‘I can do anything I want on my property!’ he screamed, and fired three more rounds. GunFAIL XLVIII
One of the lightest weeks in child shootings in recent memory. Congratulations, America! I found just three children accidentally shot this week, ages 3, 4, and 8. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any way of just shutting the flow off completely, but it’s nice to finally see less than a half dozen or so. Also coming in on the low side were home invasion shootings, GunFAIL incidents involving security guards, and accidental shootings while teaching someone how to use a gun, each happening only once this past week. It was also a light week for guns found in schools. I discovered just one, in Elgin, IL. On the other hand, I also discovered this article, alleging a fairly serious undercounting of guns reportedly found in schools across the state of Ohio last year. By the paper’s count, there were some 250 found there in 2012.
The low numbers in some of this week’s categories were compensated for by the hunting accidents (5), shooting range accidents (4), accidental discharges by police officers (5), and loaded gun cleanings (2). There were also two accidental discharges in retail establishments this week, one in a Burlington Coat Factory store in Racine, and another in a restaurant in Elizabethtown, KY. Thanks for making us all safer, ninjas!
Among this week’s “Holy $#*%@!” stories: the SWAT cop in Chillicothe, OH, who accidentally discharged his weapon immediately before executing a drug raid, while he was still staged outside the suspect’s home. Apparently, the officer discharged his rifle at the exact moment they deployed a flash-bang grenade, and nobody even realized he had fired a round until they found a woman inside on the couch, dying of the head wound caused by the round he’d unknowingly put through the outside wall of the house.
- PASO ROBLES, CA, 9/26/13: A rural Paso Robles man is awaiting trial after firing bullets into his neighbor’s home while target shooting. Dean Buckley, 59, of Whitley Gardens told police that he did not mean to hit his neighbor’s home while shooting at a water tank in his backyard. “I could easily have been getting a glass of water and taken a bullet to the head,” said Tom Normandy, Buckley’s neighbor. Normandy and his wife were sitting in their living room about 5:30 p.m. Sept. 26, when they heard a gunshot and something hit their home. A second gunshot sent a bullet flying through their kitchen window with a shatter, ricocheting off a wall and cabinet before landing on the kitchen floor. While his wife called 911, Normandy carefully entered his backyard in the direction of fire, yelling through the woods at his neighbor to stop shooting. He yelled that bullets were hitting his home. Normandy said Buckley screamed back, “I can do anything I want on my property,” and fired three more rounds.
- WELLINGTON, OH, 11/14/13: 4:45 p.m.—200 block Wenner St., police were sent to investigate a report of shots fired inside a residence and found a woman had accidentally fired a revolver while she was moving some firearms inside her apartment. Police said the woman was not injured, but she was visibly distraught.
- INDIANAPOLIS, IN, 12/07/13: RTV 6 reports that a 3 year old is dead after being shot in the head yesterday evening at his family’s home on the 1800 block of East 68th Street. Police responded to the scene after 6 p.m. where they found the boy inside the home suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. The child was then rushed to Riley Hospital for Children in critical condition and later died of his injuries. Investigators have indicated that they believe the child accidentally shot himself in the head after he pulled the gun off a kitchen counter. A neighbor to the family said “I’ve known they had guns; they’ve carried them in public on their side, they’ve got permits for them and I just thought they always were a little bit more responsible than that.