Nov 14, 2014

The Only Ones: Load that Glock, Barney; I Gotta Clean It.

The subject line may be too rough on the police officer involved. It depends on what , exactly,  happened that day on the Iowa City cop training range, and it's unlikely his boss cops will ever report more than that a shooting accident happened.

You've heard it before, but maybe some firearms newbies  -- and reporters -- will stumble across this.

Two Iowa  City police officers were injured when a gun went off while it was being cleaned. 

(1) Dammit, you can't clean a loaded gun.  The bullet thingie gets in the way of the stick thingie with the rag gizmo on it.

(2) No properly working firearm ever "went off."  It was placed in a firing condition by a human being and the sear tripped by a human being.

The department says officers were in the process of cleaning and conducting maintenance on their weapons at a department substation Monday after a day of special training.

Which training failed to get a concept or two across, or got it across to an officer who couldn't be bothered to  pay attention to what the hell he was a doing.

The shooter and another  officer were slightly injured.

It was a negligent discharge, or an accidental one if you care to parse the subtlest meanings of the two words and give the shooter the benefit of every possible doubt.  I won't.  I've had a ND, and I can't blame it on a mysterious Count von Wentoff who spooks around, invisibly loading guns and  pulling triggers.

1 comment:

Rob said...

"Special training", from time to time back was I was in the CG our 'special training' involved beer.

Getting shot with an unloaded weapon is so much more than just dumb when it's a professional.