I pit gun fetishists who have accidents due to dumbass gun safety practices

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m tired of hearing about things like this:

Texas teen killed by his grandfather’s dumbass gun safety failure

and seeing no charges filed.

Synopsis: On a hunting trip, walking through woods, grandfather snagged his AK-47 trigger on a branch, discharging the ‘assault rifle’ into his 14-year-old grandson’s back.

Police say it’s an accident and are not filing charges.

It’s an accident, all right, but it’s not an act of God – someone is responsible for truly dumbass gun safety here. I say, if I can be chraged for driving unsafely and killing a teen, why not charge hunters for killing someone with their gun if the accident flowed demonstrably from unsafe practice?

And I want to see the “we’re all about safety, don’t worry” NRA file a friend-of-the-prosecutiuon brief asking for this guy’s gun permit and hunting license to be physically stripped from him in some ceremony that includes being slapped smartly across the face by some French officer. And jail time. If you actually preach gun safety and actually tell us you need guns to protect yourselves and you hate criminals, then let’s criminalize bad gun safety and let’s get the NRA to spend cold hard cash protecting us from THESE criminals.

I’m no gun fetishist; indeed, I don’t know too much technical stuff about shooting. But I’m not an unreasonably gun-fearing person either – we have guns in the house, I’ve been shooting, I was once asked to join a competitive college pistol team after they saw me shoot. Still, I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if the AK-47 in the Texas accident counts as a true “assault rifle.”

But I do know a little about safety. And I’m tired of being told, in-person and in media reports and online, that everyone is so motherfucking safe with their weapons. Familiarity breeds comtempt – it’s simple logic that a certain number of people who carry guns all the time eventually take their eyes off the prize or get lazy. Don’t tell me that people who really like weapons and are expert in handling them take them too seriously to ever fuck up – save it for these guys.

And in the Texas case in question, even I, no NRA instructor myself, can cite a number of absolutely clear violations of simple gun safety.

  1. You DO NOT EVER keep a loaded gun pointed at someone. It doesn’t matter much if it discharges into the ground – why in God’s name are you pointing it at your grandson? Or even swinging it around?

  2. Travel with the safety on, numbnuts.

  3. Why is the gun even loaded? You’re not going to shoot when there’s someone in your field of fire, are you? You’re not going to shoot while moving through the woods, without clearing your field of fire, without knowing the location of every other hunter present, are you? Then pull the freakin’ magazine out (and clear the chamber) – it’ll only take seconds to load up. Any shot at prey you’ll miss in the first few surprised seconds of a sighting while staggering through the brush is one you haven’t thought about long enough to take safely anyway, right, bucko? It’s not like you’re going to be ambushed by Vietcong and need to be ready in a split-second.

  4. Why isn’t your trigger protected? Travel through underbrushwith something covering the trigger guard to prevent, oh, THIS KIND OF THING.

Surely the NRA’s long reach extends down into Texas. Surely there’s more to NRA gun safety than I know – probably there were even more violations of commonsense gun safety in this case than my modest list. Why can’t the NRA reach down into Texas with Hestonian wrath and smite these who have disregarded the gun safety laws of Moses himself?

But Mosaic wrath is peanuts compared to what actually happened, I guess. For their careless worship of a golden gun, the angel of Death hath visited their firstborn.

:frowning:

Sailboat

2

People hunt with AK47s? Wow. I had no idea.

3

It’s for personal defense. Those god damn squirrels have sharp teeth.

4

“Never point a gun at anything you’re not willing to kill or destroy”.

Yet the Dumbass is carrying it pointing at his grandkid. Who is this guy, Dick Cheney’s brother?

5

I can’t help but think that the resurgence of gun-related threads recently is in direct response to Heller coming out of the SCOTUS later this month and its expected decision. Nothing earth-shattering has been happening recently, so I have to wonder what is driving this recent spate of bile.

6

No fetishist either, but I do like guns a lot. I currently own 3. But I agree you on this issue and you make a valid point about car deaths vs gun deaths.

7

Whether or not the AK-47 qualifies as a “true assault rifle,” the 7.62x39 cartridge is less powerful than the average traditional hunting cartridge. Of course, I don’t think that’s going to stop a lot of people from demonizing the AK-47 and making it seem like that specific gun was what caused this accident, and not the lack of safety. It could have happened with any rifle.

8

“The meeting of the Small Penis Club will now come to order! Seargant at Arms!”

9

Ah, of course. The “gun owners are compensating for their small penises” meme. It NEVER gets old.

10

You sure? They weren’t all wiped out after Tet.

11

I would like to know why the OP is using the term “gun fetishists?” What is it about the people involved in the linked story that merits the use of that term? Sailboat claims to not be anti-gun, but that specific term is one that is pretty much only used as a loaded term to knock gun owners.

12

The AK-47, being Soviet, is an Afghani-killin’ gun.
Where are our boys right now keepin’ law and order? Afghanistan.
Why do you hate America?

:rolleyes:

You’re confusing the SDMB with your duties as Recording Secretary in your other club, Lamar.

13

I generally agree with Sailboat here. Except that AKs are decent rifles. And, as I recently learned, there is no model name difference between the military and civilian versions. It’s reasonable to go hunting with a semiautomatic single shot AK.

The rest of it? Tragic. And stupid. And tragically stupid. Damn it.

14

Even I, who has never handled anything deadlier than a BB gun, know to never point a gun at anybody. Ever. Period. Even if I’ve checked a dozen times to see if it’s unloaded. Never. Isn’t that pretty much gun safety rule number one? Or is that behind “there’s no such thing as an unloaded weapon”?

I have no problems with hunting. I have problems with dumbfuck hunters.

15

I think you’re missing the point which is not gun fetishists vs anti-gun people, but that gross negligence and stupidity on the part of Grandpa there killed a 14 year old boy. Or can’t you look beyond the labels to the issue at hand?

The OP has a good point and one that should be at the very least discussed by all, given the access to guns that we all have–“fetishists” or anti-gunners alike.

Whiterabbit–hell, I’ve never shot anything more than a cap gun and I know not to point a gun at anyone, loaded or unloaded. Somehow, knowing that Gramps feels real bad about this doesn’t abate my anger one bit.

16

The question that must be answered is “Are 14 year olds in season?”

17

And, if not, what is the fine?

I’ve never fired any gun, but I’ve had gun safety drilled into me by my father and a former roommate. I, too, know that you always check the chamber for yourself, even if you just saw someone else check it, and that you never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot.

18

No, I absolutely can’t look beyond a loaded term like “gun fetishist.” You really think that’s just a superficial label that should just be overlooked? It’s a blatantly derogatory term and I asked a simple question, which is why the OP chose to use it when it has no relevance to the issue at all.

19

Maybe the kid wouldn’t get off his damned lawn.

Or didn’t send a thank you note for his last birthday present.

Or maybe his last words were “Fuck you, grandpa”.

20

There are model name differences. Different manufacturers and importers use different names for different rifles. You don’t buy an “AK-47” - you buy a MAK-90 or a SAR-1 for example. Usually those rifles aren’t even patterned off the AK-47 - they’re usually AKMs, occasionally AK-74s or .223 AKs. But anytime the media sees a rifle that looks like that, they’ll say “OMG FULLY AUTOMATIC ASSAULT RIFLE MACHINE GUN AK-47!!!”

To the OP: Why do you assume this person is a “gun fetishist”? Simply because he owns a gun? He sounds like the sort of dumbass who pulls his gun out a few times a year to hunt and doesn’t know what he’s doing. What you’d consider “gun fetishests” tend to be more serious and knowledgable about guns and their safe operation.

You imply the NRA isn’t really serious about gun safety but just tries to appear that way, but that’s not true. The NRA (an organization that I’m no huge fan of) is very serious about safety and education.

Three of your four points about safety were entirely correct. Number 3 wasn’t so - there’s no need to keep the chamber unloaded if you follow the other rules. Charging a round is a fairly loud process and could scare away your target if you waited until you were ready to shoot during a hunt.

Anyway, this sort of thing is blown out of proportion. There are, IIRC, around 80-90 million guns in 40-50 million households in the US. Accidents in which someone gets shot are relatively rare. But the media loves reporting these sorts of things, so you hear about them and it forms the perception that they’re more common than they are. If the media started reporting every kid drowning in his pool (something much more common), people would start clamoring for pool laws.