It doesn’t matter how pro-gun you are; some things just don’t make sense.
Gun safety rules are fairly basic:
- Every gun is treated as loaded until you personally verify that it is unloaded—both the magazine and the chamber. Unload your weapon when not in use.
- Do not put your finger inside the trigger guard, much less on the trigger, unless you are ready to shoot.
- Do not point the gun at anything you do not intend to shoot or kill. Keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction at all times.
It does not take a genius to practice gun safety, but lately it seems as though people at the opposite end of the bell-shaped curve (i.e., idiots) are in the news for gun usage.
- In Davies, FL, an Instacart driver attempting to deliver groceries had trouble finding the address, pulled into the wrong driveway and the owner fired three shots, striking the car.
- Ralph Yarlwas (age 16) was shot by 84-year-old Andrew Daniel Lester in Kansas City, Missouri, when the teen went to the wrong house to pick up his siblings.
- In upstate New York, Kaylin Gillis was a passenger in a vehicle that pulled into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house. The resident, 65-year-old Kevin Monahan, fired two shots from his front porch, Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey Murphy said in a news conference Monday.
- The list goes on and on.
When I was in Southwest Asia, I was trained on every weapon I might need to use, M-16 rifle and M9 pistol. I then had to qualify as competent with the weapon on a range while stateside and again when I was overseas. How many of these people have had training or had to prove their competence?
The last case really concerns me. The Akron police attempted to stop Jayland Walker for the heinous crime of a broken tail light, although Driving while Black cannot be discounted. He MAY have had a gun, which he MAY have fired during a vehicle chase, but did not have the gun when he was shot 46 times; some reports indicate that 94 rounds were fired by police. Three officers fired 18 rounds in 6.7 seconds. The police in the Akron case were not charged or indicted. What may be legal is not necessarily ethical or moral.
Are people such wimps that any indiscretion needs to be responded with deadly force? Are they so afraid that they cannot function any other way? What the hell is going on? Discharging a weapon is supposed to be restricted to responding to an immediate threat to life or property, not a paranoid fantasy of what might happen.
All I can add is that I’m damn glad none of these yayhoos deployed with me to a combat zone. Any action of this type and they would have endangered others. They would then have been yanked back, their weapon confiscated, and potentially brought up on charges.
sfnowak 