Responsible Gun Owner Shoots Self, Young Daughter While Cleaning Gun

[onehandle]

STONINGTON, Maine (AP) — A man and his young daughter have suffered non-life threatening injuries after a handgun the father was cleaning fired and wounded them at their home in Stonington.

State police say 38-year-old Ryan Matson was cleaning his .45 caliber handgun Sunday morning when it went off, wounding him in the leg and his 4-year-old daughter Riley Matson in the thigh. The child was sitting next to her father at the time. They were taken to a hospital for treatment.

Matson’s wife and another child also were at home at the time of the shooting and were not injured.

Authorities say no charges are expected.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/2013/11/03/handgun-fires-injuring-dad-daughter-maine/2VNsdmCZIekFlP3mFjzm6M/story.html

[redwitch]

1. Don't most people empty the gun before cleaning it?

Damn, the stupid actually does hurt.

[onehandle]

2. Gun owners feel safest while holding their long, hard steel.

So safety logic goes out the window.

[Eleanors38]

46. You know this, how?

[B Calm]

3. and how stupid to have his 4 yr old daughter next to him

while cleaning a handgun.

[tblue]

31. While cleaning a LOADED handgun.

That poor child. She needs to be protected from her stupid daddy.

[lostincalifornia]

26. Actually, many gun deaths are due to "empty guns"

[sir pball]

45. You generally have to disassemble a gun to clean it.

Which is why my BD detector always pegs when I hear the "I was cleaning it and it went off" story. More like "I was being a criminally negligent jackass with a loaded weapon but I need to CYA!"

I mean, it COULD have gone off while he was stripping it, but that's still pretty high on the dumbassery scale - not properly clearing the weapon on the firing line after you're done with it for the day is damn near as bad. Either way, "no charges" is just idiotic.

[valerief]

4. Too bad his 4-year-old didn't also have a gun, because it's her god-given right.

The father should be put away for not giving her a gun.

Gungeoneer logic.

[xchrom]

5. du rec.

[MoonRiver]

6. Yep, that's what I call responsible.

[Duckhunter935]

7. Nope not responsible

An idiot who fails to follow proper safety measures. On the other hand tens of thousands did the same thing that day safely and never make the news. They are the responsible gun owners.

[Fumesucker]

11. They are responsible until they aren't

http://negligentdischarge.com/

Each year many people in the United States are injured by
accidental and negligent discharge of firearms.
When the records for 2008 come out, I will be
one of those people in the report.
Each year people are also killed by accidental and negligent discharge of firearms.

At about 5:16 PM on January 19, 2008 I had a negligent discharge
of my Rock Island .45 ACP pistol.
It was NOT an accidental discharge.
It was caused by negligence.
I knew all of the safety rules.
I thought that I followed all of the safety rules.
But I became complacent.
I let my guard down just one time.
That was all it took.

[tblue37]

32. It takes just a moment's distraction for a "responsible" gun owner to be

transformed into an "irresponsible" gun owner--even after years of handling guns responsibly.

"I will never understand how I could have been so careless when I have always been so careful before."

IOW, this guy IS precisely whom people mean when they refer to "responsible gun owners." Even when he pulled the trigger, although he had forgotten to make sure there was no round in the chamber, he did not just assume the chamber was empty. Instead, when he went to pull the trigger to make sure the new safety grip he had just installed would not need filing to fit properly, he still made sure to "aim the gun in a safe direction"--just in case.

But since he was sitting in the corner of his basement, THERE WAS NO SAFE DIRECTION. He was hit when the bullet he didn't even realize was there (because just this ONE time out of hundreds he had forgotten to check) ricocheted in that closed space.

Human error is inevitable when humans are involved in anything. All a responsible gun owner has to do is have a single brain fart--and we often don't even realize that we have forgotten or missed/overlooked doing something. For example, since I carry two totes with straps for books and papers when I teach, I have twice failed to notice that I left my purse behind when I drove to work. Fortunately, my missing purse didn't chase me down to wound or kill me.

But a brain fart while one is handling a gun can be fatal to the gun owner or to some innocent bystander. All it takes is a brief moment of distraction for a person who has been for years a responsible gun owner to suddenly become one of those "statistical anomalies" that responsible gun owners point to and say, "irresponsible gun owner!"

ON EDIT: This comment refers to the man in the link in the post directly above mine, not to the fool in the OP's story.

Another edit to add this from the guy's website, since it is so pertinent:

[font color = "blue"]"This incident happened because I got so used to handling guns and taking them apart and putting them together that safety measures became automatic. This is a good thing when you're talking about keeping your finger away from the trigger until the gun is sighted on a target. It's bad when it involves checking to see if a gun is unloaded. In this case I had just installed a grip safety and was checking to see if the safety worked properly. It did. You just can't trust your unconscious mind to do the right thing.

You should NEVER allow safety to become "automatic". If you do it's just a matter of time before your gun goes off when you don't want it to <emphasis added>."[/font]

[tblue]

34. Amen! And HI CUZ!!!

Long time no see!

Good post!

[tblue37]

35. Hi yourself! I am around--mostly just reading, though. nt

[oneshooter]

55. "It takes just a moment's distraction for a "responsible" driver to be

transformed into an "irresponsible" driver--even after years of driving cars responsibly."

[Brickbat]

44. This is a fascinating website. I read the guy's whole story.

Thanks for posting it.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

12. Cut him some slack.

He only shot two out of the four people in the house.

Jeeze.

[tblue]

33. There oughta be a law

against not following proper safety measures. Obviously there's not enough accountability.

[Orrex]

8. Why do they always say "it went off?"

Why not say "when the asshole carelessly discharged the weapon" instead?

More accurate, I'd say.

[jsr]

9. Because the gun jumped the gun and prematurely ejaculated.

[Orrex]

10. It should have thought about baseball

[reflection]

20. Algebra. Nuns. W.

Anything.

[Shankapotomus]

13. If only the 4 year old had her own gun

she could have defended herself from her idiot father.

[thesquanderer]

16. Yes. "The only thing that stops a parent with a gun is a child with a gun!" (nt)

[longship]

14. First step, remove clip. Second step, clear the chamber.

Then clean your gun, never pointing the barrel at anything you hold dear.

Gun safety 101.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

23. Yes, preferably by pulling slide back.

[joshdawg]

15. Oh, my. Wayne Littlepeter of the NRA

would be so proud of this "responsible" gun owner.

[City Lights]

22. "Wayne Littlepeter."

[ReRe]

17. That man has a permanent...

... sign on his forehead that says Stupid!.

When we get a drivers license, we have to take a written test and a driving test. Yet one can own and use a gun without proving any knowledge of it's safe usage. I just don't get that.

[CSStrowbridge]

18. This...

"Authorities say no charges are expected."

This has to change. Anyone who harms another person with a gun by accident should be charged with unlawful discharge of a weapon. Don't give them any jail time, but just a fine... the first time. The second time it happens, it's a felony and you lose the right to own a gun.

[mikeysnot]

19. Don't forget to include "Law Abiding"

[SidDithers]

21. Two people hit by one shot?...

Unpossible!! There must have been a second shooter.

Damn you BFEE!!

Sid

[lonestarnot]

25. SidDithers, are you sure?

Really?

[Silent3]

30. +1 n/t

[aikoaiko]

24. More fodder for the anti-gunners.

The culture war marches on.

[Hoyt]

38. Well, the "I gotta have a gun in my pants crowd" sure can't use these tragedies to their advantage.

I don't see gunz as a "culture war," but apparently guns are way too important to some folks.

[Blue_Tires]

42. I'd have thought the pro-gunners would want to check this moron just as harshly

He committed a cardinal sin of gun safety (assuming of course his 'official' story is true), harming himself and an innocent child...Shit like this just makes the gun community as a whole look bad...

[sir pball]

50. Even if his story's true he should be charged.

I don't believe most of the "cleaning it" tales, but even if it is true, criminal negligence at a minimum. I'm not going to say "there's no such thing as an ACCIDENT with a gun"; accidents can and do happen - but with a firearm the consequences are so severe that even an legitimate whoopsie should be punished harshly.

[aikoaiko]

57. Of course, I want those who endanger children held accountable.

I was just remarking on the happiness that some seem to take in condemning or mocking all responsible gun owners when a child is shot by someone who is irresponsible or criminal.

[giftedgirl77]

27. If your IQ is lower than the caliber than the gun

you own then you shouldn't own it.

[gopiscrap]

28. Jesus Christ there should be charges

[RC]

37. But guns only Discharge.

[BeyondGeography]

29. Errr, ummm

Fuck.

[Bazinga]

36. First rule of guns,

All guns are always loaded.

Second rule of guns
Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.

Third rule of guns
Never place your finger on the trigger until your sights are on the target and you have decided to fire.

Following any one of those three rules would have prevented this. Gun safety is not rocket science.

This is criminal negligence.

[Hoyt]

39. Problem is, way too many gun nuts/fools don't always follow "rules." Gunz seem to make folks stupid.

[sir pball]

49. So punish the stupidity.

Far too often these stories end with "no charges will be filed". Utter, complete BS - this guy needs a firm, legal slap upside the head at best and damn possibly a felony conviction to keep him from doing it again. The severity of the punishment is debatable, but there shouldn't be any opposition to something happening here. A few well-publicized cases of "'I was cleaning it' is NO EXCUSE!" would probably be a much better incentive to act safely than all the training in the world.

[Hoyt]

53. I prefer to prevent stupidity. But, gun culture wants to protect their access to more gunz.

That's the problem. I think we have too many. Sitting on our assess and doing nothing as gun cultists want will only result in another 100 million guns (and all the crud that goes with them) being manufactured over the next decade. To make the gun cultists happy, we have to put up with more and more of these tragedies. But, some folks don't care as long as they have their gunz to comfort them.

Time to enact laws like Australians had the guts/foresight to do in 1996.

[sir pball]

54. Nice idea if you're into it, but we're way past that point. We were in 96, for that matter.

Australia wasn't and isn't the US. Laws like that just aren't going to happen here in your lifetime...you're free to spend your time and energy advocating for them, but it would be a lot more effective to just accept that the barn door is wide open and the horse has long ago run. So let's focus on what we're more likely to be able to do - get this guy a felony conviction and make sure that he can't ever own a gun again via Universal FFL Transfers.

[Hoyt]

56. The dumbass should never have had a gun. But again, we gotta put up with this to make you guys happy

surrounded by your gunz.

[Javaman]

40. Yeah, real "responcible"

[Blue_Tires]

41. What percentage of these "cleaning my gun" -stories are complete bullshit

to cover up for something much more negligent/stupid/heinous? 25%? 40%?

[sir pball]

48. 100%. Res ipsa loquitur.

I suspect at least 75% of them are covering up, but even the remaining 25% deserve legal repercussions - if you cause unintentional harm with a firearm, it isn't an "accident" it is, simply by the fact that it happened, with no other evidence required, gross negligence.

[rdharma]

52. I would guess the "cleaning my gun" stories are about 90% BS

......Especially the ones that result in injury or death.

[LittleBlue]

43. Not a responsible gun owner, then

Aren't you supposed to, you know, unload the gun when you clean it?

This is why I like revolvers. Nearly idiot proof.

[Eleanors38]

47. local newz.

[MissMillie]

51. my son's friend shot himself the same way

Enlisted in the U.S. Army.

He's at home cleaning his gun.

His pregnant wife and child were not home at the time, thank goodness.