Last week, during a professional training operation, I had an accidental discharge of a firearm. This is despite at least 15 years of professional experience with firearms, plus many, many years of training and safety with firearms beforehand.
I was in the military for four years, including a year as an armorer. I have trained with weapons of all different types. I have trained other people on how to use firearms. I am meticulous about firearm safety. It's been kind of one of my badges of honor for teaching people how to use them: how many people go, Tim knows his shit. He knows how to be safe. So that's why, having this happen to me, it's still taking some time for my brain to wrap around what happened, and it's sometimes still a little bit hard to discuss because of the shame that comes with being someone that it happened to.
I should probably talk about where it happened. I, until about a week ago, appendix-carried my CCW, my concealed carry weapon, meaning that I had a holster in the front, and me being as safe as I thought I was, as safe as I always planned to be, I've always carried one in the chamber because I've wanted to be able to engage a potential threat without having to rack the slide back.
Well, all of that came to a head a week ago when I went to, during this training, during a full—that's one thing I really want to hammer home. This was not screwing around off in the hills. It's not even on camera because this was not for the Northwind Aerial Channel. This was just a full-blown, planned-out, scheduled professional training. And I was getting ready to do a course of fire. And as I went to draw my weapon from the holster, it went off in the holster. I'm not going to sit here and say that I didn't accidentally finger the trigger, because I don't know.
Will we ever know what caused it? Probably not. I don't know, because it very likely could have gotten caught on my shirt or my belt or the holster itself. When I'm feeling mentally and physically able, I'm going to do some experimenting of my own, and I will make a follow-up video to this later on.
I drew my weapon from my holster, from the time of the proctor going beep with the stopwatch to the round going off. Um, probably less than half a second. Um, the round went through my holster, it went through my penis, and it went through my left testicle, so I am, as several of my fire department buddies have lovingly started calling me, I'm Half-Sack now. That's my call sign.
I was rushed into surgery where my left testicle was removed. And right now I have to wear a catheter for probably the next month or so because of damage to my urinary tract. The bullet center-punched both my penis and scrotum and left testicle. To give you an idea of how... how good of an aim that I have, it went through the seam of my jeans, in the pants of my jeans.
That's how center-punched it was. It's a miracle that I'm alive. Three degrees' difference in aim and that bullet would have been in my femoral artery. Um, this is probably one of the things that makes me, you know, cringe the most: it was a hollow-point round. Um, I did not bring any FMJ training rounds with me, so I used the ammunition that I carry every day because I have a plethora of it and figured, why not use it up? I need to get some newer rounds anyways. These rounds are, you know, quite a bit old. It was a Glock 23, .40 Smith & Wesson hollow-point round.
It's the weapon I've carried since I bought it. It's been my concealed carry weapon. And it's the holster that I've worn for at least five years, I think. Shit happens. It was an accident. It was a training accident. I am embarrassed. I am feeling a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and a lot of self-hatred for it. That is getting better.
I am healing mentally and physically. The physical healing is going quite well. I have a lot of stitches down there. I would happily send you some photos or show some photos on here, but then, you know, I'd end up being a Minecraft YouTuber. YouTube would probably delete the channel, so we're going to leave my—we're going to leave those bits unexposed to the internet as a whole. It's not a pretty sight. It did a lot of damage, and it's quite painful. As you can see, I'm leaning forward on my, you know, my cane right now because it sucks, especially to stand.
I've been spending a lot of time laying down and recovering, which is hard for a guy like me who wants to be up doing things, especially as harvest is starting very soon. Another source of a major amount of guilt is that I'm unable to help out with harvest at the moment or any sort of farm work. Because even standing right now, the catheter puts me in so much pain from all of the incisions and everything down there. That I'm basically useless.
And standing here right now, as soon as I finish recording this video and start uploading it, I'm going to go back and lay down because I'm in a considerable amount of pain. I'm thankfully off narcotics already. I ditched those as soon as I could because the opiate dependency scares the living hell out of me. And I was starting to get the withdrawal symptoms of weird, fuzzy headaches and just craving them for the sake of craving them.
So I haven't had narcotics, and tomorrow will be a week since I've had my last dose of narcotics. And I'm down to just a medium dose of ibuprofen, generally at night, to help me sleep. As you can see, my spirits are still pretty high. It's taken a while to get here. This has definitely been one of the most depressing moments of my entire life, especially the day after surgery. It sucked majorly. And it's going to be a long, long road to healing.
I will get back into using firearms. Right now, I probably should get myself into therapy first. I've had a lot of friends and family, and even some doctors, recommend it due to the amount of stress in my life and, you know, the amount of accumulated post-traumatic stress from 11 years as a first responder. And now this. When I even think about pulling out a firearm to shoot it, I start getting nauseous and my hands get sweaty, and they start trembling a little bit.
We will get back to it. And I will bounce back from this. And I'm already trying to find ways to use my experiences to help others, to counsel others, guide others through injuries such as this. And I would never be anywhere close to as healed up as I already am if it weren't for the overwhelming support of friends and family, both online and in real life.
Going back to the accident itself, from the moment I hit the ground, I was surrounded by people I call brothers and sisters, friends, family, and colleagues. It was, you know, if I had to choose a moment to blow my shit smooth off, as the kids say, this was the time to do it. I had paramedic... I had a paramedic right next to me. I had people who have been in emergency services for their entire life. I was surrounded by so many professionals that took care of me immediately, rendered my firearms safe, got my clothes off, got me out of the fire ant nest that I fell into.
That was fun. Kept me calm even as I went into shock. I'm going to save that for the next video where I discuss the shock because that was a whole thing. And... Even from the moment I got to the hospital and went into surgery, I never felt alone. The very next day I woke up, and I had people calling in to check on me. I had visitors the entire time. My pastor's coming out today. There hasn't been a day that's gone by where I haven't had someone stop in and check on me, either in person or multiple times online.
So... Thank you all so much for watching. We'll keep you guys updated on the recovery process as we go along. I truly believe talking and laughing about things, especially, are some of the best ways to heal. And I'm going to make sure I do both of those. So, this is definitely the most vulnerable I've ever felt putting something on the internet. And I've filmed myself in American flag short shorts and nothing else on the internet.
So, yeah, if you want to leave mean comments calling me a dumbass for having an accidental discharge, carrying one in the chamber, carrying appendix carry, whatever... Go ahead and leave those comments. Just know I hate myself way more than you guys could ever hate me, so do what you're going to do, but you're not going to get to me. For everyone else who's been so aboveboard, so understanding and helpful with this injury, I cannot thank you enough. You're truly one of the reasons that I'm still standing here today. Thank you all so much for watching, and I'll see you next time. Now, get off my lawn.
