Worth saying again.
It just pisses me off to see something like this described as an "accident". In fact, the term "accidental discharge", so common it is often appreviated "AD", just sets me off. Descibing a negligent discharge as an "accidental" discharge should be a felony misuse of the English language.
A few years ago, a local cop shot and injured another cop with a weapon in an evidence locker. I actually got the following letter printed in the paper in response to the poor reporting:
Firearms safety rules ignored
A news item described how a Gwinnett County police officer was wounded when a rifle discharged as he and another officer were processing it ("Confiscated rifle discharges, wounds officer," Law and Order, June 18). This certainly should have been reported as a "negligent discharge," not as an "accident."
The four basic rules of firearms safety are:
All guns are always loaded.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
Be sure of your target.
The first two rules were certainly ignored. The third rule was also almost certainly ignored.
Firearms rarely fire on their own. The article states that "it discharged." This implies that the gun did this on its own. I would maintain that violation of the third rule is the more likely culprit.
[FreedomPoster]
The basic rules of firearms are more than well-known to a majority of gunowners. What seems to be the argument here is whether to carry "cocked and locked" or not.
Being a female that carries in a concealed carry purse, I feel "cocked and locked" is asking for a whole world of hurt. The amount of jostling a handgun takes in a purse, even though there is a built-in holster, is way too much for me to feel that I was carrying safely in "cocked and locked" mode.
The negligent discharge of the police officer is a case in point.