Steering Shaft short on ignition switch possible?

Sounds like a dead short somewhere down the column that you can't see. I had a friend that replaced his switch & his tach was screwed to the top of the column. He wondered why one screw was longer than the other, he found out quickly. The long screw contacted the hot wire in the harness & shorted it to ground. He swapped out the harness & put short screws in to not repeat the incident.