State police Lt. Eric Hermick said Sunday the father had secured a rifle in the back of the truck and placed his pistol on the console when the handgun went off. Hermick said police are reviewing surveillance video from the store, which helped lay out the chain of events; the video is not being released.
“It is very clear-cut exactly what transpired here,” Hermick said of what he called clearly an accident. “As he’s laying it down, it discharges.”
They may have happened as he laid it down, but guns don’t “go off,” unless someone was showing flagrant disregard for rule 3, and in this case rule 1 too.
What kind of fool does not check the chamber, and transports the thing out of a holster or a case?
Unfortunately, that boy’s father.
Yeah even a damn shoe box would have prevented this. Although if he’s handling it that poorly to begin with it’s only a matter of time.
amazing how every time there’s one of these stories of a gun just going off, it always just goes off while someone is handling it. Can’t recall hearing a story of a gun going off while sitting on a shelf….
Very sad story.
There are a lot of gun owners in this state, and unfortunately, there’s always going to be some percentage of them which are morons you wouldn’t want to trust with a sharp pencil, let alone a gun. No doubt our opponents will suggest this is the reason for mandating training, but in most cases, then you just have trained morons.
Of course, this is not to say I believe morons don’t have the right, but there are some people in this world I sure wish wouldn’t exercise it. It’s been rare, but there have been a few people I know I’ve tried to talk out of interest in getting into guns.
I had a (now ex-) fiancé who’s biggest reason to support gun control was she had a friend who was a moron with guns. That was hard to argue against (but I did try).
I see a lot more people who are horrible drivers, lets ban cars!
A fun irony, I think, is that most of us are willing to acknowledge that gun ownership isn’t for everyone (even if we all agree the right is there for everyone). The reason this is ironic is because the opposition to civilian gun ownership demands we evangelize the practice as a defense mechanism. I’d be relatively unconcerned about declining gun ownership, or declining participation in the shooting sports if I also did not understand that also means a decline in our relative political strength.
A gun culture that’s not constantly under threat might be more willing to discourage that drunken cousin, or careless brother, from gun ownership than they would if they hadn’t been imbued with the idea that we have to recruit everyone possible into shooting because otherwise we’ll see the right chipped away at, and eventually completely lost.
The other thing to note is that some fraction of official “accidents” are nothing of the sort. The brief initial account I read of this one did make it smell like a ND vs. intentional, but I know for an absolute fact that one “accidental” death in my home town a few years ago was clearly 2nd degree murder, only ruled otherwise because both were 14 years old girls, the victim having several of her “friends” over for a sleepover.
Or maybe the shooter was such a “moron” she couldn’t track reality, but such people should be avoided. As much as you and I avoid air travel now.