Maybe he could wait until "that" principle is in the car next time!!!

There is no such thing as an 'accidental discharge.' A firearm only fires when the trigger is pulled. Every certified police and military firarms training regimen preaches 'finger off the trigger' discipline. Safety levers are a crutch and it is generally bad practice to rely on mechanical safeties and ignore the fundamentals of proper safe gun handling.

Remote possibility, since this was inside the vehicle in cramped quarters, that something else got caught inside the trigger guard.

Was he reading the newspaper, listening to right wing wacko radio, watching TV, or just practicing his craft?

No principles were involved. The person being protected is a principal.

Oops. Guess we should be glad nobody got hurt, and I'm certain he will be much more careful in his weapon handling in the future.

Beyond that, hey, stuff happens.

Souds like Barney Fife is alive and well at the Secret Service. How about one bullet per agent?

Hey, hey, hey...more sound competence from the bush team! WHOOT!

what was the car guilty of?

REALLY, I didn't know the gun was loaded!!

Lucky he didn't shoot himself in the foot, hope he learned to be more careful.

Motive: It causes the car to go into the shop for a check-up.

Car 54 where are you...........OOOOH OOOH OOOOH

Because the rest of 'Bush's' government is as incompetent as he is.

I think he listening to left wing wacko radio, Oh wait, there isn't one, they all went bankrupt.....LOL

Another nonstory by the democrat tv network. Yawwwwwwn

The car was guilty until proved innocent. Secret Service thought it was better to shoot first ask questions later. Rumor has it was a foreign car.

Clear cut case the surge is working, the media is running out of "road side bomb" storys......

He missed... I believe he needs more practice. BTW, since we're talking about Iran, why didn't ABC report on the demonstrations there?

Unfortunately you can't blame Bush for this one... The administration does not hire Secret Service Agents.

Thank you Mr Reece for pointing this out, now which ones are being incompetent for not doing their research more thoroughly?

Ummm that would be the morons who try to blame everything on the president.

Stupid is as stupid does!
What was this guy doing?
Wow!!
I hope I never stand or sit next to "those" guys!!!

George

Accidental is accidental. Leave that agent alone.

Nice choice of wording: "...one of their weapons accidently fired.", gun control much? The weapon is at the mercy of the person at the trigger, just like a car to the driver, a baseball bat to the slugger. The gun did not do a damn thing.

I got to witness an "accidental discharge" of a firearm last week.

I locked the slide back on this particular pistol, checked the magazine well and the chamber, and they were empty. I then handed it to the person in question, who inserted the magazine, released the slide and inexplicably pulled the trigger.

Fortunately no one was hurt. The muzzle was pointed toward a body of water at the time.

As it turns out, this pistol is of a type which requires pulling the trigger to decock it, and this apparently is what he was trying to do, having forgotten he had chambered a round.

In other words, he was careless. The gun is entirely innocent.

"If you ain't been throwed -
then you ain't rode."

Accidents do happen and firearms do go off accidentally. What kind of comment is this! "The spokesman would not confirm the type of gun used to shoot the automobile." Why do you have to put a picture of America's number on enemy at the top of the story?

Maybe the Secret Service agent was hearing voices: "Secret Service Agent-Pig, your mother doesn't like you."

Accidental Discharge? Just ask our Vice-President about that....

Was it an American car or an illegal alien?

Some secretive service person is in need of a TIME OUT...bad secretive service person bad...

Amen to those who say there is no such thing as an accidental discharge. I have been carrying a weapon for over 15 years and it was explained to me by a firearms instructor early on that it should be called a NEGLIGENT discharge. Everyone should be thankful that no one was hurt at the UN (unlike the earlier incident at the White House), and the agent in question should be disciplined and undergo mandatory retraining.

Everything should be negligent and not accidental? No more car accidents. The malfunctioning traffic light from a thunderstorm was negligent. My neighbor slipped on her stairs and fell. The spider she stepped on which made it slippery was negligent. I was at the firing range and my Glock misfired. The "instructor" came over picked the gun up and it fired before he barely touched it. Guess the magazine or slide was negligent. Get a life.

For the record, guns CAN fire without touching the trigger, I've seen it more than once. It's very unlikely, but it is possible. The firing mechanism is spring loaded and held back by a "sear" which is usually activated by the trigger. There are well documented "AD's" 1. slipping sears, glocks are reported to have this happen while unattended, slam fires- the firing pin carries momentum forward and hits the primer under it's own momentum, cook off's - the chamber is so hot that next round auto loaded into it just overheats and fires without the primer being struck (more common in semi-auto rifles) and there are many more. There IS such a thing as an accidental discharge, which is why you always keep the barrel pointed away from people.
With that said, this is most likely the case of an agent chambering a round or holstering a pistol with his finger in the way. The Secret Service doesn't buy cheap firearms. Most are issued Sig P229 in caliber 357sig for personal protection detail. It's about a $900 handgun and extremely reliable. Slam fires, cook offs, and sear slipping are pretty much non-existant in those models, so it was likely operator error. And these Secret Service agents are the same ones that will protect WHOEVER is in the office of the President and Vice-President, they hold an alligence only to the office they protect, not the person in the office. They work for the Tresury department, not the administration or even the executive branch.

Actually they work for Homeland Security now..not treasury