You have to wonder sometimes about these gun fondlers. There is yet another story, this one from a semi-rural location I and many Oregonians know well: Lincoln City. It’s a small place, not that attractive in its city center, but it has a gorgeous, peaceful lake separated from the beach by only feet and the ocean by only a few tens of yards. The Dee River from the overflow of this misnamed “Devil’s Lake” to the ocean itself is the shortest river (definition requires year-round flow, not temporary rivers that flow only during flood season) in the world.
Yet now there’s another reason to think of “short” and “Lincoln City” together. There’s not much to tell save for what’s in the headline, but if it’s worth anything, you can read about yet another dood shooting himself in the dick in honor of his right to self-defense.
PS. Of course he hadn’t bothered to do the paperwork for a gun permit, that would have impinged on his constitutional freedoms. So when he gets out of the hospital, he’s going to face multiple criminal charges for endangering others and weapons violations.
I have conservative relatives in Oklahoma that I strongly disagree with, but they take gun safety seriously. Now I’m wondering if gun safety is considered “PC” by the new generation of conservatives.
I still wish we could fight for national rules on gun safety, with strong penalties for offenses, like losing rights to carry guns in public for a year (5 years (longer)). This should not be controversial, and even most gun owners should agree, so long as we made sure that it would be applied fairly and reasonably and it was not an underhanded attempt to restrict gun ownership among “responsible” gun owners.
In a somewhat separate topic but not really, I wish the same rules applied against police. I really hate it that polish can point guns at people whenever they want with no cause and get away with it scott-free.
Ayup.
There was some story a while back about some guy shooting himself in the foot three times while cleaning his guns, before finally going to the hospital. Christ of the Andes. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR GUNS LOADED. JFC. What is the matter with people? I speak as someone who grew up with guns but also learned that there are very strict rules about them, including DO NOT LEAVE THEM LOADED. I live on a farm, so yes, we have guns as tools, in case an animal needs to be put down. But we sure as hell don’t carry them around loaded!!! I hope the guy actually does get charged. Unfortunately the cops tend to let morons like this go free. I suppose they see themselves in these idiots. Which tells me all I need to know about what fools the cops are.
@Kestrel:
Good memory! That story is 28 years old!
https://apnews.com/57b946eb15f8c06df6270c6ce4051f4e
William Brinkman @1
Yes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/30/us-gun-owners-meme-feud
Not a gun owner, but in addition to this rule, I thought there was another:
“a gun is always loaded. Even when it’s unloaded.” That is, always
treat a firearm as if it were loaded and the safety were off.
How many times have you heard “I didn’t know it was loaded”?
And I gather that removing the shells doesn’t always mean a gun
isn’t loaded — there’s something about a shell remaining in the firing
chamber even when you think you’ve gotten all the shells out.
(Sorry if I’m using the wrong terminology, I haven’t had anything
to do with guns since I was a kid at camp.)
As for “polish” violating the most basic of gun safety rules, in our
area, an off-duty NYPD officer managed to kill one of his friends
while showing off his fancy laser-guided pistol. He pointed it at
his friend and it went off. AFAIK, he’s still on the force. (Yes,
the NYPD is that unprofessional.)
I admit that (as a UK resident) I’m not anything like an expert – my experience goes no further than DB shotguns – but I just don’t understand this. As far as I understand it, there is absolutely no sane procedure for cleaning a gun that is compatible with either having a round chambered or having the weapon in a fireable condition. You literally can’t discharge a gun whilst cleaning it.
So, every time I hear this excuse, I mentally replace “cleaning” with “playing with”… And I don’t play with my tools.
Sorry, please insert the word “not” at the appropriate place in my first sentence… “not anything like an expert”.
by your command, Dunc.
It’s all dick.
Dunc@#8:
What happens is someone is handling the gun preparing to clean it, then discovers it is loaded.
I know a guy who shot himself in the leg with a .308 that way. By the time EMTs got to him his blood pressure was basically “dead.”
One time I cleared a pistol before cleaning it and a live round popped out. That was a hell of a reality check. I never figured out how it got there but it was “a mistake.” Treating guns as if they are always loaded is a good idea even if you disable them. I used to safe guns by removing the bolt and storing it separately.
When I was in my tweens or early teens, my friends sometimes played with air rifles. (I have no idea if it was actually legal) One time it was like, “Hey Lumipuna, will you stand as target while we pretend to shoot you with an empty rifle?”
I intuitively felt it was unsafe, but agreed to it anyway, due to a combination of peer pressure and not knowing how unsafe it *really* was. I was the nerdy kid, even less familiar with guns than my friends were.
(We weren’t friends due to matching interests, but rather because we were the only three boys of roughly same age, spending summers in the same neighborhood.)
A few years before that incident, my grandfather had briefly tried to teach me how to shoot with an air rifle. Perhaps the rationale was harm reduction, since “boys will be playing with them anyway”. I was a little kid at the time, uninterested in guns and 100% not paying attention to whatever safety advice he taught me.
More evidence that “responsible gun owners” are a myth.
My position is: No guns for ANYONE. Not civvies, not police, NOBODY. They’re not worth the trouble.
Oh, there are responsible gun owners, but they don’t make the news because they don’t show off their guns in public. Not showing off in public is part of being responsible, after all.
And idiots like this guy are the ones that get angry because the responsible gun owners are ‘telling them what to do’ and ‘treating them like children’, and so like toddlers they act out by doing the opposite to prove that they are macho believers in ‘freedom!’
These guys are to gun owners like the idiots who do ‘rolling coal’ are to car owners. That said, they’re also a much higher percentage of gun owners than the ‘rolling coal’ sorts are of car owners due to the different social pressures involved.