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When I moved to Montana, a woman named Tasha Johnson was the first person to befriend me. When I moved away we stayed in touch. On Thursday, May 14, Tasha called me from Kalispell. She’d just had a terrifying experience. “While my son napped in his room, [my daughter] and I are playing outside. We heard a very loud snapping sound,” Tasha told me. “I couldn’t find where it came from. I shrugged it off. Then I went to get my son from his nap . . .

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“I first noticed the dry wall dust on the changing table,” Tasha said. “Then I saw the large hole in my son’s bedroom wall.” She looked closer. She was shocked to see a “very large bullet” poking through the light blue paint in her one year-old’s room.

Judging from the size of the hole Tasha concluded a rifle round had caused the damage. She called the police. The police determined that the bullet came from a “high-powered rifle” such as a 7mm or .308.  The bullet was tumbling when it hit the house, suggesting a ricochet. That made it difficult to pinpoint its exact origin.

Tasha blamed no one for the stray round but the person who pulled the trigger. “What happened had nothing to do with laws or lack of laws,” she insisted. “It was some moron that didn’t understand gun safety.”

Four rules people. Four rules.

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23 COMMENTS

  1. “What happened had nothing to do with laws or lack of laws,” she insisted. “It was some moron that didn’t understand gun safety.”

    True. Next topic?

  2. Damn, glad the child is ok. That happens in MI a lot in Nov. That whole part about knowing your target and what is beyond it escapes some people.

  3. Maybe someone will invent bullet proof wall paper to help reduce harm from stray bullets.

  4. Glad your friends kid was OK. Unlike when this happens in Chicago almost daily. It’s ALWAYS some jagoff…

  5. A friend in Brooklyn has a few of those bullet holes in the walls of his home, and sadly none of them have anything to do with gun safety.

  6. When I was a kid, we had bullets sometimes smack into the roof and whistle into the back yard from people hunting in a woods about half a mile away. I think they were hunting squirrels with the tube up. Of course, hunting deer with a high powered rifle was illegal in Indiana, but legally you could use an anti-aircraft gun to hunt squirrel. Go figure.
    I still say if you are going to hunt with the tube up, use a shotgun with light shot, but I get shouted down by the expert hunters who never miss. Uh-huh.

    • I forgot to mention that the woods in question was owned by a church and hunting in it was not allowed.

      • The light went on right after I hit the send key. Tube = barrel, I think. So tube up = barrel pointed up (for safety). Got it.

        • Yeah, tube up = safety. Just like the Jack Wagon who shot a rifle in the air and it landed I know not where, and killed a girl in Ohio. I see all the high speed low drag operators are out today.

  7. Similar thing happed to me. Before moving to Florida I lived in the Catskills of NY.
    One sunday sitting in my upstairs den watching a race and hear a whack on the side of my house.
    Turn my head and see a hole in my wall. Look back at the TV and there is a hole in that wall too.
    3 feet from where Im sitting.
    Turns out it was from my neighbors home range. He was letting some fool from NYC who had never fired a handgun take a try.
    Rapid firing, some muzzle rise and it went over his berm into my house.
    Crap happens living in the country.

  8. Rule #5; You are legally liable for whatever damage the bullet does once it leaves your barrel.

    • It wasn’t the 1st time it had happened.
      Another neighbor on the same side called the cops and he the owner lost all his guns.
      Cops took them away right then and there. Registration does indeed lead to confiscation. Prime example.
      Its always been illegal to lend a gun to another in NY, Even in your own backyard. Its registered to the owner. The other guy was then in the possession of an unregistered hand gun.
      NY laws have always been “F”ed up. More so now with the Safe Act.
      In my factory myself and my business partner each had our EDC dual registered. Plus the shotgun kept in the hallway closet.

    • That was something my dad taught me. “Remember that every piece of lead you fire has a lawyer attached to it.”

      And while I get what he was trying to say, I also must confess that it’s made me laugh at the thought of shooting a firearm that fires lawyers. Especially when firing birdshot.

  9. When I was in college I was visiting a friend in North Carolina, the family and guests were all sitting outside in the evening and we started hearing things hitting the leaves in the tree we were sitting under. It was some neighbor shooting a .22 from his back yard. my friend’s dad got a bit upset–and I mean that, he didn’t go nuts or anything, just yelled real loud, “Hey, we’re out here!” a couple of times. Shooting stopped and we finished our evening sit-down. Pretty crazy, when I think about it.

  11. A few moths ago, I was shooting on BLM land. I was shooting in a gully with my targets on a bank with dirt cliffs 300 yards behind. As I was picking up, I heard others shooting. As I drove out of gully, I saw two guys shooting at a small knoll about 20ft high. They were facing away from cliffs in the direction of town. Closest residences were about 1 1/2 miles away. Too many idiots out there, which is why I was in the gully.

  12. I cant speak for all country living. But the rules are different in rural areas. I had 8 acres my 2 neighbors on each side 150 and 300 respectively. If I felt like shooting. I just opened up my kitchen window and would blast away at plates set up 75 and 100 yards out. Stranger things could and would happen in the public lands off of state owned roadways. State property………just blast away. If someone was riding off road bikes???? It was just a part of rural living for us back then.

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