Barr accidentally discharged a pistol that was handed to him by a supporter at a campaign event in 2002. The bullet struck a glass door—no one was injured in the incident. One of Barr’s sons later attacked a man dressed as Yosemite Sam who showed up at a campaign event to mock the then-Congressman over the incident.

A Chicago Tribune reporter doing a story on Brown’s involvement in the civil war in El Salvador in March 1984 witnessed Brown become the victim of an accidental shooting when one of Brown’s friends pulled the trigger of a gun he thought was unloaded. The friend shot himself through the hand and the bullet struck Brown in the calf. “You stupid son a bitch, you shot me,” Brown said. “And now I can’t go to El Salvador.”

In Vol. 10, No. 10 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in September 2002, Cooper wrote, “Note that riflery is not an exclusively masculine province. The ladies can shoot right along with the gentlemen, if they wish to. Driving, on the other hand, does seem to be a man's job.” He went on to mock the accidental shooting of a tourist, writing, “We hear from Namibia that a German tourist's holiday down there came to an end when he was mistaken for a baboon and shot by a local farmer. If this poor fellow looked enough like a baboon to be mistaken for one, he may be better off dead.” Turning to the topic of slavery Cooper added, “This talk about reparations for slavery is so silly that one could expect it to fade of its own embarrassment, but people keep after it. In the first place, it is unreasonable to ask anyone to make reparations for something he did not do, nor cause others to do. In the second place, if you study this subject you will realize that slavery may be considered a natural condition of civilized man. As our favorite columnist, Thomas Sowell, has pointed out, there is hardly anybody on earth whose ancestors have not enslaved or been enslaved at sometime in the past. It is a lot more sensible, as well as more humane, to put the losers to work than to kill them. I have been amused by the tale of Richard Burton, the famed explorer of Arabia, who was a crusader against slavery but went to considerable trouble to acquire the necessary slaves of his own when setting forth for Mecca. As even Al Sharpton should note, the Negro slaves who were brought to America by the colonists had one and all been enslaved by their black brothers in Africa. Perhaps these activists should put in to Nigeria or the Congo for their reparations.” He continued on the topic of race, writing, “Perhaps you will not believe it, but I recently picked up from a British publication that some movie producer is now contemplating making a movie about the man who crossed the Alps with the elephants—casting Denzel Washington as the man! So much for public education!” Cooper was upset because Denzel Washington is African-American, and added, “If we can cast Denzel Washington as Hannibal, I think we might try to cast Brad Pitt as Booker T. Washington.”

In a wide-ranging interview with The Independent in May 2006, Nugent—who shared that both he and his teenage son have experienced accidental firearm discharges—fired a handgun out of window of the truck he was driving and made the following comments:

• “I say if somebody robs you, shoot 'em. I'd like all thieves killed. And all rapists. And carjackers. No more graffiti. No
  more...”
• Speaking on the Iraq War: “Our failure has been not to Nagasaki them.”
• “How do you get peace, love and understanding? First of all you have to find all the bad people. Then you kill them.”
• When asked if his fellow NRA board members think that he goes too far in his public comments, Nugent said, “Most of them. I say that I want the rape victim to shoot the rapist. They agree with me privately. They think stating this publicly is bad PR. They're wrong.”