A 13-year-old in Chicago takes his father’s pistol out of a lockbox and removes the magazine from the weapon. He shows the gun to a neighbor the same age, and pretends to fire it several times. Two former Marines in their 20s meet up to watch a Miami Dolphins game. One pulls out the Glock he just got for Christmas, taking out the magazine before handing it to the other, NBC reports. A 64-year-old grandfather in Texas ejects the magazine from his gun, preparing to clean it, pointing the barrel toward the wall. His grandson’s friend is in a bedroom on the other side. Each thinks the gun in their hand is unloaded because the magazine holding the bullets has been removed. No one realizes that there is still a single live round in each gun’s chamber, bullets that will kill their neighbor, their Marine buddy, and their grandson’s friend when they pull the trigger. It's a danger that gunmakers have been aware of since the advent of the first semiautomatic pistols, yet it continues to kill.
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 because many states only recently began reporting their data, and information on cases may be incomplete. NBC News found 41 cases that weren’t captured in the data. In 2021, the most recent year of federal data available, at least 42 people died in such accidents. People have also suffered grave injuries. 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. More than a hundred years ago, gunmakers devised a way to prevent this type of accident from ever happening. A small metal piece known as a magazine disconnect keeps a pistol from firing if the magazine is removed. Many gun safety advocates see the device as a simple solution to foreseeable tragedy — one that would work automatically, with no user effort or knowledge required. With guns increasingly purchased for personal safety rather than hunting, buyers have also gravitated toward new weapons less likely to have magazine disconnects. For many, having a bullet ready to fire at a moment's notice — even without a magazine in place — is seen as a benefit, not a drawback.