A friend of mine named Andrew threw a small get together of friends to hang out in his basement. There were video games, food, and a lot of joking. Andrew hadn't been feeling well and was becoming easily irritable. Apparently he found some of the people to be rather annoying and instead of throwing them out of his house, he chose to deal with them by threat. He threatened that if the named people did not stop bothering him, he would shoot them with a paintball gun. He informed them right as he was loading his Tippmann 98 Custom paintgun. This kind of scared some of the other guys, but he assured them the safety was on and wouldn't shoot unless the annoyed him. One of the guys freaked out and jumped on Andrew and wrestled for the gun. Andrew threw him aside and for no reason opened his mouth, put the barrel of the paintgun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. His eyes widened as he fell to his knees coughing up blood and refusing to let anyone call an ambulance. After about two hours time, he stopped coughing kicked everyone out of his house. His throat was so swollen that he had difficulty breathing and couldn't eat for about three days. He couldn't talk for about a week more. Once he was able to open his mouth without too much pain, he noticed he had shot his uvula clean off. It was gone. About a month or so later he discovered he had no gag reflex.

Now, you may be asking yourself just exactly why might someone shoot themself with a 300 feet per second firing paintball gun in the mouth. Well, Andrews reasoning was simply "to prove the safety was on".

He still doesn't have much of a gag reflex, but his uvula does appear to be growing back (somehow). He never suffered any long term damage or anything like that (which is rather lucky) and is back to his normal self. We all make fun of him about it from time to time. The best part of the story is this, his parents never found out!

Submitted on 01/06/2007

Submitted by: Brandon
Reference: Sometime in 2004

Copyright © 2007 DarwinAwards.com

Graham said:
Neutral: Personal Account
His parents will find out NOW, though! Indeed a very stupid thing to do (guns, guns, guns). Thanks for sending this in, Brandon.

James said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Sounds like the kid was disturbed. Nevertheless this is quite bizarre, and since it's a PA there's no harm in voting to share it with the readers! Thanks, Brandon!

Jack said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Considering how many people die or are seriously injured by blanks, he's quite fortunate to have survived.

Chip said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Wow! Impressive story. Never heard one quite like it. I am somewhat surprised there was not more damage done. Thanks for sending the story, Brandon

Shadow said:
Neutral: Personal Account
a fun little Personal account involving guns... a good read tho. Thanks!

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