So, this fucking moron has a child look into a loaded gun before he discharges it into his leg. Some gun safety there, idiot.
Ya know, I’m not a rabid anti-gun person. I will most likely never own one but I haven’t generally been opposed to responsible gun ownership. This story does give one pause though, and will probably give the anti-gun crowd some, ahem, ammunition.
It is a little hard to sell the “responsible gun owner” spiel when a licensed peace officer, giving a gun safety lecture, accidentally shoots himself, after potentially putting a child in danger.
I would hope the agent had the child look into the open area where the slide was pulled back rather than down the barrel. Taking the word of a child that there was no bullet was pretty dumb. I don’t know much about guns, but I do know never take anyone’s word for it.
I have a hard time with this, it keeps getting reported as an “Accidental Discharge” (AD) but I don’t think that there is such a thing, this was a “Negligent Discharge” (ND) plain and simple, I spend a lot of time handling guns and the prospect of getting a .40 caliber haircut keeps me on my toes safety wise, this guy is/was an idiot, just because you are in Law Enforcement does NOT mean that you know how to safely handle a weapon (obviously this guy did not).
While this incident is profoundly stupid and troubling, folks shouldn’t take it as a given that the guy had a child looking down the barrell of a gun, or relied on a child to confirm that the weapon was unloaded – the article doesn’t say any such thing:
It’s blatantly obvious that he had an audience member look into the chamber (not the barrel) to see if the gun was loaded. You can’t even tell if a gun is loaded by looking into the barrel! I’m not pro-NRA by any means, but this sort of ignorance/assumption sums up many of the problems with the anti-NRA movement.
Did he actually have the kid look into the barrel? I pictured it as the kid looking into the chamber. Small difference, as the bullet doesn’t exit at that part.
he implied that the kid deliberately didn’t tell the officer about the bullet and therefore the ‘accident’ was more of a prank by the kid
at least that’s how I read it. I suppose I could be wrong
Well, to be fair, there was a healthy load of ignorance and assumption that preceded this agent firing a round into his leg in a room full of kids, wouldn’t you agree?
Whether or not someone looked into the barrel or not doesn’t lessen the severity of the situation, IMO.
On a serious note, I pictured the child looking in the chamber as well, though even that isn’t reassuring when the gun was in the hands of a cop that shot himself.
Come to think of it, there is no way that kid was looking down the barrel. If that were the case, the cop would have been fired immediately. Forget the fact he was teaching gun safety which would have made it twice as stupid.
