Every gun owner thinks they're a responsible gun owner.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Well, to be fair, this guy was responsible… responsible for shooting his own grandson in the shoulder.
Yeah, as a gun owner, I try to avoid other gun owners. I went to have my my rifle scope bore sighted for the hunting season today. The guy at the counter picked up my rifle and flagged everyone in the damn store with it. I asked him to set it back in the case and left. I knew the gun was clear, and an employee cleared it when I came in, but you still don't do that, period. Now that I think about it, the guy didn't even clear it before picking it up and flagging everyone with it.
as a gun owner, I try to avoid other gun owners.
Same.
I once watched a range safety officer finish his shift, then step up to the firing line with his own handgun and promptly point the muzzle down the line at me while chambering the first round. I packed up and left, and haven't been back.
It's really crazy how cavalier folks are around firearms. It only takes one lapse in judgement or attention to drastically change lives forever.
Top three mythological creatures of American folklore:
- Bigfoot
- Mothman
- The Responsible Gun Owner
I don't think that's fair. I've taken gun/hunting education classes from some volunteer instructors that seemed to me to be about the most serious, responsible people I've ever met.
Cool beans. Everyone considers themselves to be a "responsible gun owner" right up until the moment they shoot someone or themselves. It's not a matter of if but when it's going to happen.
Edit: Gun nuts and apologists line up here to get blocked.
I’m not a fan of guns myself, but this is quite a reach.
There are certainly many, MANY more irresponsible gun owners than responsible ones out there. But to say that there are none is just objectively false.
Do accidents happen? Yes, and they can happen to anyone. The difference is that a responsible owner’s accident isn’t going to end up with a person getting shot.
No, there are far more responsible gun owners than irresponsible ones. There are roughly 100 million gun owners in the USA. If "most" of those people were irresponsible then there wouldn't be 100 million of them left. We only hear about the irresponsible ones having accidents or committing crimes, which is a tiny percentage of the overall 100 million.
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Excellent example of a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Well done! Bit of a shame you're trying to use it in an actual debate, but you do you.
That's an absolutely absurd claim. The fraction of gun owners that ever shoot a human being is very close to zero.
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I just want to live long enough to enter a situation where I can legally kill someone with my 1911😔
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Which is he, one of the 'good guys with a gun', or one of the 'bad guys with a gun'?
Maybe his grandson was a 'bad guy with a gun,' in which case the grandfather is actually a hero.
I believe he falls in the category of one of the morons with a gun.
I'd like to see that venn diagram.
after the Pietta 1860 snub nose revolver went off around 5 p.m. and accidentally struck the young boy in the shoulder
“When he decided to cock back the hammer of this revolver it slipped and it shot his grandson in the left shoulder, causing an injury,”
I really hate when people go all passive voice about having shot someone. Did it just magically 'go off' or was dumbass fucking around with it while it was pointed at his grandson?
"It was the gun that shot my grandson! The gun, I say!"
"Will you get rid of the gun that shot your grandson?"
"When you pry it from my cold dead fingers, commie!"
Guns don't shoot people, people shoot people. Do I have that catchphrase right?
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It was an old school revolver where you have to manually cock back a spring loaded hammer. If you pull it back part way and then gently guide it back to normal position, the firing pin will just rest against the primer (the part of the round that sets off the gunpowder) and nothing will happen. If you pull it all the way back, the hammer locks in place until you pull the trigger, at which point the locking mechanism is unlocked and the hammer is freed to slam the pin into the primer, firing the round. The problem comes if you pull it most of the way back and then lose your grip. In that case, the hammer slams into the round just like if you fired it. Because of the physics involved with pulling back the hammer against a heavy spring (ironically a safety against kids pulling it back), the end of the gun usually gets levered upwards during the act of cocking. So, even if you started pointed directly at the ground, you often won't be by the time the hammer locks in place. It's your job as a gun owner to make sure that nothing you don't mind shooting is in front of the gun at any point during that arc.
Add to this that it was a blank round, meaning there was just gunpowder but no bullet. Usually in a round, the gunpowder is trapped between a big slug of lead (the bullet) and the primer. In a blank, a thin layer of paper and glue is used in place of the bullet to keep the powder from falling out. A lot of people think blanks are 100% safe because there's no bullet, but at very close range that tiny bit of glue still gets shot out with enough force to penetrate skin.
Thus, the guy is still an idiot for pointing the gun in an unsafe direction while cocking it, even if it's a blank, but it's easy to see how a 62yo could lose his grip on the hammer and have the gun go off accidentally in a direction he didn't intend. And because it was a blank, he likely wasn't following full gun discipline like he should have been. This doesn't excuse his behavior (gun owners are literally taught to treat every weapon as loaded and deadly), but it might explain both his behavior and why the article chose the passive "it slipped and it shot" voice. Because basically, he was getting it ready to use as intended and it did magically "go off", and it also is quite possible that it wasn't pointed at the kid when grandpa started the task.
Yea, I wouldn't say "magically go off" but this isn't the gun misbehaving. It was a negligent discharge through improper operation. Its not a malfunction of the gun.
And to the people who don't get how old revolvers operate, they can go off without the trigger pulled in a very specific manner that isn't going to occur without someone actively getting the gun ready to fire. It's the manual operation of the firing action.
Some newer revolvers will have a mechanism that doesn't allow the hammer to swing all the way forward without the trigger being in the pulled position, but not all of them so.
And for an example of how dangerous blanks can be, the actor Jon-Erik Hexum during filming took a gun with a blank, held it to his temple and pulled the trigger. The force of the blank killed him.
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It sounds like he cocked it before raising it, his thumb slipped off the hammer at the end of the action, and then —with his finger in the guard— he reflexively tightened his grip and discharged it.
Same thing can happen with semi-automatic pistols when you hit the slide release and all the weight slams forward: you accidentally pull the trigger to keep your grip, and then it discharges.
Which is exactly why you KEEP YOUR FUCKING FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER until you're absolutely sure you want to fire.
Everyone is a Responsible Gun Owner™ until they aren’t.
The pro-gun community works hard to ensure the "responsible" part remains 100% voluntary.
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Odessa, Texas
Yup. Checks out.
Well, when there’s nothing else to do…
This guy shot at the air and somehow managed to miss. He should be barred from ever owning a firearm for being such a spectacularly bad shot.
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And? Did it get their attention?
“It’s just kind of neglectful to take a gun out that has blanks and fire it amongst people,” he said.
The casual structure of this sentence is kind of funny at this point in history. I'm guessing he wasn't intending to downplay the severity of the situation with that remark but it is quite the understatement.
but the act was not very smart,” Houchin said
Between the act, and forgetting the wedding rings at a wedding, I'm beginning to think this isn't a very bright family.
Obviously the solution would have been to require every guest to have their own gun. Duh.
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In his defense, it does seem that he got everyone's attention.
/s
Buttwipe should have his gun rights revoked. Even I, a non-gun-user, know that you treat every firearm as loaded, lethal and ready to fire at any moment, and never point it at any person ever unless you intend them dead.
Accidents with guns only happen because of criminal negligence.
And for fuck's sake you don't cock a gun or pull the trigger when it's pointed at a fucking child. you. stupid. pile. of. shit.
iT jUsT wEnT oFf!
But did he get their attention?
That's in the constitution as a permissible use of guns. It's right after the part where we added Manitoba.
Can't celebrate life without an implement of death
I came here to officiate and shoot children AND I'M ALL OUT OF SHOOTIN'CHILDREN
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'Facing legal trouble'. Yeah, because that's really the only negative in this situation 🤦♂️
Surprised he didn’t try to clink the glasses with his gun
I thought firing a gun to get people's attention was only something terrorists and mentally deranged psychopaths did
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