I followed the recent thread about dumb injuries. I learned almost as much from that as I have from my own incidents of idiocy.
I noticed in the thread that a lot of injuries involve power nailers. This was a bit unnerving because I’ve recently bought my first two. While reading the thread, it occurred to me that my framer does not have a trigger guard.
Which leads to the questions —
Does the nailing gun that injured you have a trigger guard?
Might a guard have prevented the injury?
Might a guard cause as many injuries as it prevents?
Please note that I have no interest in, and no intent to start some silly class action against the tool companies. But if trigger guards make these things safer, then that will become a purchase criteria for my next gun.
Replies
I don't think a trigger guard would do any good. You already have to have the thing pressed against something to get it to fire.
Most injuries I've seen were from nails going through stuff and then into a hand. (Or other body part)
A couple have been from someone holding the trigger down and hitting the safety against their body somewhere.
Never seen a situation where a trigger guard would have helped.
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
It used to be that the only safety was at the shnoz end of the gun. Depress the nose and it would fire with trigger depressed. Don't keep your finger on the trigger and you should have no problem. Bounce fire is quick and repetitious, so on rare occasion you could shoot your boot to the deck. I now own a senco framing gun which had the option of bounce fire or restricted trigger. The nose on the restricted needs to be depressed before the trigger will work. No bounce fire possible. Since I use this alot for toenailing, the restricted trigger is preferred. Initially I had it set up bounce fire and too many times I heard the second nail land somewhere when toenailing. To my knowledge, the restricted fire is the safest you're gonna get outside of common sense. Best of luck.
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