I’m put in mind of a favorite quote.
“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
[Ford Prefect:] “Why, what did she tell you?”
[Arthur:] “I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
Piemonte said he feels lucky
There was also that gun safety guy who very instructively shot himself:
So basically like D.A.R.E. for guns (if D.A.R.E. actively promoted “responsible” cocaine use and had been lobbied for by the drug cartels).
He said he and his wife… decided
to apply for concealed-carry permits for their own general safety
Yeah… er… how’s that going?
Don’t be too critical on the instructor. Sometimes you have to hammer the message home! In this case, Drop the hammer.
The instructor was a victim of complacency. No matter how long you have been doing this, how many hours of safe handling you have, one must be ever vigilant of the basic rules of gun handling. Professionals and cops are not immune to accidents.
Said it once before, but it bears repeating:
I think I would characterize the student as the victim in this case.
Yes thats true of anything I tell my son not to touch but if I tell him why he should not do something then he will act rationally.
But it’s ok, he’s the only one in that room professional enough to carry a Glock 40. With that sense of timing, he should have gone into comedy!
I would like every child to be taught how to use and maintain firearms as soon as they are physically mature enough to do so safely. Every citizen should know how they work and what they do from the earliest possible age.
It is impossible for this to happen without the occasional undesired shooting, unless massive investment is made in special equipment.
Perhaps incongruously, I dislike weapons that leave the hand, and wish they were not necessary.
The gun safety instructor who shot the student was 73. How old do you have to be to meet the “physically mature enough to do so safely” threshold?
People’s abilities are variable, and setting limits to things based on age is often counterproductive.
This incident had nothing to do with the instructors maturity level. He had the knowledge and skills and still screwed up. Just like a fit swimmer can drown, and a race car drive can crash on the highway. No one is immune to mistakes. One can be completely competent and still have an accident.
OK, so it’s obviously not the student’s fault but we can’t really blame the shooter and it would be unthinkable to blame the gun. Is there any way we can pin this one on Obama?
I love how people replying to Rob are very specifically ignoring exactly what he wrote in the message they’re replying to.
Yup, the adults are supposed to be responsible. But not all are. And sometimes even good parents have kids that play over at a friend’s house, where things might not be under control.
And no doubt the program is self serving. But not in the way you state. Toy stores and video games do more to normalize guns than this program. The program doesn’t expose them to guns any more than seeing them on tv does, and at least tries to shift the topic to “guns are dangerous.”
This program is intended to avoid the extreme bad publicity that comes with little kids shooting themselves and each other. Yeah, mitigating that PR nightmare is probably a victory to the NRA. Very self serving.
And if they think their program could save lives, good for them. Maybe it’s daft, maybe it has a self serving component. But doing nothing seems an even stupider option.
Who said we can’t blame the shooter? He was negligent and his negligence resulted in an injury. If you’re looking for someone to talk to about holding him responsible, talk to the cops who decided it was a harmless accident.
So here’s a question: exactly what does a CCW class have to do with a gun safety class (where no firearms will be present at all) being taught in grade school in Missouri? I mean, outside of the obvious yellow journalism implication that the first-graders are going to be shot next.
