Fun With Guns: Prosecutor Edition
McLennan County, Texas. (That’s Waco)
First Assistant District Attorney Michael Jarrett said he asked fellow prosecutor Landon Ramsay if he could see Ramsay’s new Glock .40-caliber pistol about 2 p.m. Monday.
Now you know right there that this ain’t going in the right diection. Guns are not boy toys.
Jarrett says he asked if the gun was loaded and was told it was not. He claims he pulled back the slide and didn’t see a round in the chamber. So he aimed the gun out the window …
“I was being extremely safe,” Jarrett said. “I inspected the gun even after I was told it was not loaded, but it was just an unfortunate accident.”
… and shot the building across the street. Killed the damn thing. Or at least scared he crap out of it. It was a vacant building so it was probably suicidal anyway.
The DA says his prosecutors will still be allowed to carry weapons because a disturbed Justice of the Peace in Kaufmann County killed a DA and his wife.
Thanks to Linda for the heads up.
“I was being extremely safe”
1“Bang!”
Safe. I don’t think that word means what YOU think it means.
‘Safe’ is when you really, really know what you are doing and double check for yourself.
This idiot should not be around guns.
On the bright side, the Rick Perry in my city elections did not get elected yesterday.
2So I do not have to hear or be subjected to any rick perry decisions in my city government!!!
Anyone who thinks it’s “extremely safe” to trust that a firearm is unloaded is extremely ignorant. I wonder what he would think of his excuse if it came from a Black man who claimed he accidentally shot someone in the building across the street. Somehow I think he might view it differently.
3Mr I AM AN Idiot,what did you see when you pulled the slide back? A vast,empty wasteland similar to the one all you nutters have between your ears? Here is a fact of life-empty guns do not fire live loaded rounds. That rascal bullet was lurking in the chamber somewhere and you have to be lying through your teeth to say you didn’t see it. If you pulled the slide all the way back,you would have picked up a live round from the magazine to fill the chamber. Either way your story makes you look foolish.
4“It wasn’t load”, “I was being safe” are the most common last words in gun “accidents”. I think this DA should be forced to cross stitch these last words on a whoopee pillow! That would be about his speed. And, dammit, make it illegal for the legal eagles to carry firearms. They just ain’t smart enough.
5Two fools met. Fool number one should have removed the magazine and opened the chamber before handing fool number two the gun. Assuming he knew how to handle guns, fool number two should have notice #1’s neglect and removed the magazine and opened the chamber. And if #2 did not know about guns he at least ought to have known they can kill people. After all, now and then people do get shot in Waco.
6The only safe gun is the one locked up in a gun safe and kept out of the hands of idiots.
Good Grief.
7Another prime candidate for Moron Insurance.
8Also in the Waco Tribune: “No one was injured, which Jarrett said was because he was careful to point the pistol out the window at a brick wall.”
Hmmm. Ever heard of ricochets? Sounds like Jarrett failed the entry screening for a Darwin Award.
9As Kaufman goes, so goes the state of Texas, right? That shooting by another elected official made precedent for other elected officials?
Seems too easy to get elected in Texas, and Gohmert ain’t the only case in point.
10This is serious stuff. And like Elizabeth said, how far would that excuse go if it had been someone else?
Now that said…I am still giggling about that no clue idjit scaring the crap out of the innocent building..
11Can a person be extremely safe, think a gun is unloaded, and the “unfortunate accident” of a gun going off? I believe the district attorney in this case, Michael Jarrett, will say that is very possible. The defense rests.
12Unfortunately this story proves that guns are, indeed, boy toys. And too many right-wingers never grow up.
13“Careful to point it out the window at a brick wall”??? CAREFUL? The only thing this guy is careful about, sorta, is to cover his butt.
The time I had a 4 1/2 foot rattler on the front porch, lying on a concrete porch slab and up against a brick wall, did I take the varmint rifle And shoot it? No, because my mother taught me about ricochets while I was still in BB gun stage. I called in the then-expert archer in the family.
I guess this guy also didn’t know what the Glock had been loaded with, or the muzzle velocity of that flood in that firearm, or whether it could in fact penetrate that particular brick wall (was it brick veneer or double – wall, and what quality of brick?). I ran into a gunidjit online who thought the warnings on ammo boxes about range meant nothing. True if you don’t pay attention.
But he’s white and in the justice system, so he will get at most a mild suggestion not to do that again.
14Oh, yeah and the window he fired through while being careful? Closed window. Shattered it. So he doesn’t know the meaning of “not loaded” or “safe” or “careful” with regards to guns. But I bet he knows the meaning of privilege and friends in the shop.
15Time for a new metaphor.
Most small plane owners spend a lot of money to maintain their plane and keep it safe.
NRA plane owners just buy a parachute. ‘Cause parachutes make you safe.*
Never fly with an NRA pilot.
*Take off and landing not included.
16I agree that they should carry firearms as you know somewhere in Russia there is someone who shoot some one else and ya know it is close enough that I can see it out my window when I’m 2000 miles north of Texas.
17Logic the one thing they never had and never will.
I had a bumper sticker that I got from a guy who had fled the Soviet Union ( I’m getting old) that said,”Communist peace is more deadly that war”–I got a lot of angry comments stuck under my windshield wiper, but I always thought of the speech that was in the movie, “A Man For All Seasons”, when Sir Thomas Moore talked about silence–silence gives consent, the silence of the grave, more examples that I can’t remember–and how the mass murders and common graves (graveyards being very peaceful) come from being “safe” as in “peacekeeper missiles” –having these crazy gun nuts talking about an armed society is a polite society–it’s such garbage, the towns made people check their guns with the sheriff before coming in where people were…and most people didn’t have them, these people are crazy–I’m beginning to think they can’t be redeemed…
18Didn’t anybody but me notice that the DA and assistant DA (and the DA’s wife) who were killed in Kaufman County were all people who owned guns and used them? They also knew that the person who has been charged with their murders hated them because they had taken action against him that cost him his job. And yet those guns did them no good, probably because they didn’t think the man was the kind of threat he turned out to be. Guns are rarely useful to the average person, even the average person with enemies.
19Point well made, Nancy Jane. Even armed, the average person is likely to have unguarded moments in the course of a day. If somebody is intent enough on taking that person’s life, the killer most likely can find the opportunity, guns or no guns.
20Four Rules. Col Jeff Cooper. True in 1957 when I first got my hands on a BB gun. True today.
1. All guns are always loaded.
212. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
Micr, amen. I wouldn’t have a gun in the house and I know those rules. Why don’t these other fools? A lot of innocent people and many of them kids would be alive today if those rules were properly taught and gunbuyers were asked to recite them first.
22Rhea—‘Micr, amen. I wouldn’t have a gun in the house and I know those rules. Why don’t these other fools? ‘
The only answer I have ever found…
23‘Don’t underestimate the breath and depth of human stupidity!’