Well, yes. Not doing that kind of thing is part of what makes them a responsible gun owner. However, while some people argue that all gun owners should be responsible, I don’t think anyone argues that they all currently are.
Moms Demand Action, an anti-gun group, has been pressuring Target in Texas to ban openly carried firearms in their stores (no, they don’t sell firearms). It doesn’t seem impossible that some rabid anti-gun supporter dreamed this up as a way to make a point.
It also seems possible that some criminal felt cornered and left it there coincidentally, in which case I would expect them to find fingerprints on it. I hope we hear back more about this. If the incident did have an anti-gun motivation, it’s going to set that movement back a bit.
I agree with the hypothesis that someone had it illegally and wanted to ditch it quick.
Why would they have done it in South Carolina then?
Sorry, my irony detector didn’t go ding. Where’s the irony here?
While I don’t discount the seriousness of the situation and the potential for Very Bad Things to Happen here, a real gun is significantly heavier than a toy gun, and I know that by age 7 or so I could easily distinguish a fake from a real gun if I was holding it or that close to it. Yes, at first glance you might mistake one for the other, or at a distance, but by the time you pick it up you’re going to notice more weight at the very least.
There is also the notion that children in stores should be supervised by adults (and, working in retail, I have to say MOST parents do this even if there’s a lot of whining about those who don’t) and children should be taught not to touch what’s not theirs. Granted, the toy aisle is an area where these two are hard to enforce.
However, the above three points - identifiable differences between real and toy guns, parental supervision, and teaching children to behave - does reduce the likelihood someone would get shot, injured, or killed. It’s not like the gun is going to leap up of its own accord, or a child picking up a gun will be compelled to start firing. Tragedy isn’t automatic in these situations. Could we please stop with the hyperventilating?
Seriously, stores are full of hazardous items, are we going to ban bottles of bleach, baseball bats, and anything else that could potentially result in “unfathomable tragedy”?
Actually… I can imagine stuff a whole lot sicker than that. If you can’t, consider yourself fortunate.
I’m having trouble imagining someone accidentally leaving a gun in a toy aisle. They’re valuable items, after all, and not generally carried in one’s hand like car keys.
No, they don’t.
Even in stores that do sell guns, the guns in the store for sale are not loaded. Ammunition and guns are stored in separate, locked cases (or long guns might be chained down). You can’t just wander up, pick 'em up, and start loading.
^ This.
It’s almost certainly some person with an illegal weapon feeling they’re about to be caught by store security dumping the gun. The penalty for walking around merely looking suspicious is pretty much non-existent, the worst you’ll get is asked to leave the store. Wandering around with an illegal weapon can send you to jail even if you’re behaving yourself.
I think such false flag operations are more fantasy than reality. Every gun crime in recent memory that made the national news has a group of seriously deluded individuals harassing survivors because they think its an Obama plan to ban guns. In fact, given such a history, its more likely some pro-gun person planted the gun there in order to blame it on anti-gun activists.
However, I would not attribute something like this to maliciousness when I can attribute it to stupidity. Some idiot probably took it out and left it there.
If no one finds it ironic that a minimum-wage “don’t steal shit” staffer probably managed to prevent a **loss **of much greater kind, never mind.
The implications I’ve seen so far is that it was deliberately left, for reasons than might be inferred but are as yet unproven.
If a licensed carrier was so stupid as to put his loaded piece down - at all, much less in the toy aisle - and then forget it - and now we’re talking “forget it for so long that it becomes a public safety issue,” and has not shown up to 'fess up, despite the fact that the gun will be traced right to his hip… well. There’s reassurance in the whole system for ya.
If any person suddenly felt compelled to ditch the weapon and instead of dropping it on a high shelf, behind some adult shit, where it would eventually be found more or less safely, or even recovered later, instead of setting it down on top of a bunch of Fisher-Price boxes… well, again. Finding such a weapon behind the vacuum cleaners or ladies dainties wouldn’t have even made the news.
What? The security folks at the store I work at are nowhere near minimum-wage. A loss prevention officer isn’t the stock boy or general clerk, they’re typically someone with some significant training or experience in law enforcement or security work. The ones I know are about an even split between former cops and former military.
These aren’t the licensed security folks that might be stationed at the door. You typically don’t see the LPO’s, and if you do, you won’t recognize them because they’re in “civilian” clothing.
Why do you assume this was a licensed carrier? I think it was some criminal type dropping a weapons because he was afraid he was about to to get caught.
And he didn’t give a damn where he left it as long as it was not found on his person.
My guess is this was an accident. Some guy was probably carried his gun in a makeshift holster and it fell out. Maybe he tucked it in his boot or someplace foolish like that.
Yeah, I’m going for accident too, it happens even to the supposedly well trained. Last year I was at my local restaurant/bar hangout and a loaded gun was found in the men’s bathroom.
A short time later a rather embarrassed Oregon State Police officer returned to pick it up.
For what conceivable reason would someone; A. Take out their weapon in the toy aisle of a Target. B. Set it down on boxes of toys C. forget it was there and D. apparently not return for it. I take it this hypothetical person is one of those law abiding gun owners that we shouldn’t be worrying about.
In that case though, they’re hunting rifles, not handguns. (AFAIK)
He wanted to make sure the GI Joe action figures knew he was armed, just in case.
Ever worn a holstered gun? It’s awkward when you’re bending over. So if a customer was checking out stuff on lower shelves, they might have taken their gun out and put it down. As for why they forgot to pick it back up and didn’t return for it later on - people can be stupid.
I’m not saying this is acceptable behavior. But it’s conceivable behavior.
No I haven’t, I’ve never had any reason to. Perhaps then they shouldn’t be carrying one around if they can’t be responsible about it.
3 more reasons why much of the world thinks America has gone mad:
#3: They sell guns in Wallmart
#2: People take loaded handguns into a Target store and no one bats an eye
#1: People leave loaded hand guns lying around in Target stores and men’s toilets and with a shrug of the shoulders pass it off as “oh well, someone must have forgot it”
They have always sold guns at Walmart. They used to sell guns at Sears back when I was a kid. They’re are actually fewer stores selling guns than there used to be.
Really? Then why the news articles and everyone getting into a tizzy? This is NOT a normal occurrence in the US, that’s why it’s newsworthy.
So you completely missed where a number of us have stated our concerns this was a criminal of some sort leaving a gun behind deliberately out of fear of being caught with it?
As for toilet boy - that’s flat out irresponsible.
There was much agitation that Oswald bought his rifle by mail rather than at a store.
I’d say if anything bothers me about the responses in this thread, it boils down to:
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Well, carrying a weapon is a real uncomfortable bitch and sometimes you just have to take it out of your holster/belt/sock/boot and lay it down somewhere, y’know?
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Of course it was a dirty, thoughtless criminal type who don’t give no shit about anyone else who carefully set a loaded pistol on top of toy boxes.
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On purpose. Yeah, riiiiiiight.
I do feel comforted to live in a great nation where stalwart defenders of gun rights can read the same rather skimpy article I did and justify nearly every possibility, cuz, y’know, it was a handgun, not something dangerous like a pack of razor blades or rat poison.
Well that is comforting.
As I see it it became newsworthy because the gun was left in the toy department, not because someone carried it in there in the first place. In that article, the Target spokesperson claims they abide by Federal and State laws so do not ban them from shops where allowed. Gun control advocates are being criticised for seeing it as another reason to ban the carrying of handguns.
There are far too many responses on here that someone laid it down and forgot about it, so no big deal. Even one person thinking like that is too many in my opinion.