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Texas Man Shoots Himself By Doing Everything Wrong

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There are a handful of rules everyone who owns a gun should generally live by. There are times to look past those rules, but you need to know the rules well enough to know how to “break” them safely (by things like dry firing, etc). For one Texas man, though, that was clearly not the case.

See, people do stupid things. But, if you listen to the Four Rules, you’re less likely to do stupid things that hurt you or someone else.

For our intrepid Texan, though, stupid hurt.

A man is in critical condition after accidentally shooting himself.

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Police said he was in his bedroom “messing around” with a gun when he accidentally shot himself. His wife heard the gunshot and found him on the ground and called police for help.

Now, first, let me say that I hope the man makes a full recovery. Not just for his family’s sake, but also for his.

Part of that is because he can’t learn from his mistakes unless he recovers.

You and I can learn from it, though.

To start with, let’s look at the Four Rules for a moment:

1. Always treat every gun as if it were loaded.

2. Always point the muzzle in a safe direction.

3. Always keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.

4. Always be sure of your target and beyond.

Now, how many of those rules did this individual violate? Arguably, all of them.

Personally, I’d give him a pass on Rule Four, only because “your target” implies you intend to fire, though I could also argue a case where he violated this one as well. It’s really not worth arguing over, in my opinion.

However, even if you say he only violated three rules, that’s three out of four. That’s a horrid percentage for getting it right.

What we don’t know is just how well versed the individual in question is in gun safety. Some believe that everyone who wants to buy a gun should have to undergo a basic safety class prior to doing so. They want it mandated by law.

I happen to think that we could skip all of that if gun safety was a mandatory part of our educational system. If people go to school, they get gun safety classes. Then you don’t need to mandate someone take a class first because everyone would have taken the class. It’s not rocket science.

But it’s also possible that this individual knew better.

I’ve found that many of those who have negligent discharges are people who have handled guns so much that they no longer really respect them like they should. They get complacent and then things happen.

Undoubtedly, some will try to blast Texas and their gun laws after this, but that’s not really accurate. This likely would have happened no matter what. Further, I suspect if this guy carried his gun, he’d be a lot more careful than he was in the privacy of his own home.

Either way, I still hope he recovers and does so soon.

Mother Uses Loss To Push For Gun Safety Awareness

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Two words that have started to make many people cringe are “gun safety.” That’s because many anti-Second Amendment types have started using that as a euphemism for gun control.

However, the original meaning of the term–the safe handling of a firearm–still matters, even if some Karens are trying to twist that meaning.

In fact, it matters so much that for one mother, it’s her mission.

According to the National Safety Council’s most recent data, in 2019 there were 39,740 gun-related deaths in the United States.

Of that total, 500, or about 1 percent, were the result of accidental shootings.

But if you were one of the victims, or the mother, father, or sibling left behind to mourn your death for the remainder of their lives, this seemingly small proportion then becomes 100 percent and catastrophically important.

No one knows this tangible percentage more than Blackberry resident Kendra Mahon, her sons Chris and Garrett, and her daughter Carrigan.

That’s because on Feb. 5, 2020, the family found themselves swirling out of control to the top of this statistical vortex when Kendra’s youngest — 16-year-old Daulton — while alone in the house, was killed by the inadvertent discharge of a shotgun that had fallen from his grip as he was retrieving it from a gun safe.

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During a gravesite ceremony to commemorate what would have been Daulton’s 18th birthday and that about 30 family members and friends attended last Friday evening, Kendra additionally told the gathering her main goal going forward is to do whatever she can to help prevent similar tragedies from visiting other families.

Specifically, she wants to use Daulton’s story to bring about more gun safety awareness for both kids and adults and, ideally, help other families avoid possibly someday joining hers in that “100 percent” statistical group.

“I was working that evening so I prayed, as I always do, that God would take care of him, but He didn’t, at least not in my way but in His way,” she said just prior to a commemorative balloon-release ceremony. “I’ve really struggled with that, but because of your prayers I’m doing better and I want to do whatever I can to keep other families from ever having to go through what my family has suffered through this last year and a half.”

In particular, Kendra has reached out to the NRA on what is required to be an active part of the organization’s hunting and safety programs.

Good for her.

Look, I won’t pretend I know what it’s like to lose a child, especially to something like that.

What I do know, though, is that far too many people take a tragedy like this and use it to justify trying to infringe on people’s basic right to keep and bear arms. Kendra Mahon, however, understands that the gun wasn’t at fault. It’s not a sentient being. It can’t make decisions for itself. What happened was an awful tragedy, but it wasn’t the gun’s fault.

So, she wants to prevent such a thing from happening again, which is normal, and has decided to do so by helping push firearm safety.

I’m sorry she got pushed into it, especially this way, but I applaud her for taking a tragedy and trying to use it to motivate her to make a difference.

Wisconsin Negligent Discharge Shows Futility Of Gun Laws

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Cats and lasers are an endless source of entertainment as evidenced by hours upon hours of videos on YouTube. However, it is patently stupid and Darwin Award-worthy to play with a cat using the laser sight of a gun.

“Woman using gun’s laser sight to play with cat shoots friend,” reads the headline of an Associated Press article today. Stupidity aside, I immediately felt bad for the woman and her friend who got shot. So, I read the article to understand what happened, and boy was I surprised by the full story.

The woman, who a witness said had been drinking, picked up the handgun, “turned on the laser sight and was pointing it at the floor to get the cat to chase it,” when the gun went off, the complaint filed Thursday said.

Alcohol and guns don’t mix, so there’s the first red flag. (An astute reader will have noticed the “gun went off” passive voice cop-out striking again; guns hardly ever go off on their own without a human actor taking a series of deliberate actions.)

Further down this absurd story, there’s an interesting twist:

The man, who was standing in a doorway, was shot in the thigh, authorities said. He left and went into another apartment, where police found him after responding to a 911 call, the Kenosha News reported.

Weird. Why did the injured person go into another apartment?

There’s no word on his condition, but authorities said he was facing charges for violating bond conditions that prevented him from having a weapon.

Oh! So, the guy who was showing off the gun to the drunk woman was a prohibited person?

The woman told police she thought the magazine had been taken out of the gun and said it “accidentally went off,” according to the complaint.

Not only was the woman drunk, but she was also unfamiliar with how this gun operates. She didn’t know that the magazine could be removed, and a round could still be in the chamber.

As of this writing, Moms Demand, Everytown, and Giffords have said nothing about this incident. They usually jump on any harm that involves guns, especially negligent and accidental discharges.

Their silence can be explained by the lesson of this story that their gun control proposals such as universal background checks, may-issue permit regimes, training requirements, mandatory storage laws, etc. don’t and won’t work.

The man who brought the gun was a prohibited person. No background check law – universal or otherwise – would have worked because this guy clearly didn’t care. A prohibited person in possession is clearly not going to bother about may-issue carry permits as seen in this story. Training requirements would have also failed; the prohibited possessor simply would not have cared. He would have laughed at mandatory storage laws as well. As for the woman, even if we generously assume that she would have jumped through the complicated training hurdles demanded by the Gun Grab Lobby, her state of inebriation would likely have overridden her common sense. Good people can do bad and stupid things when drunk.

This story is a tragicomedy of errors. Negligent and accidental discharges are bad and avoidable by following the Four Rules of Gun Safety.

But this story’s big lesson is the futility of the massive maze of gun laws that only burden lawful gun owners, while those who are prone to breaking laws do so with impunity.

I hope the Gun Grab Lobby eventually wakes up to this, but in the meantime, my thoughts are with the poor cat; I hope he or she isn’t traumatized for life.

Detroit Firearms Instructor Bringing Training To The Masses

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Longtime supporters of Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co (as well as its previous iteration at NRA News) have seen today’s guest featured on the show many times in the past. Rick Ector is a staunch Second Amendment supporter as well as a firearms instructor, and for the past ten years one of Rick’s special passions has been putting on a weekend of free firearms instruction for women in the Detroit area. Last year, despite all of the concerns and chaos surrounding the COVID pandemic, Rick and a number of other volunteer instructors were able to put 1,900 women through a basic firearms safety course, and this year Rick’s hoping to double that number.

On August 21st and 22nd, Rick’s bringing his annual event to two separate ranges in the Detroit area, and his plan is to give 4,000 ladies of all ages and skill levels the opportunity to train and shoot for free. That’s right, even the ammo is included in Ector’s training weekend, thanks to a donation of 80,000 rounds from the folks at Fenix Ammunition.

Even though the plans for the weekend are shaping up nicely, Rick tells me that he could always use more instructors, so if you’re interested in lending a helping hand you can reach out to him on the Facebook page for Rick’s Firearm Academy of Detroit. It promises to be an outstanding event, and it comes at a very opportune time. A new poll of Detroit residents released this week shows an overwhelming number of them are concerned about crime and aren’t interested in seeing city officials defund their police department.

By an overwhelming 9-1, they would feel safer with more cops on the street, not fewer. Though one-third complain that Detroit police use force when it isn’t necessary – and Black men report high rates of racial profiling – those surveyed reject by 3-1 the slogan of some progressives to “defund the police.”

“It’s scary sitting in the house, and when you go outside to the gas station or the store, it’s possible someone will be shooting right next to you,” said Charlita Bell, 41, a lifelong Detroit resident who was among those called in the poll. Last year, when her car was hit by stray bullets during a shopping trip, she hurried home rather than wait for the police for fear the shooter might return.

“It’s always some random shootings,” sighed Rita Gibbs, 70, who is so distressed she hates to turn on the news these days. “I just can’t stand it.”

It doesn’t help that Wayne County, where Detroit is located, has been accused of slow walking the issuance of concealed carry licenses. In fact, the county’s now facing a lawsuit over the delays, which in some cases have left residents unable to lawfully carry for more than a year while their carry applications are being processed. In the Detroit suburbs of Macomb and Oakland County, applications are generally approved in a matter of weeks, not months, but in crime-plagued Detroit some residents have been waiting for 14 months or more to hear back from licensing officials.

Ector’s big weekend won’t involve any concealed carry instruction, but it will provide women with the basics of gun safety, allow them to send a few rounds downrange under the watchful eye of an instructor, and hopefully get a better understanding and appreciation for gun ownership and their right to keep and bear arms in self-defense.

High School Student Calls For Gun Safety Education In Schools

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Gun safety education is something that all Americans should be exposed to. A lot.

After all, guns are part of our society and a lot of the issue we have with regard to guns is that people don’t really know what they’re doing. While accidental shootings aren’t nearly as common as intentional shootings, there’s really no excuse for them. What’s more is that we can minimize them by teaching people how to be safe with a firearm, even if they don’t intend to ever own one.

Where should we expose everyone to such a thing? Well, one California high school student has a hell of a suggestion.

A 12-year-old boy was killed by an accidental discharge of a handgun brought to his house by a friend in Chula Vista this month. This tragedy should make us look at how we are currently trying to combat unintentional firearm deaths, and see if it actually works. As of now, the only method that our government has come up with to help is to increase gun control.

But has that really worked? California already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

I am 15 years old, and spent most of my life in a small town in Northern California before moving to Alpine. It was there, at the age of 12, that I received my hunter safety license through my local 4-H club, after safely operating firearms for quite some time.

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The solution to this problem is a return to a couple of decades ago when firearm and hunter safety were taught in schools; some states are already doing it. A 2017 article by the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported that then-Utah Gov. Gary Herbert had signed legislation offering $75,000 for schools that implemented a gun safety program. North Carolina state Rep. Jay Adams and Idaho state Rep. Ronald Nate proposed elective gun safety classes be introduced for schools in their states.

The author, Nate Strauch, pretty much nails it.

Right now, most Americans don’t have any firearm training. Some who served got it in the military. Others learned from their parents, but most got nothing. Meanwhile, a lot of those people are going to buy guns and some have a reason to be concerned about the lack of training. Yet rather than require it before someone can exercise their right to keep and bear arms, wouldn’t it make more sense to just make sure everyone learns it in school?

It would also demystify guns, an act that will save a lot of lives all on its own.

If people don’t grow up thinking of guns as status symbols or pathways to strength and power, then maybe a lot of people won’t seem to think respect comes at the end of a gun. That’s an awful lot of our current problem, so anything we can do to end that should be something with unanimous support.

We’d also get a lot fewer accidental shootings if people understood firearms and firearm safety.

Unfortunately, there are those in this country that seem to want those accidental shootings and want those violent encounters about respect and being “dissed.” After all, they then use those to justify gun control despite the fact that we can put an end to these actions without interfering with the rights of law-abiding Americans.

Which is a shame. We could do a lot of good by listening to this high school kid.