Virginia: After an Unintended Discharge of Your Weapon — What’s Next?

A common question we get is what do I do if I have an accidental discharge of my firearm? Well, the first thing you should do is render aid and assistance if there should be any injury. If it’s property damage, that’s something that can be dealt with at the time, if need be, or later but if there’s injury you must deal with it right away. That injury is significant.

Then you must call 9-1-1, and when you call 9-1-1 and engage with that 9-1-1 operator you need to only tell them the basic information, which would include who you are, the address, the fact there’s been a need for emergency medical services and then you hang up. You do not need to engage with the 9-1-1 operator, You’re still in a situation and the less you say the better you are going to be. At that point you call your U.S. LawShield representatives and try and see if they can assist you with respect to what to do, because there’s a number of circumstances that can occur and the issues can be somewhat different with respect to those circumstances.

At that point if the police are involved (and they typically will be when there’s a discharge of a firearm) then you should not make any statements to those officers unless and until you have a lawyer present. Because they will be investigating as to whether a crime has been committed and typically in this type of situation you can see a charge such as reckless handling of a firearm or that can be more serious depending upon the circumstances of the event.