Wow, Third accidental shooting this week in the same area.....

[KansasVoter]

I think Gun Safety is really important and all gun "enthusiasts" should be careful about showing off their guns to friends. I think stories like these are good to note because it might make all of us more aware of gun accidents.

=================

For the third time this week there has been an accidental shooting in our area.

An Enfield man is in critical condition at Baystate Medical Center after being shot by his friend.

Lt. Larry Curtis told 22News Kevin Windun is fighting for life after taking a .9 mm bullet to the back of the head around 2:00am on Saturday.

The 24 year old was at his friend's house at 168 State Street.

Police say 27 year old Raymond Moule was showing off his handgun when it went off.

Even though it was an accident, Moule is facing charges which include reckless endangerment and possession of pot.

http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/local/Man-accidentally-shot-in-head-by-friend

[Mugweed]

1. He was showing it off to the back of the guy's head?

Really?

[sylvi]

37. Reminds me of the exchange from "Analyze That"

Jelly: Anyway, two of the witnesses decided not to testify and the third guy, well, he commited suicide.

Dr. Ben Sobel: How?

Jelly: He stabbed himself in the back four times and threw himself off a bridge.


:-)

[benEzra]

2. Shot another guy in the back of the head at 2am and busted for drug possession?

Yeah, he's representative of gun enthusiasts, all right...just as much as a criminal with a 12-gauge is representative of you and the people you shoot skeet and clays with.

The gun-accident Big Picture:



The rate has continued to decline since the '90s, though all I can find is the one showing the decline in fatal child gun accidents:

[divideandconquer]

3. Gun owners do very well every year in the Darwin awards.

Gun owners do very well every year in the Darwin awards. Check it out!
<http://cgi.darwinawards.com/cgi/search.pl?keywords=category%3Dgun&swishindex=stories.data&show_description=yes&maxdisplay=10&maxresults=50>

[divideandconquer]

4. Funny how quiet gun "enthusiasts" get when one brings up the Darwin awards

They all know they're all "just a shot away" as the Rolling Stones proclaimed. Weapons fantastically multiply the power of evil.

[Katya Mullethov]

13. Weapons fantastically multiply the power of evil ...........

They make me funnier . And leave me naturally enhanced .

Maybe it's like LSD that way .

[SteveM]

15. That stuff in his pipe fantastically multiplies the power of hyperbole. nt

[divideandconquer]

29. Some one who normally would get their ass kicked can kill dozens

That a multiplier effect

[Katya Mullethov]

31. Dozens ? Will this be more than 24 ? 36 ? 48 ?

Like Fort Hood , that shit was puro evil . Seems to me , the numbers you are conjuring up seem more attributable to an IED or maybe a few open topped vans with mobile mortar tubes .

[AtheistCrusader]

19. Don't know what your problem is but

accidents with firearms have been declining steadily since the 50's. Both fatal and non-fatal.


This one doesn't sound like an accident though.

[Callisto32]

25. EXACTLY why the state wants them so badly eh?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

30. So how much more dangerous would Hitler have been with a Glock versus his Luger?

What about Cheney? What item makes him more evil - a Mossberg 500A Defender or Remington 850 Express?

I think the Mossberg would give him +2 Agility but take -1 Reliability and require +1 manna as well...
We can only hope he's using ghost ring on either shotgun for +3 Accuracy.

[benEzra]

9. Not that many, on a per-owning-household basis.

In terms of accidental fatalities on a per-owner basis, boats/kayaks are more dangerous than guns, as are household swimming pools, neither of which are statistically dangerous from an objective standpoint.

Close to 40% of U.S. households own guns, with in excess of 80 million individual owners. Yet the accident rate of noncriminal gun owners is exceedingly low. Guns have to be handled carefully and respected, but they are not that complicated to handle safely. The rules of safe gun handling are actually quite simple.

(1) Always treat any gun as if it is loaded.
(2) Never allow any gun to point in an unsafe direction.
(3) Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you are ready to shoot.
(4) Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

[KansasVoter]

5. One reason only. Many Many Less Hunters. Deny that???

[benEzra]

10. Why would that be the only reason?

Sure, the decline in hunting has resulted in a decline in hunting accidents, but hunters are only a small minority of gun owners, and the accident rate for nonhunters has fallen precipitously as well. I think it has more to do with an increasing emphasis on safety in the broader gun culture, not just in the hunting realm but also in recreational shooting, practical shooting, shotgunning, benchrest, what have you.

That may simply reflect an increasing awareness of safety in general in the broader culture. Back in 1900 or even 1940, there was a totally different attitude with regard to industrial safety, car safety, aircraft safety, etc.; we spend a whole lot more effort now than we did back then on safety education, and since that time the fatality rate from factory accidents, mine accidents, car accidents (on a per mile basis), aircraft accidents (again, per mile), pedestrian accidents, bicycle accidents, accidental drownings, etc. etc. have all experienced similar declines.

In my experience, shooters of my generation (Gen-X) and younger tend to be somewhat more conscientious about safe gun handling (particularly muzzle discipline and trigger finger discipline) than my dad's generation, and I'll bet his generation was more safety-conscious than his parents' generation. Heck, the Four Rules weren't even codified until, what, the 1960's or 1970's, by the Cooper/IPSC movement?

[Hoopla Phil]

12. Those careless skeet shooters.

http://www.kcra.com/news/16871050/detail.html

MODESTO, Calif. -- One man is dead after being hit by a shotgun blast during a tournament at a skeet shooting range, police said Sunday.


We must ban competitive shotgun shooting.

[benEzra]

18. ".73 caliber terror."

"These .73 caliber destructive devices, which can shoot up to nine 9mm rounds with a single pull of the trigger, proliferate on the civilian market via a loophole in the Gun Control Act of 1968, which bans most guns over .50 caliber but exempts deadly .73 caliber riot guns. A pump riot gun and a side-by-side riot gun were the most lethal guns used by the Columbine killers. According to experts, riot guns kill even more Americans annually than military-style assault rifles, and Dick Cheney used one in 2006 to shoot a lawyer out of season.

" 'No one needs a 12-gauge to hunt deer. It would blow the deer to smithereens,' stated Joe Q. Blow, a random doofus on the Internet. 'Nobody needs a gun twice as powerful as a fricking AK-47 to hunt deer with.' And according to the website .73 Caliber Terror, 'These military-grade weapons can shoot down airliners and police helicopters. We need to keep these weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands.'

"Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to restrict deadly riot guns to military and police only. 'We don't want to ban anybody's guns, we just want to get deadly .73 caliber cannons off the streets. Nobody needs a Perazzi to hunt moose.' "

:evilgrin:

[Hoopla Phil]

21. You forgot the deadlier .73 caliber heat seeking bullets that seek people out.

[benEzra]

22. And some of them even have shoulder things that go up!

[rrneck]

23. Gah!

:rofl:

[SteveM]

16. Hunters make up, what, 18-19% of gun-owners? And hunters' safety record...

has been improving significantly, even when accounting for declining numbers, due to hunter ed and the requirement to wear International Orange when hunting public lands.

[AtheistCrusader]

20. And many, many more hunters in all other categories.

Correlation/causation?

[bluerum]

8. Interesting. Change in accident rate is inversely proportional to population growth.

One would expect that if the rate of gun ownership does not increase with the growth of the population.

[kelly1mm]

6. Accidental gun fatalities, just like other accidents like car crashes

or others where one is not carefull with the tool they are using are tragic and reports like the one above are important reminders. Thanks for posting it.

Likewise, I think Automobile Safety is really important and all automobile "enthusiasts" should be careful about showing off (in) their cars to friends. I think stories like these are good to note because it might make all of us more aware of auto accidents.

[bluerum]

7. "It went off." I shake my head when I read or hear those words.

[benEzra]

11. Yup.

Can you imagine...

"Officer, I was sitting in my car, when my car went off and hit that pedestrian."

"He was standing in front of this tree here when the chainsaw went off and got him in the leg."

"Yeah, the table saw went off and cut off the tip of his thumb. It just went off."

:eyes:


When a gun is (1) pointed at the back of somebody's head, (2) a finger is inserted in the trigger guard, and (3) the finger pulls the trigger while the gun remains pointed at the head, it did not "go off." It was negligently pointed at another human being and the trigger was negligently pulled.

[oneshooter]

14. Rule #1

Keep your booger pickers off of the bang switch till you are sure of your target.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[shadowrider]

27. I don't think negligence applies in this case

More like intentional, now the shooter is trying to say it was an accident to avoid charges.

That's just my opinion.

[benEzra]

28. Yeah, you may be right. (n/t)

[Hangingon]

17. I love the quality of news reporting.

They know their subect. I have never seen a .9 mm bullet. I have used .9 mm pencil lead.

[Callisto32]

24. Sounds more like an execution to me.

[east texas lib]

26. Your concern is so touching...

Thank you.:hug:

[slackmaster]

32. Unrec for drive-by "current events" post with nothing to connect it to forum topic

:nuke:

[divideandconquer]

33. Yes, the "guns" forum has nothing to do with 1000's of Americans being shot with guns

:eyes:

[slackmaster]

34. The topic of the thread is an unfortunate coincidence of "accidental" shootings

Which are already rare, and can be made even less common by teaching basic gun safety in public schools.

[divideandconquer]

35. "gun safety", what an oxymoron

"Military intelligence", "jumbo shrimp", "barenaked ladies", "gun safety"

[friendly_iconoclast]

38. Feel free to refute benEzra's figures in post #2 - if you can

I remind you of a quote from Philip K. Dick:

"If it keeps happening even when you don't believe it, it's scientific"...

[divideandconquer]

40. 30,000 dead Americans every year from the barrel of a gun that we know about

Billions of dollars in costs in hospitals and how can one quantify the terror guns cause in homes and neighborhoods. USA highest murder rate of advanced nations, worse than the poor nation of India What about those facts? (and no, $8000 per capita ex Soviet states don't qualify as advanced)

Maybe if congress would let the CDC keep tabs, I might have more confidence in gun statistics, especially from Red States.

[X_Digger]

41. Umm.. it's called WISQARS.. roll your own.

http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html

[GreenStormCloud]

36. Guns don't "just go off".

That would be like a car starting itself and driving off.

[proteus_lives]

39. Ban accidents and human error. It's the only way we'll be safe.

[Nomorehannity]

42. The pot charge is pretty stupid and the "reckless" charge is too weak

"Reckless endangerment?" This wasn't reckless, THERE WAS A RECK (or wreck). A stronger charge is in order, but then the prosecutor would have a good charge instead of two weak ones. Prosecutors go for what is easier. They love drug possession charges.