Details about this story

• Source: Sacramento Bee
• Date: April 13, 2008
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Andrew McIntosh
• Topics: Safety
• Data Types: State Data
• Description/Excerpt: As the tool's popularity surged during the building boom of the 2000s, a Sacramento Bee investigation found, nail gun injuries also took off despite decades of warnings from researchers and doctors that the guns are dangerous, especially in the automatic mode known as "contact trip." Driven by compressed air, the brawniest nail guns can blast 30 nails a minute that travel up to 490 feet per second, qualifying the nails as low-velocity missiles. In contact trip mode, with one pull of the trigger, they fire those missiles whenever the muzzle makes contact with a surface – including heads, hands, eyes and even chests.