Reasons why we can not have nice things.
JBLM soldier playing with handgun shoots girlfriend, police say
A Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier playing with a pistol shot and wounded his girlfriend Tuesday in Lakewood, according to Pierce County prosecutors.
The 21-year-old was charged Thursday with one count of third-degree assault and released on his own recognizance with orders to live on base.
The soldier is a specialist within the 7th Infantry Division, division spokesman Lt. Col. Roger Cabiness said.
According to charging documents:
Police and West Pierce Fire & Rescue crews were dispatched Tuesday night to a report of an accidental shooting at an apartment in the 8100 block of 83rd Avenue Southwest.
First responders found the solider applying pressure to a wound on the right side of his 21-year-old girlfriend of four months. She told police they had just returned to his apartment after getting dinner when she heard a gunshot and fell to the ground.
He ran to her and began administering first aid and called 911.
The woman told medics her legs were tingling and she could barely feel her toes, but the extent of her injuries are unknown.
The man gave a brief statement at the scene, saying the couple had just gotten back to his apartment from dinner. He always has a pistol with him, and thought he cleared the rounds from it when they returned.
He said he didn’t realize it was loaded until it went off and the bullet hit his girlfriend.
He gave a more detailed interview later, admitting he was playing with the gun and pointed it at his girlfriend, joking he was robbing her. He pulled the trigger, thinking the gun wasn’t loaded.
It was loaded, and the gun went off and shot his girlfriend, he said.
I can not envision what would happen if I pointed a weapon at the Soviet. There are several different things that make her legs tingle and there are even brief moments when she can barely feel her toes. However, I never play “Point the Gun” with her.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Army News, Darwin Awards, Dumbass Bullshit
So let’s add up the violations of the 4 Laws of Gun Safety that this rocket surgeon broke:
1. ALWAYS treat EVERY gun as if it were loaded. AT ALL TIMES! – pretending to rob your girlfriend? Check.
2. ALWAYS keep your muzzle pointed in a SAFE direction. – your girlfriend’s body? Check.
3. Keep your booger hook OFF the bang switch until ON TARGET and READY TO FIRE! – pull the trigger while breaking the first two laws? Check.
4. ALWAYS be sure of your target AND WHAT IS BEYOND! – well, I suppose he was sure of his target, no mention of what the round hit after exiting his target, so I guess he gets a pass on this one.
That’s a solid 3 for 4! Good Job Joe Snuffy!
A good (?) argument can be made for him breaking all four.
Well – he was purposely pointing it at her, though nobody is debating it was a stupid thing to do… I believe that she was his intended target, though he never intended the gun to go off. Thus, he was sure of his target.
Yeah, it’s a fine distinction… but I’se makin’ it. 🙂
Thru and thru the girlfriend, the wall behind her, the rear passenger side window of the car passing by and then the head of the child in the safety seat.
He better start looking for another target, I mean girlfriend, I bet this one has seen the light! 😉
“booger hook” … I thought I had heard them all
I pull the trigger on empty guns all the time. I may be checking the trigger pull after working on one of my firearms or cleaning it. I point it at the floor, but knowing there is no round in the chamber. Only an idjit points a supposedly unloaded firearm at anyone and pulls the trigger. He should be headed to the gray bar hotel for involuntary manslaughter, at the minimum.
Well, she’s alive.
First degree stupid.
This is the slippery slope of arming Soldiers.
While the itent makes sense, clowns will fall through the cracks. Its called the Law of Averages.
Darwin has a say, as well.
True.
The gene pool is getting rancid!
That is not going to change. Should run each individual through the risk assessment matrix, assign a risk category number and determine mitigation actions to apply.
For the 1 billionth time it really irks me when people say, “the gun went off.” Even law enforcement will say that when speaking of an incident.
As we know, guns are discharged and except in EXTREMELY rare instances, do not discharge unless the trigger is pulled.
There have been some mishaps with the Sig P320, some Remington 700 triggers and some 1970’s single action revolvers but for the most part, nope.
And if those firearms were held in a safe direction nobody would be the worse for wear and tear…
Stupid fuck.
My D.S. waylaid a stupid trainee for unsafe handling of a firearm in basic at Ft Leonard Wood and then in AIT my D.S. at Ft Polk literally beat the shit out of a trainee and got him bounced when the moron pointed a firearm at him, loaded, at the range.
Trainee Whitt was out of the US Army in about a month after that.
By that time his black eyes had pretty much healed and the stitches had been taken out…
Needless to say, gun safety became the top talk of the troops on the range….
Nobody even came close to unsafe practices after those instances, trust me on that one…
I’d argue that he should have been pissed if the gun didn’t go off… in this situation, the firearm was loaded, the safety was off, and this chucklenut pulled the trigger… damn right the “gun went off”!!
This is the bullshit defensive verbal response/excuse for people who don’t want to admit that the gun “went off” because they pulled the trigger and they shouldn’t have because of the consequences. Undropped guns don’t “go off” by themselves. They fire because the person holding them pulls the trigger.
Oops.
My bad.
Now Dave, come clean (so to speak).
I’m calling Bullshit on your comment….
“I never play “Point the Gun” with her.”…
“He always has a pistol with him,”
Even during normal duty hours while in uniform? Is that allowed? Is that a new thing?
Sure would bring a new twist to quick draw contests on Fridays in the motor pool when they’re supposed to be sweeping/lining up vehicles for the weekend./smile
But he’s a Dumb Ass. The whiz Wheel™® can’t wait for his name to be released so he can score him.
Off-duty and off-post only.
Interesting for such a left-leaning state, but WA has had “shall issue” carry long before it became the national trend in the mid-to late- 1990’s. I know this because I got my first CCW permit when I was stationed at Lewis from 89-91.
Guess I should have annotated my second sentence with /s.
Just trying to reconcile in my mind the assertion/statement from the article of “always” has a pistol with him./smile
We used the S&W Mod. 10 bull barrel .38 wheel gun in my early days at brink’s where I started in June 1970 and at one point, the gun went off question arose so our Armourer took one of the above Mod 10’s, cocked it and beat the shit out of the hammer with a hammer and the only thing that happened was that he broke the hammer off. Those Mod 10’s have a steel block in front of the hammer firing pin, so the block comes up when the trigger is pulled back and stays there until the trigger is pulled.
Specialist….he definitely sounds “special”
At least he wasn’t trying to shoot a beer can off her head
I just submitted my CC license renewal package to the State. The requirement to prove passing a gun safety course is waived if honorably discharged and a DD-214 was previously submitted and on file.
Portland mayor Ethan Strimling, as a state Senator was always trying to make veterans submit to training every time they renew so I had to make a call to ensure that was not presently the case.
It is shootings like this that make me want to re consider the gun safety course requirements, veteran or not.
Sad.
What’s up with troops in the Northwest?
File this under some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you:
Two 25th Infantry Division soldiers stationed at Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska had a worse week-end than the rest of us. Except for maybe Dave.
As it happens, the pair, Specialist William McCormick and Pfc. Zachary Tennyson were hunting near Carter Lake when one of them fired a round at a black bear walking above them on a ridge. At which point the bear then tumbled down the slope, dislodged a bunch of rocks along the way, and landed on top of McCormick who was both almost smothered to death by the bear and injured by the falling debris.
https://www.armytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2018/10/01/soldier-critically-injured-in-alaska-after-being-struck-by-a-falling-bear/
McCormick was airlifted to Anchorage and treated for “life-threatening injuries.” Tennyson was unhurt in the incident.
This will become legend in the Army:
“No shit, there I was, ass-deep in the tundra. I drew down on this bear…”
Black bears matter.
Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you. This just shows both can happen at once.
Support the right to arm bears.
Well just grin and Bear it
Bear with me, this place rocks!
yeh but…..”what about the bear”? lol 😉
This kid needs a new MOS. Clerk/Typist.
Every time there is a shooting at or near a military installation, well-meaning civilians come out of the woodwork and say “Soldiers should be allowed to carry firearms while on post! After all, they’re trained to carry guns so we know they can be trusted with them.”
And incidents like this show what that’s such a bad idea. Just like not all cops are expert gun handlers, neither are all soldiers. I stopped counting the number of clearing barrels that were ruthlessly executed by careless GI’s during my deployments.
During the first big “surge” in 2004 I was at Camp Beuhring in Kuwait and negligent discharges and lost weapons were an every-other-day occurrence.
You might ASSUME that someone who carries a gun for a living would know and apply the basic rules of firearms safety but there are so many examples of that not being true that they would fill an encyclopedia.
^^^THIS^^^
if you made that assumption, it would be unwarranted. The average snuffy who has had not had firearms training beyond BCT/boot camp has no business packing heat without further training.
Police included…some of us were on the pistol team and shot all the time, but several of the officers rarely shot, qualified or even removed their weapon from the holster….we had one that had a spider living in the barrel! lol (not funny, but it is!)
Ditto that in both Kuwait and A-stan, most of the holes in the tops of clearing barrels were 9MM from LT’s with college degrees!
Had a couple of clearing barrel executions in ’07 in Iraq, too. At least one was a grunt.
Also had a guy fucking with his M16 in the back of a Humvee that deployment. Fired a round into the roof of the truck. Spent the next month with no firing pin in his rifle. He was a grunt.
Letting troops carry on base is a completely garbage idea.
Tell that to the survivors of that muslim major shooting!!
BTW, why do I get the idea that SPC Fumblefingers here has III%, Molon Labe and Oath Keepers stickers all over his truck?
He wears Grunt Stupe T-shirts and cargo pants, too
Style*
Apparently I broke autocorrect, not the other way ’round.