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Gun Fail

Lowe’s knows… I have a gun, because I just shot myself with it in their parking lot: GunFAIL XLVII [1]

by David Waldman [2]Follow [3]

 Guns [1]

Just your basic, routine, 40+ GunFAIL events week. Though once again, the hunting season is responsible for about a quarter of those listed. I count 11 clear hunting accidents this past week, two more that came in as late reports from prior weeks, plus one more that isn’t as clearly labeled a hunting accident, but was being investigated by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, ordinarily a pretty clear indication that it’s hunting-related. That brings the total for this installment of GunFAIL to 14.

If we make a similar assumption, we find a total of four accidents occurring while someone was cleaning a still-loaded gun. There are three clear examples, plus one more that happened while the owner was “breaking down” his gun, usually a prelude to cleaning. Though again, it must be admitted that unloading a gun is usually a prelude to breaking it down, so clearly not everything is working as it should be, and maybe I assume too much.

Five “home invasion” shootings are among the entries this week, plus one that fell from the owner’s pocket and shot his wife, one that shot its brand new owner immediately following its purchase, and one used to shoot yet another suspected “intruder” who turned out to be the gun owner’s caretaker who’d come to check on him.

Continuing the Christmas shopping season’s hottest trend, another gun carrier has accidentally discharged his weapon while out at the stores, this time shooting himself in the parking lot outside a Lowe’s home improvement store in Pocatello, ID.

The child victims of GunFAIL were mercifully few last week. Just five were found, ages 5, 15, 15, 16 and 17. Many of you have, no doubt, by now become aware of the story of the 3-year-old killed in Indianapolis on Saturday. That particular tragedy does not go unrecognized, but it won’t be included until our next installment.

In our continuing count of guns found in schools, I found stories last week from: Toledo, OH [4];Durham, NC [5]Camden, SC [6]Winter Garden, FL [7] (where at least one Daily Kos reader I know of has a child in attendance); Omaha, NE [8], and; San Francisco, CA [9].

On a slightly more positive note, I thought you might find it interesting to know that our military, which has some considerable experience with firearms and which generally frowns on members carrying arms in the routine course of business on base, has taken on one more precaution for its members: private gun ownership mentoring. [10] Why? “The idea for this was to put together some form of mentorship in terms of privately owned weapons due to the numbers in trends that the Army is seeing with soldiers injuring themselves with weapons they purchased,” said a spokesman. Glad to see the Army keeping an eye on reality, and being willing to address a real world problem, rather than relying on some kind of Invisible Hand of Freedom to do it for them.

Without further ado, this week’s installment, below the fold.

  1. MCKENZIE CO., ND [11], 11/14/13: Kaelan Macdonald and his family spent the past three weeks, including Thanksgiving, in a St. Paul, MN, hospital after he was shot in the eye while pheasant hunting. Russell Macdonald said he and he his son were deer hunting with two others Nov. 14 on their family farm in McKenzie County, about 20 miles southeast of Bismarck. He said the deer hunting was slow that Sunday so the group decided to walk a slough where they had seen some pheasants earlier in the day. When they reached the slough, Kaelan and one of his friends walked the edge to the other side and Macdonald and a family friend went through the middle. When a rooster flushed, the friend fired with Kaelan 80 yards directly down range. Russell Macdonald said it was then the magnitude of his son’s situation hit hard for him and his wife. “I have never felt fear like that before,” he said. Admittedly, Russell Macdonald said they didn’t follow safe hunting rules — and it cost his son dearly. He said one of the biggest things is thinking something like this couldn’t happen to them. He said he plans on sharing his story with others when it comes to proper hunting safety and how, in an instant, things can go wrong.
  2. FORTY FORT, PA [12], 11/21/13:  Forty Fort police took out a search warrant on a man who accidentally shot himsel
  3. Read More-100 [1]