Contrast the headline above with the headline at idahostatesman.com: Two injured at Expo Idaho gun show after rifle discharges. Now consider the “bullet points” underneath the title: “A vendor was trying to secure the firearm when it went off; Bullet struck the victims in the legs; injuries not life-threatening.” See the problem? “A 74-year-old gun vendor from Washington told investigators he was securing a Savage Arms B Mag .17-caliber bolt-action rifle with a plastic zip tie when the weapon discharged.” Once again, a journalist crafts a story about a negligent discharge that . . .

removes responsibility for the ND from the person who pulled the trigger, and makes it seem as if guns are inherently dangerous. OK, they are. But they don’t just “go off.” Bad things happen with firearms when humans (and the occasional canine) do bad things with them. Like pull/step on the trigger when they shouldn’t.

There was a shell in the rifle, and he mistakenly fired it, according to Sheriff’s Office spokesman Patrick Orr. The bullet went through a cardboard box, two table covers and a metal cane, then struck the leg of the 51-year-old holding the cane and the leg of a 64-year-old man standing nearby.

The victims were taken to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center for treatment. The injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.

The gun show opened at 9 a.m. Saturday and went on as planned, [Expo Idaho Director Bob] Batista said.

Orr said the vendor who accidentally discharged the gun fully cooperated with the investigation. The investigation is ongoing, and the vendor hasn’t been cited.

Huh. I reckon the unnamed vendor (nice sleuthing Statesman) at the Lewis Clark Trader gun show is likely to be named in a civil suit shortly. Regardless of the outcome, the article rightly points out that the cost of his indemnity insurance will soon be prohibitive. After a previous ND, Expo Idaho raised their insurance requirements to $5m, forcing out some smaller dealers. Fair enough?

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54 COMMENTS

  1. OK, but does the 51yr old now have TWO jimpy legs? Or a double bad on one side. And a deadlined cane. Details man.

      • What do we have in this nation, roughly 350,000,000 guns? Not everyone handles every one with Col. Cooper’s 4 rules 100% of the time. Even 99.99% compliance – in the literal and statistical sense – means mistakes due to negligence. That means the drive to the gun show is more dangerous than the exhibits.

        • And therein lies the real truth – that statistically, the stress of everyday life invokes more deaths from heart attacks than deaths from “gun violence” ever will – the CDC says, and I quote, “About 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths.” But the media likes to showcase these .0001% events at gun shows as if they are the norm. My liberal Mother-in-law always cracks me up when I take my boys to a gun show by telling me to “Be careful!” Being around all those guns, just poised to “go off” at any minute is terrifying to her. What she and the rest will never understand is that gun shows are probably some of the safest places on earth. She’s in much greater danger with just the stress of waking up every morning or driving to the Starbucks for her double caf, soy milk latte with 2 splendas. I actually relax a little when I am at a gun show. It’s one of the few places in public you can let your SA slide.

        • That means the drive to the gun show is more dangerous than the exhibits.

          The difference is: negligent discharges are 100% preventable, because they are 100% within the control of the person handling a given firearm.

          Accidents (including accidental injury due to negligent discharge of a firearm) do not happen in a vacuum; rather, they happen as a direct result of inherently unsafe behavior. That’s why negligent discharges are referred to as negligent.

        • 30,000 people a year in this country die from falling down.

          It’s more dangerous to own legs than it is to own a gun.

        • “The difference is: negligent discharges are 100% preventable, because they are 100% within the control of the person handling a given firearm.”

          So are pretty much every car related fatality. If noone ever drove in any manner that was could conceivably be “unsafe”, there would be no accidents. Yet, there are still accidents. Just as with firearms.

          Run a sufficient number of trials of any experiment, and you’ll get at least one of any theoretically possible outcome. Which is really all this “safety” hysteria is all about: Sensationalist “journalists” and their statistically illiterate groupies having access to national/international level numbers of trials.

          Doesn’t mean there aren’t more right and less right ways of handling firearms (or cars.) But it does mean that the proper way for “society” (code word for a bunch of politicians and apparatchiks in our age and system) to handle them, is via criminal channels. If the behavior of the discharger is not sufficiently negligent for a jury of peers to find him guilty, it’s not negligent to get the state involved at all. Just file under shit happens and people die sometimes.

          The whole nonsense about dragging civil courts (and insurance “requirements” to make sure the ambulance chasers’ honey pots are rich and sweet) into areas away from interpretation of voluntarily entered into contracts, is solely there to enrich and empower lawyers; and to give those incapable of staying out of the lives of others, yet another avenue they can abuse.

        • I worry more about a vehicle crashing through the walls of the exhibition center than being shot while at a gun show. It’s the far more likely event.

    • Holly cr_p dudes, that weapon was likely checked entering the building, or at least before it was put on display. It’s just as, if mot more, likely that someone layer chambered a round.

      • So make it a habit: if you pick up a weapon, confirm that it is unloaded/loaded to your expectations. Even when I’m at the gun shop at the guy hands me a gun that’s locked back with no magazine, I look down the mag well, check the chamber, and check the breech face. It’s obvious no round is going to be in that gun in that situation, but I do it to not get casual, so if there is ever a time like this, the same procedure would allow me to avoid a problem.

  2. I hate it when my guns magically load themselves between the tim when I triple-checked that it’s unloaded and when I pull the trigger to ziptie it.

    • When I bought my first gun, the salesman told me to check 5o see if it has a round in th chamber every time I pick it up because, “Sometimes the dog loads it while you’re not looking.”

      • I’ve taught my daughter to always check the load state of firearm, even if she just saw someone else check it- and that if anyone objects to this, they are wrong.

  4. Even though it was 100% the vendors fault for having a loaded firearm at his booth in the first place, if the safety recall hadn’t been done, the door is open even wider for civil damages. Because there is an open safety recall on Savage B. Mag bolt 17 caliber rifles.
    http://www.savagearms.com/recall/bmagbolt/

  5. When gun owners own up to their mistakes in public instead of telling a reporter their “gun just went off” the anti gunners will take the ammunition we give them to use against us.

  6. And>>>>they’re both wrong. The writer and especially the idiot dealer. I’d sue the shite outa’ him. He should be barred from the show…duh.

  7. Is it possible that the mainstream media is avoiding libel lawsuits by using “gun went off” etc vs “owner had/caused an ND”? As opposed to having a deliberate, inherent antigun bias/all guns are evil mindset?

    Similar to how TV news reports on “alleged” rape/murder/robbery.

    Just a thought.

    • I did a couple years of radio news. Once when a grass fire got out of control on a hot dry windy day, I capped the story off with something like “it’s really a bad idea to be burning today.” The station manager was on me within seconds of the end of the newscast, and he was furious that I was “editorializing.” Same thing with traffic accidents. That’s why you read that a motorcyclist struck the side of a car instead of some idiot pulled right out in front of a motorcycle. You can only report the facts.

      We know the gun went off. We’re pretty sure somebody pulled the trigger. But we can’t prove it so we can’t print it. It’s more a lawsuit thing than a gun bias.

      • “You can only report the facts.”

        Thanks for the laugh.

        MSM editorializes all the time, but in subtle ways. Guns don’t “go off;” it is mechanically impossible absent a true mechanical failure (which is so rare as to be vanishingly small). Yet, they report it that way continually. That’s not a fact at all by any stretch of the imagination.

        There are so many examples of this. To assert that the modern media only reports facts is one pretty big joke.

  8. Gun dealer: rifle discharged itself. Don’t know how it hurt those stupid people.

    JESUS, these are the greatest spokesmen for our “sort”. I’m going to bed, “dealers” like this give me nightmares.

    • The only thing worse than a dealer muzzling you is a dealer muzzling you while he pulls the trigger back to zip tie it.

  9. In my experience, BB’s and pellets come in .17 and .22. Probably more than that, but I never saw it. This, however, was not a BB. If it went through a metal cane and two legs, it was a .17HMR. Tiny bullet, oversized case.

  10. The only thing worse than a dealer muzzling you is a dealer muzzling you while he pulls the trigger back to zip tie it.

  11. FYI…. It’s a .17 WSM which has a 20 gr bullet moving at 3000 fps. I imagine it was pretty loud and un- nerving for everyone in the building. The bullet probably blew up on the concrete floor or it might have travelled further and done more harm….

    • Conspiracy theories aside – the dumbsh!t dealer had to pull the trigger on a rifle with a closed bolt that he had not confirmed was unloaded. I believe he qualifies for the Irresponsible Gun Owner of the Day award, among other less pleasant responses.

    • And besides, what wierdo lib would have any idea about loading a .17 WSM? Half the people commenting on this site did not know what that round was, including me.

    • Probably not, although we did have a guy running around a gun show in Virginia doing just that with .22 rifles about 5-6 years ago. Fortunately a -careful- gun dealer checked his guns and discovered the rounds and they quickly tracked down and arrested the culprit.

  15. My friendly local gun store (FLGS) owner was set up two tables away from this guy, and was there when the gun “went off”. The ND took place about 20 minutes before the show opened to the public. The gun was a Savage .17 bolt action, and the dealer had the bolt closed when he put the zip tie on and tightened it – thus pulling the trigger. The bullet hit another dealer’s metal cane, which was a good thing because it separated the core and the jacket. Pieces of the jacket went into the leg of the guy with the cane, and the bullet core went on to hit the second guy in a leg. The cane strike was fortunate, because it slowed the pieces down a fair amount. The guy with the cane was back in the show later that day – my FLGS dealer didn’t hear about the second guy.

    The part that really annoyed people was that the man responsible for the ND claimed that the rifle must have been shipped by Savage with a round in the chamber. My FLGS dealer said that is total BS – he has received and sold that model of Savage .17 in his store, and they always arrive with the bolt completely removed from the action. This appears to be a completely idiotic action by the gun seller, and it may result in the Expo Idaho owners deciding to stop gun shows in that venue. They raised the liability insurance requirement from $1 million to $5 million a few years ago, when another idiot did an ND at a different show.

  17. And the gun vendor did not even bother to point the unchecked weapon in a safe direction at all times?

  19. Was that .17HMR? I’ve never shot it, but I am quite impressed with it’s penetration capabilities!

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