Some People Have No Business Being Near Guns

Chicago Tribune:

A 21-year-old Joliet [IL] man accidentally shot and killed himself while trying to demonstrate how the safety mechanism worked on his new handgun [...]

Joliet Police Cmdr. Al Roechner said today that the mishap occurred around 5 p.m. Friday as Perry was sitting in a vehicle in front of his home with two other people.

The two witnesses said Perry was displaying his recently purchased .25-caliber handgun when "he set the safety, pointed the gun at his face, pulled the trigger and the safety didn't work,"

Comments

[NMissC]

uh, uh....

I still remember the moment when I was less than ten years old, and pointed a toy gun at something-- a person, perhaps, or maybe a pet-- and my grandfather chastised me severely, saying one did not point a gun, even a toy, at anything you would not shoot.

Didn't really effect my childhood games of army and the Civil War (sorry, I was a Southern boy) in backyards, but was always in the back of my mind. At least where I was raised, a culture very much full of guns, one was very conscious of where one pointed a gun. As my father explained to me at some point, early, if folks observed you not using proper gun etiquette (unloading in crossing fences, careful about who was where when shooting-- all part of why Dick Cheney's shooting in the face incident reinforced my view of him as an ass), you were a pariah.

And, of course, this poor benighted soul obviously did not know whether a gun was on or off safe. But then, that's why you treat all guns as if they were loaded, and ready to fire. At least, that's how I was raised.

[Pierre Corneille]

NMissC,

Your childhood experience was a lot like mine. My father traded in guns as a sort of hobby/avocation, and at least in his presence, we were never allowed to point a toy gun at people. (An exception was made for those 25 cent flourescent water pistols, of course.)

I don't know about your experience, but going to many of the many gun shows my father attended were probably the best training for me when it came to gun safety: these gun shows drove home (for me, ymmv), that guns were incredibly boring (after looking at a bunch of guns for more than 29 minutes, they lost for me any appeal they might have had).