Irresponsible Gun Owner Link Round Up 1.14.15

It may be a New Year (hi there 2015), but human nature ain’t changed much. There are still people out there with guns who fail to use them responsibly. People who store them incorrectly. People who leave them lying around loaded. People who attempt to train others in the use of guns while being untrained themselves. People who think giving guns to children are a good thing. People who turn to guns to resolve their problems. And of course people who shoot their spouses.  Case in point:

Peachtree City Police Chief shoots wife

Officers were called to Chief William McCollom’s home on Autumn Leaf shortly after 4 a.m., according to Peachtree City police Lt. Mark Brown.

McCollom called 911 at 4:16 a.m., saying he had accidentally shot his wife twice, GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang told Channel 2 Action News. Margaret McCollom, 58, was taken to Atlanta Medical Center and is in critical condition, according to Brown.

No charges have been filed and a news conference is scheduled at 2 p.m. at the Peachtree City Police Department, Brown said in an email release. Peachtree Police, the GBI and the Fayette County District Attorney will participate in the news conference.

“The investigation into this incident has been turned over to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation due to the husband of the victim being the Peachtree City Chief of Police,” Brown said.

Police have not said what led to the shooting, but the town’s city manager has placed McCollom on administrative leave pending the completion of the investigation and an internal review, according to Brown, who referred questions on the incident to the GBI and the Fayette County District Attorney’s office.

Oh, and apparently, this shooting was accidental:

The Peachtree City chief of police is on administrative leave after shooting his wife twice Thursday morning.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says police chief William McCollom called 911 just after 4 a.m. Thursday saying he had accidentally shot his wife, Margaret, at their home on Autumn Leaf.

While I’m not a gun owner (and hope never to be) even I know that guns should be stored unloaded and that one should never point a gun at someone without the intention of shooting that person. So I wonder why the chief of police was pointing his gun at his wife.

It’s bad enough when civilians shoot one another, but when a member of law enforcement shoots someone it is worse.  In the United States, law enforcement officers are granted tremendous privilege and power (IMO, those should be earned, not granted by simply being in uniform and having a gun). They hold significant ability to affect the lives of others.  Often, their decisions can mean the difference between life and death for civilians.  As such, they should be held to a higher standard of responsibility. After all, with great power, comes great responsibility. Or it should.

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Woman is shot and killed by her toddler

A woman is dead and her son now mother-less after a trip to Walmart went horribly wrong.

Local station KXLY reported that a woman in her late 20s died in the electronics section of a Kootenai County, Idaho, Walmart after her son somehow slipped out the handgun she kept in her purse and fired. It’s a sign of the times that employees and customers initially fled the store assuming it was under attack.

Walmart spokesperson Brooke Buchanan said in a statement to ABC News today:

“A very sad and tragic incident happened in our Hayden store involving a female customer, and we’re working with the local sheriff’s department while they investigate what happened.”

Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department’s Lt. Stu Miller said that the woman was with several children doing some after-Christmas shopping when the “accident” happened.

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A man in Nashville, TN wanted his McDonald’s double cheeseburger. Badly. I mean, so badly that when he didn’t get it, he returned to Mickey D’s with a pistol. Yeah…terrorizing the employees of McDonald’s bc your order was messed up? That’s a totally appropriate use of a gun.

North Precinct detectives are looking for 21-year-old Demetri Johnson in connection to the Thursday aggravated assault at the restaurant, according to a news release from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. His last known address is on Joseph Avenue.

Police said Johnson placed a drive-thru order early Thursday, received his food and pulled away. He drove back through the drive-thru, complained about the missing cheeseburger and the manager asked him to park and said he would bring out the missing sandwich.

The cheeseburger is not part of the eight items McDonald’sis cutting from its menu in select testing locations.

Johnson is accused of walking into the restaurant a few minutes later with a pistol, racking it and demanding that staff fix the order, police said. He and the three women with him also wanted fresh fries and new soft drinks. They left after receiving their food.

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14-year-old Texas teen shoots his father  in a Christmas dispute

According to Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio, the unidentified man was involved in an argument with his 16-year-old son who was disappointed with his Christmas present of a fishing rod.

“The young 16-year-old was very upset because he claimed that the rest of his friends, either got a car or a pickup for Christmas. All his father provided for him was a fishing rod,” Lucio said.

Lucio said that father struck the teen on the head with a baseball bat, enraging another son — age 14 — who ran out to the family car where he retrieved a shotgun kept in the trunk.

Few details have been released, but even if the father struck his son, that’s still no grounds to exacerbate the situation by shooting him.  That makes things worse and is a clear example of an irresponsible gun owner.

“The young 14-year-old boy discharged the weapon. Discharged it twice. The second time he hit his father in part of the face and part of the shoulder,” Lucio explained, adding that the father will lose an eye as a result of the shotgun blast.

Authorities state the 14-year-old then took off from the home, driving in a car before sheriff’s deputies spotted him in an open field. Police say the teen struck another vehicle while attempting to elude them.

Sergeant Michael Brooks with the Harlingen Police Department said shootings like this can be prevented by placing a gun lock on a weapon, adding that the Harlingen Police Department provides gun locks to the public, free of charge.

“If the weapon can’t be fired, then it won’t be fired,” said Brooks.

The shooting could have been avoided if there were no firearm in the household to begin with. Sadly, many people think the presence of a gun makes families safer.

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 An Irresponsible Gun Owner 2-fer! 

Former Glasgow, Kentucky police officer Darrell Smith is suing Barren Outdoors, and one of their employees, for negligence, over an incident that occurred last March. According to WBKO, Smith went into Barren Outdoors and asked to see a .38 caliber handgun. When the clerk handed the gun to Smith, Smith examined the gun, then he cocked it. The gun went off, shooting off part of Smith’s index finger.

Smith’s attorney says that the lawsuit is seeking to make up for lost income. Smith lost his job on the police force after the incident. His attorney, Alan Simpson, tells WBKO:

He’s permanently disfigured. He went through a lot of pain and suffering. He’s gone through several surgeries. He’s got a lot of medical bills that have to be paid. It ended his career and he’s going to have a lot of lost income.

The suit says that Barren Outdoors’ employee was negligent because he didn’t perform a safety check on the gun before handing it to Smith.

If a cop can’t handle a gun safely, why should we assume others who aren’t trained can?

This incident is disturbing on several levels. First, take note in the video that Smith and the clerk who was assisting him were not the only people in the store. There were at least two other customers, and two other clerks. Everyone involved was fortunate that Smith’s finger was the only thing that was shot. Second, cops are supposedly trained to properly handle firearms. The store clerk definitely screwed up by not checking the gun to make sure it wasn’t loaded. But shouldn’t Smith have also checked the weapon before he started playing with it?

If a trained law enforcement officer is this casual and careless with a gun that he only assumed wasn’t loaded, and never checked, how can we feel comfortable around the thousands of largely untrained “responsible gun owners” that we encounter?

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Irresponsible Gun Owner Link Round Up 1.14.15
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