No, accidents don't "just happen", what kind of nutty pseudo-religious tripe is that? A gun can't do anything by itself, it's an inanimate object (your fear is irrational, you are a hoplophobe) ... if you follow elementary safety rules, you will not have an accident. For this "accident" to have occurred (presuming it was even one, we're all assuming it was), this guy would've had to break not just one but multiple elementary safety rules, all of them quite obvious and commonsense. It's like car "accidents", 90% of them are not accidents, I actually wish they'd call them "purposes" not "accidents", because it's not an accident when you make a purposeful decision, on purpose, to break road safety rules and risk lives. Less than 5% of road accidents are caused by mechanical failures or problems with the road, the other 95% are caused by people deliberately engaging in illegal and risky behaviour on the road. If you on purpose take a gun and not check if it is loaded, and you on purpose point it towards yourself (in this case into his left chest, nogal --- almost impossible), and you on purpose pull the trigger, then which part of that, pray tell, is an "accident" in any meaningful sense of the word? Accident my ass, this is either a "purpose", or he was murdered and it was set up to look like an accident (probably more likely, in my opinion, at least statistically ... we don't have all the on-the-scene facts here). Or maybe it was a suicide set up to look like an accident, in order to let his family claim life insurance (such policies usually have a suicide exception clause, but if it was an "accident" then that wouldn't apply). There are numerous possibilities. But think about this, this guy had to turn the gun around to point it *into his left chest* AND then insert his finger behind the trigger and then PUSH the trigger (as the gun is now pointing towards himself). Just use your head, does that sound plausible, unless he was stoned out of his socket or something.
I've always found that people who like to state the phrase "accidents happen" are also the people who like to be absolved of the responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.
*Edit* Hmm:
http://www.aaimedicine.org/journal-of-insurance-medicine/jim/2000/032-04-0266.pdf ...
"a gun-cleaning ‘‘accident’’ is almost always an attempt to disguise a suicide"
