Idaho woman sentenced for mailing loaded .357 Magnum

[benEzra]

6. Since guns "go off" when the trigger is pulled (accidentally or otherwise),

one can certainly speculate as to how the trigger was pulled. Unless the revolver was packed cocked (unlikely) and there was something in the package to pull the trigger, or the revolver was very old (pre-transfer-bar-safeties) and dropped exactly right onto the hammer spur (where was the packaging?), there are certainly interesting questions as to how it happened.

It wasn't necessarily nefarious (perhaps a postal employee figured out what it was, realized handguns aren't allowed in U.S. Mail, and was attempting to unpack it, for example), but guns don't just "go off" spontaneously.