Per Krissy's request in her comment to my rather brilliant compare and contrast chart from my previous post, here's the story of how the bullet hole ended up in the floor of my Jeep.

Several years ago, I bought a little .380 pistol for my (now ex-) wife for protection. My profession at the time involved dealing with some shady folks who got irritated at me from time to time, and I thought it best, in case any of them should visit my home, that she should have some means of protecting herself.

After I bought the pistol, I took her out to show her how to shoot it. I explained to her how it worked, how to hold it, how to aim, and how to squeeze on the exhale, and how to keep it safe. She seemed to grasp the concept, so I let her pull the trigger with no bullet in the chamber, just so she could get the feel of it. Once she was comfortable with that, I loaded it and gave her the fire at will command.

She fired exactly one shot. It missed the target by at least 20 feet, leading me to believe that the safest place in town if she were armed would be behind the target.

The report from the gun was loud enough (that little sucker could yell, a lot more than I expected) and the recoil was harsh enough that she apparently was offended by it. After she fired the shot, she turned around and, with a wide-eyed look of sheer terror on her face, handed the gun to me. Unfortunately, the safety lesson was apparently lost in her discombobulation, and she was pointing the gun directly at my midsection. This, of course, led me to the conclusion that the most dangerous place in town if she were armed, was behind her.

Luckily, no further shots were fired and I didn't suffer any wounds. Not that a dinky little .380 would do a whole lot of damage, but I was worried that it might get infected.

The gun made it back into my bag and I forgot about it until the next time I went hunting. During a break in the hunt, I took the pistol out and decided to take a few shots with it. It was very cold that day, and I think all the gunk the manufacturer put on it to keep it from rusting in the box while it was still on the shelf got really thick, and the gun jammed on the first shot. My hands were so cold that I couldn't clear the jam, so I just set it on the floor of my Jeep and went on with the hunt.

A few hours later, while we were all standing around telling dirty jokes and scratching ourselves as men are wont to do when doing manly things, we heard a muffled boom from the direction of the Jeep. At first, I thought a tire had blown out, but a quick walkaround revealed four intact tires, so I didn't think much more about it.

After we packed everything up, I climbed in the Jeep and spied the pistol on the floor. It was facing in the opposite direction than that which I had laid it when I left it there, and there was a spent shell casing on the passenger's seat. It was then that I realized that it was a sunny day, so despite the cold temperatures, the inside of my Jeep had warmed up quite a bit, and apparently that gunked-up gunk that had made the pistol jam must have relaxed a little bit, and the bullet had slid in the chamber, where it had an encounter with the firing pin and discharged.

That's all. Nothing exciting. No shootouts with the police during a high-speed chase or anything. Just a gun that had a mind of its own.

So there.