Unlucky, lucky or just plain dumb?

For as long as I can remember, every time I read a story or heard one on the news about a gun accidently going off and injuring or killing someone, I was skeptical.  First of all, if you drop a gun 100 times it may go off once or twice.  Even then what are the chances that when it does it will be aimed at someone and not just blank space?

The other day I was sitting in the kitchen reading my book and my loaded pistol was lying on the counter.  My pistol is a type of pellet gun but does shoot lead pellets powered by a shell about the size of a 22.  Anyhow, I put my book flat on the counter and pushed it inward so it would not fall on the floor.  I pushed it just a little too far and the pistol fell off the corner of the counter and was heading toward the floor.  I reached over to grab it but was too late.  It hit the floor, went off and I felt immediate pain in my forehead!  A weapon had been dropped and injured a human being, ME!

When a pistol drops, it has basically 4 places to land on: left side, right side, bottom and top.  In order to discharge, it must hit directly on the hammer.  What are the odds?  If it does hit directly on the hammer what are the odds that the barrel will be pointing directly at someone's head?  If you think of the range of the pistols aim like a circle, wherein it could shoot in any direction, a human head takes up a very small portion of that circle.

Well, as they say in the westerns, it just grazed me.  It put a furrow about 1/8 inch wide and 2" long in my scalp just above my right eye.  Unlucky that it hit me when it went off; lucky that it just grazed me and didn't hit my eye; and, dumb for putting a loaded pistol so close to the edge of a counter!