Rule 1
Samuel Benally Jr. was at an apartment on West Tacoma Street when he said guns should be kept unloaded because people could point them at their heads, said Sierra Vista police Sgt. Brett Mitchell.
Benally then demonstrated by putting his own 9mm Ruger, which he believed to be unloaded, to his head and firing it, Mitchell said.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Just a little chlorine in the gene pool.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Sounds like a contender for the Darwin Award.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I bet that’s a lesson his “students” don’t soon forget!
Darwin Award nominee.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Firearms safety has its own, unique, set of punishments. No law can mandate common sense.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Can’t fix stupid.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I will never understand something like this.
Every single time I touch my Beretta 92FS, the very first thing I do is look in the chamber, even when it has never been out of my sight right here on my desk. I keep snap-caps in it for dry-fire (mostly at the TEEVEE) and I know what I’m doing. I never touch it without looking in the chamber.
This costs me two seconds. How expensive is that?
I’m never going to understand something like this.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:30 am
“Can’t fix stupid.”
Heh, actually Samuel Benally Jr. just proved you can.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:44 am
…because people could point them at their heads…
And cars should be kept unfueled, because people could drive them off a cliff.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Evolution in action
May 19th, 2009 at 11:18 am
OK, I can almost understand him pointing it to his head to make his point – but WTF did he pull the trigger?
Sigh… Stupid is as stupid does…
May 19th, 2009 at 11:31 am
And still this tragedy could have been avoided by observing rule 2 and/or rule 3. Multiple failures required to create tragedy.
a. All guns are loaded
b. Don’t point guns at your or anyone else’s head (caveat: unless the gun has been disabled to be unable to fire; unloaded is not a disabled condition)
c. Never touch the trigger on a gun that you “believe is unloaded’ while pointing it at your head.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“You can teach ’em, but you cant learn ’em…”
May 19th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I’ll bet that if he was going to point that gun at his crotch, he would have checked the chamber.
Head? Maybe not.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
The very definition of QED.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Don’t laugh! This is just yet another instance of Gun Violence that the VPC and the Bradys can throw in our faces!
May 19th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
(…durn blog ate the “cynicism” close tag on that…)
May 20th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
“People like those making these snide pathetic remarks
are devoid of any feeling or humanity” Assholes, There are people grieving!”
May 21st, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I disagree. Apparently you can fix stupid. He won’t be stupid ever again.