Remember, according to our betters, you can't be trusted with a gun.
Police chief shoots himself in the hand after spending time at the range.
And naturally he says it happened when he was "cleaning his gun." Having cleaned a few guns in my time, I can tell you without hesitation that anyone who uses this as an excuse for an accidental discharge is full of it.
The first thing you do when you clean a gun is unload it. The last thing you do is point the thing at your hand or anything else and pull the trigger.
I'd venture to say that 99.99% of the time this excuse is used, it in fact an attempt to cover up nothing more than a stupid, thoughtless mistake in gun handling.
I call bullshit
ReplyDeleteI ask my dad about an accidental shooting story in the local newspaper when I was purdy young where it said that the victim was reportedly cleaning his gun...I was curious because of all the safe handling lessons that I had already been taught and it seemed like a bad reason to get shot....Dad told me back then that if the victim was dead that it was used to cover up a murder, or a suicide, but if the victim was only injured that it was probably one of us "experts" that got careless and broke one of the basic rules for a split second, he said that it was old worn out BS clear back then...
ReplyDeleteYeah, for some reason that excuse is seen somehow as being less culpable, although it isn't really. Guns are loads of fun, but you really do have to follow the rules of safe gun handling with an iron will to avoid this sort of accident. That is simply hard to do, especially once you get used to them and the guard goes down for just a minute.
DeleteSorry cw but I must disagree. The 4 basic rules are there specifically to prevent us from letting our guard down. Taking shortcuts or just simply getting lazy is generally what causes this type of 'incident' - you can never be too careful around firearms. If someone is prone to not following the rules all of the time, then perhaps they should not be around them.
DeleteBottom line, he screwed up.
We just had a 13 year old girl killed here whose brother was "cleaning his gun". How do you clean a loaded gun?
ReplyDeleteExactly, you don't. And cleaning doesn't usually require you to pull the trigger.
Delete