearing instead of something pointed. Finally, I recovered fully. Im still into spudding and you guys will see me more on the site but I will NEVER look down the barrel of ANYTHING again again. Happy spudding guys and stay safe.
By now 'not-looking-down-the-barrel' for me has become such an instinct that I've managed to turn it into a form of OCD... I subconsciously avoid being in the "firing line" of any random bits of pipe and tubing that are in the area
And that's having never shot myself with anything (accidentally, anyway).
I feel sorry for you man. Unfortunately, you learned the lesson the hard way. Guys, and girls I suppose (that would be an interesting poll topic), I'm sure we all "know" general gun (cannon,etc) safety rules, but following them is so crucial. You are very lucky, but like you said could have been so tragic. Keep on top of your safety for your sake and those around you. Besides, the more incidents that occur from our cannons, the more likely they are to be outlawed completely. Not saying that would stop any of us, but just a hindrance that could be avoided.
But then again I say, I'm glad you are Okay. Smart shooting guys.
Wow, it stinks about what happened to your eye. Does it hurt when you look at bright lights since it's permanently dilated?
As a side note, I've never had something like this happen to me (although one of my friends was hit in the eye with a velcro dart once...Ouch), but I did have an experience with a ricochet that scared me pretty bad. I used to go target shooting with my air rifle every day after school. Being in middle school at the time, I didn't think much of what my backstop was and, one day, I decided to tack my targets on a block of wood... Bad idea. It didn't take long for a ricochet to come back and bounce off my eyeglasses. I've never really wanted to switch to contacts after that little incident.
Speaking of gun safety, I found this video while looking at trebuchets the other day. Can you spot the rather major safety fail?
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