Posted on 02/18/2012 1:45:45 PM PST by exhaustguy
A pastor's daughter who was rushed to Bayfront Medical Center after she was accidentally shot in the head at church has passed away, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Read more: http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_pinellas/pastors-daughter-dies-from-injuries-suffered-in-accidental-church-shooting#ixzz1mlsofSi2
(Excerpt) Read more at abcactionnews.com ...
It can be a mistake to try to substitute technology for understanding.
Let's say you have a pistol with a magazine interlock such that it won't fire without a magazine.
Then you inadvertantly leave a round chambered without realizing it. If you then insert a magazine and pull the trigger what will happen? What did you expect to happen?
If you observe the four rules of safe gun handling, you will be fine without the interlock.
If you have the interlock but fail to observe the rules, you will not be fine.
And if you adhere to the “Four Rules” and have the safety feature?
Exactly!
Some things my dad (a WWII vet) taught me about firearms:
Always assume that every gun is loaded every time you pick it up. When in doubt, check and recheck and triple check and never forget to check the chamber. It only takes one bullet to kill another person or yourself.
Shooting a gun by accident is no accident, it is stupidity.
A gun is not a toy, don’t treat it like one. That’s not to say that guns can’t be fun to shoot, but always respect the gun.
A clean gun is a happy gun.
Never aim a gun at any person, ever, unless your intent is to kill that person. Never aim a gun at another person in jest or as a joke even if you are “sure” the gun is unloaded. That includes a gun that you think is loaded with “blanks”.
If you aim your gun to shoot a person in self defense, never, ever shoot over the perp’s head as a warning or shoot to wound; always shoot to kill and with the very first shot as you may not get a second chance.
An unloaded gun with a safety lock in one room with bullets locked away in a safe in another room is about as useful as no gun at all.
When your life is in danger, remember the cops are only a phone call and probably 10 to 15 minutes or more away.
You are a woman (girl), you can’t overpower most men if their intent is to do you harm, that is unless you have a gun and know how to use it.
Target practice, no matter what your mom says, is never a waste of time. Neither is fishing.
I miss my dad.
Just last weekend there was a shooting near me. Guy at a party put his gun in the safe ‘cuz he knew he would be drinking. Midway through the party he showed it off to his buddies - keeping the magazine in the safe. After showing it off put it between the bed mattress. And later still showed it off again, and pointed it at a wall and pulled the trigger to show them it was “empty”.
Maybe that's part of the problem: People who get so excited about "showing off" their weapon that they can't think clearly enough to follow safety rules.
How could you ever clean it? It's more like "Assume every gun is loaded till you check it and then check it again".
Buy the feature if you like. I would choose not to buy.
I own a small .32 that has an interlock which prevents moving the slide back far enough to eject a round when the magazine has been removed.
It's an absolute pain in the neck to unload properly. I remove the loaded magazine. I must then insert an unloaded magazine and cycle the slide to eject the chambered round. Since I live in the People's Republik of Kalifornia and can't get a ccw, I find myself having to go through this awkward drill in my car at stops in Nevada or Oregon.
This additional handling is just a further opportunity for something to go wrong.
Kalifornia now outlaws the retail sale of handguns without loaded chamber indicators. The accidental shooting which prompted this law involved a Beretta which HAD a loaded chamber indicator. The idiot who fired the gun didn't know what was being indicated.
If you support the anti-gunners with every "improvement" they seek, our guns will have to be outfitted with flashing neon signs and sirens designed to warn the user and anybody else within fifty yards.
If you support the anti-gunners with every “improvement” they seek, our guns will have to be outfitted with flashing neon signs and sirens designed to warn the user and anybody else within fifty yards.
____________
Interest in safety = supporting “the anti-gunners”. Got it.
Then you have paid extra for one more thing you don't need, that will eventually break, or otherwise screw you up, at the worst possible moment.
I don’t want a gun with that “brilliant” safety feature. For a variety of reasons I may find myself with a gun that has a round chambered but no magazine and no way to fire that round. That might cost me my life.
I'm sick to death of anti-gunners in Kalifornia costing me thousands of dollars in order to create the "safe" utopia they seek. I already pointed out how a magazine disconnector could get a person into trouble. I pointed out how one of my own guns has features which create more opportunity for problems.
If you want to pay for "gun safety" that's fine but you shouldn't expect my support for it.
Thanks for your comments and insight. I hadn’t really considered how frustrating and inconvenient such safety features could be. I was all caught up in that “dead 20 year old girl” thing. My bad.
Yep, the “loaded chamber indicator” and the internal “magazine safety” are both due to California law.
My wife’s Ruger has both (we don’t live in California). For a short time, I had a Jimenez 9 MM with both of those “features”.
Those poor people. God give them peace.
My kids are friends with this girl and her boyfriend. This was such a profound tragedy on so many levels.
The young man who asked to look at the gun usually doesn’t attend church there, he was there to help that day.
The man who showed him the gun is a professional security guard (yes he should have known better and checked the chamber once removing the magazine...but it was a mistake, and we all make mistakes...a mistake that had tragic results.)
The kid wasn’t looking to buy a gun, just going to be in the market for one when he came of age. So there was no “guy selling” going on in the church as some media outlets have reported.
They went into a closet to view the gun. The gun went off and fired through a wall and into the next room. Not that anyone being hit would not have been a tragedy, but that bullet travelled through a wall and into a room full of people at just the right trajectory to hit the young woman (the girlfriend of the guy asking to view the gun) in the back of the head and travel straight through her head doing irreparable damage to her brain. The bullet could have hit so many places but it went straight through her head...the chance of that happening just overwhelms me.
The man who owned the gun is a long time friend of the pastor’s family. The church family had to witness the whole incident (including, of course, the boyfriend, the parents, and many young children.)
She seemed to rally mid week, giving all concerned some hope, but then started failing the last couple of days.
I appreciate your comment because if you look back up through the thread, there’s not a lot of empathy to be seen.
The ripple effect of this event will last the entire lives of those involved...truly a tragedy.
Added safety features on guns can be useful but they can lead even experienced firearms enthusiasts into a false sense of security and away from reliance on the "primary" safety. For the inexperienced who don't know the basic rules of safety (who shouldn't be handling guns but do) added mechanical features just introduce added possibilities for confusion and distraction.
“The beauty of the rules of safe firearms”....is that those who don’t follow them are seldom the ones who suffer.
I wouldn’t say that.
I know I’me being snarky but it is frustrating. This conversation began with a dead girl.
I am a gun owner, occassional hunter, and southerner so I am not an “anti-gunner”, but there is a frustrating tendency for those who are very much into guns to be hyper sensitive about any suggestion.
Absolutely the idiot who fired the errant shot is wholly to blame. You can bet that he will never get another nights sleep. The thing about gun accidents is that they are often tragic, even if it is the first and only accident.
Arguing that too many safety features makes one careless is like saying seat belts causes people to drive fast. Not really logical.
there has to be a happy medium
That's your opinion. You can keep it and your snark.
The thing about gun accidents is that they are often tragic, even if it is the first and only accident.
How about you show me the statistics to prove that most ADs result in injury and your other contention that most ADs that do injure someone injure someone other than the shooter. You like to make bold statements now let's see you back them up.
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