Perhaps if the pistol was in the “cocked and locked” condition, the discharge wouldn’t have happened. For certain it wouldn’t happen if the chamber was empty.
Sorry for your misery. Get well soon.
The chamber being empty would massively increase the time it takes to bring the pistol into action and introduce another potential point of failure at a time when milliseconds count.
I am not familiar enough with the Witness family to say whether it *can* be carried cocked and locked, as many later pistols cannot. Even it it were capable of doing so, there’s no shortage of pistols where the safety blocking the hammer from falling in a drop scenario isn’t really strong enough. Certainly old and worn 1911s and Browning High Powers have been known to do it too, but that’s more of a ‘your gun is old, worn and broken’ issue than a design or materials choice issue.