The world continues to reel with shock over the Dark Knight theater massacre, but the truth is that there are tens of thousands of gun deaths every year in the U.S. (over half of those suicides) and tens of thousands of non-fatal accidental gun injuries. (I'd love to get you exact figures, but they vary depending on the source.) So when you hear a news story about a guy who walked into Walmart carrying a concealed weapon, bought some milk, and reached into his pants to grab his wallet and instead almost killed himself and two other people, including a child, it's not that unusual. It sounds like a bad joke, but it's not. With the Dark Knight killings so fresh in our memory, I can't even poke fun of this act of stupidity. I can only be grateful no one was killed.
It happened in a Walmart in Dallas, Texas. That state, at least by one source, is ranked 23rd in gun death rates per capita. My state, New York, has the country's fifth lowest gun death rate, half the U.S. average, due to our very strict gun laws. This is kind of amazing when you realize that we have the third most populous state, and all of us -- people from every color, creed, race, religion, sexual orientation, and belief -- are crammed into such a small amount of land. Not to mention that New Yorkers have a rep for being a bit, shall we say, testy.
The Dallas man, who had a permit for the gun, reached into his pants and his gun went off. He was injured, as was a mother and her kindergarten-aged daughter who happened to be nearby. The bullet hit the cement floor after grazing his leg and shards of the cement flew into the mother and daughter. Imagine how much worse it could have been.
Reportedly he then fled the scene after the gun went off. Yeah, he didn't stick around to see if everyone was all right. But he's been arrested and charged with injury to a child.
I'm just glad this particular incident didn't end up with the death of a mother or a child, or both. Many others will not be so lucky this year.
Where do you stand on gun control?
Image via Nevada Tumbleweed/Flickr
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Comments 12
Second ammendment is clear. It shall not be infringed.
HOWEVER, Sweden issues their citizens a gun AND teaches them how to use it, so maybe we should take a page out of their book and instead of enforcing gun "control," enforce gun SAFETY and EDUCATION and make to where idiots who keep their gun in their pocket instead of safely in the holster get fined for having it in their pocket before it goes off accidentally.
I just have to wonder how someone who doesn't stick around to make sure a child that they just personally injured (albeit by accident), was alright, managed to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in the first place? In my book, it would seem that this person must have some sort of psychological handicap/shortcoming that would have prevented him from being able to obtain one! Seriously, what kind of person doesn't care that they've potentially just accidentally shot a child for crikeys sake? That's insane!
And I agree that anyone who has a permit to carry a weapon on their person, whether it be concealed or not, should be required to pass a very strict safety course to be allowed to do so.
Like so much of our constitution the 2nd amendment is extremely outdated. It was written so that we, the citizens, could ensure that our government never got strong enough to force its will on the people- if we really wanted to have weapons equivelant to that of the government- so that we could overthrow them if needed now, we'd all have to have access to nuclear weapons...
This is exactly why I am afraid of having people just carrying guns around. It endangers everyone around you if it goes off. You can give safety courses, but that doesn't really make people follow them now does it?
I'm sorry, but it's too dangerous. I'm all for upholding the constitution, but when it gets to a point that it's too dangerous or we learn better then I don't see a problem with changing things a bit. I say give people the right to keep them in their homes. Not out in public.
It doesn't take someone with mental disabilities to accidentally shoot themselves. My ex-husband bought a handgun shortly after I left his redneck ass, and took it to work to show it off. As he was getting out of the car, he somehow dropped it and shot himself in the leg, shattering his femur. Now, apparently he didn't know how to put the SAFETY on the gun or to handle it carefully, or, how about, only have a gun when you actually NEED one. It isn't some boy-toy to brag about to your friends. Sadly, a large chunk of Americans have the maturity of a 3 year old and see guns as some representation of their masculinity or redneck-inity, and not for what they are. Until we can manage to change the nature of PEOPLE, something needs to be done to limit gun ownership, especially the kind of weapons the idiot in Colorado had access to.