Fun With Guns: Bankruptcy Court Edition
Next door to the Grand Rapids Police Department is the U.S. Bankruptcy Court building. Inside that building are court officers cleaning guns.
A court officer accidentally shot himself in the hand while cleaning his gun inside the U.S. Bankruptcy Court building in Grand Rapids Friday afternoon, a source tells 24 Hour News 8.
The officer did not sustain life threatening injuries, but it’ll be a while before his ego injuries heal.
The situation created a large presence of emergency responders, police and fire trucks at the scene for about 30 minutes Friday afternoon.
Maybe he should look into bringing a clean gun to work.
You have to CLEAN guns? Sheesh. I got enough stuff to clean without having guns to clean.
1In the Gymkhana of Gun Safety this guy rates a 5 for failing to look down the barrel of the gun to see if it was loaded. Or, a 2 on the Darwin Scale.
2UNLOAD THE FREAKIN’ GUN BEFORE YOU TRY TO CLEAN IT, FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3Sheesh! There are way more moroons out there than anybody counted on.
A firearm goes off when the trigger is pulled on purpose, or when someone is negligent. There is no third option.
This guy was negligent and needs to be held responsible for being so.
4This article troubled me so that i immediately jumped on the information superhighway to determine exactly what a “Court Security Officer” was. I had it in my head they might be US Marshall Service deputies. They are NOT, according to the internet. They are contract employees with some sort of law enforcement background. They receive a limited deputization, but sadly that act allows them to carry firearms. usmarshals.gov hasnt a job description currently posted, although that could change in a couple of days.
5It reminds me of an old cartoon in The New Yorker, where the defendant on the stand says “I knew the gun was loaded – but I just never DREAMED that it would go off!”
6I would rather he clean the gun at work than at home. Less chance of hitting a kid.
7This doesn’t happen when someone cleans a gun. It happens when someone is being stupid with a gun and claims to have been cleaning it. And was he allegedly doing this on a break? Surely he couldn’t be getting paid at the same time.
8Edward Starsmith: I totally agree!
With all the examples of people discharging their weapons while trying to clean it, I am thinking a full time professionally trained gun cleaning service might be profitable. Especially if the courts would require it of those who have proven they don’t know how to do it.
9We should allow contract security forces to carry guns. But we shouldn’t allow them to carry bullets. Just having a gun at your side would be all that is needed to get compliance from 99% of the population. Bullets are really not necessary. Just ask Barney Fife — Sheriff Andy wouldn’t allow Barney to have bullets, either.
10Has to be Obama’s fault. This guy wasn’t going to give the UN his gun unless they pried it out of his owie hand.
11If a kid doesn’t know how to play with a toy and hurts him (or more rarely her)self, a parent generally takes it away.
Why doesn’t this happen more often with “adults” and guns?
12Jan is right about the gun cleaning thing. All these idiots who claim to have shot themselves while cleaning it are liars. They were screwing around with it, maybe trying to play Marshall Dillon, G.I. Joe, or John Wayne, and shot themselves.
I’m old enough to remember great childhood shoot outs with cap pistol six guns. That’s the most dangerous weapons those dumb asses ought to be allowed to possess. And they should probably undergo a background check to gauge their suitability even for that.
13No wonder there was such an overwhelming response! That damn building is federal! I bet the occupants really didn’t like being detained in their offices or unable to get to them for however long it took to trundle away little Mr. Idunnowhutimdoin.
14There need to be “consequences” for carelessness with firearms. (You know all these authoritarian types talk about “consequences”–always negative–for other people’s mistakes–why not theirs?)
First, you have to go to gun-cleaning class. You have to clean 100 handguns and 100 long guns under the immediately supervision of an ex Marine (to the extent any of us is “ex-“). Then, the next hundred times you want to clean your own weapon, you have to take it to the designated Firearms Safety Officer for your organization and do it in front of him or her, while being videotaped to be sure you’ve learned your lesson. Any mistakes break you back to numbskull and you start gun-cleaning class again. In the meantime, all your firearms are locked up and you have to get the Safety Officer to give you one (empty, checked by the Safety Officer) without any bullets in it because you’re not safe. If you get that far, you are then restricted to one bullet, and you have to phone the Safety Officer when you’ve shot it and need to clean your weapon. And so on and so on, tedious, annoying, detailed–and if it bugs your freedom loving soul too much and you do something outside the rules–you lose all your firearms forever.
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