“I urge everyone to be extremely cautious with their firearm…I know from personal experience how easy it is to discharge a firearm accidentally.” That’s Kentucky state legislator Leslie Combs stating the painfully obvious. Well, obvious unless you’re an elected official. As yahoo.com quotes fellow Dem Rep. Jeff Greer who was in the room at the time, “She was emptying the weapon and she thought that it was empty and pointed it away and down and pulled the trigger and it went off. Thankfully, no one was hurt. I know she feels terrible about it. … It’s just an unfortunate event.” Yes, a very unfortunate event . . .

Unfortunate that she’s too pig-ignorant to know that simply dropping the magazine doesn’t ensure an empty gun. Unfortunate that she thinks pulling the trigger is the best way to check that her pistol is clear and safe. And unfortunate that her 94th district constituents selected this specimen to represent them in Frankfort.

Her luck is about to improve, though, because she’s going to receive some of our commemorative hardware. And if her staff is really lucky, maybe it will stop the next round she negligently launches in her office.

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104 COMMENTS

  1. I really thinkk the trophy should have the gun pointed the other way… or maybe a person looking down the barrels of a Joe Biden special.

    • I think the gun pointing to the side, with the holder looking at it with a puzzled expression and scratching his head with Hus off hand?

      The problem with looking down the barrel is that the trophy is for irresponsible use or lack of knowledge / understanding, not just stupidity…

      • The statue should have just shot himself in the foot – complete with torn shoe and through and through hole. The award is for those who were, at least momentarily, stupid, so keep the symbolism obvious.

        • _____________, holding a db shotgun looking up the bore with the gun pointed at his/her face. You know, checking to see if its loaded.

    • Guess I am lacking info on Biden . I thought it was Cheney who shot his buddy in the face. At any rate I urge anyone who uses or plans on using a gun to attend a safety training course. Here in the Midwest state certified hunter safety classes are given to kids free of charge and completion of the course is noted on your drivers license / ID . Its called negligent discharge and it’s way too common of an occurrence. It gives gun haters fuel for their anti-2nd amendment campaign.

    • Let’s skip all that – why is it so hard to keep your finger off of the trigger?

      I don’t think I’ve EVER had a moment where I’ve pulled the trigger and gone, “Oops, didn’t mean to do that!” Whether it was at the range, clearing the gun, or just dry firing, every time the trigger was pulled it was on purpose.

      Seriously – do these people grab the gun like some ham-fisted caveman? No offense meant to cavemen, of course…

      • The phrase “booger hook off the bang switch” comes immediately to mind. Not sure who said that first but I’ve used it ever since I saw it on one of these posts.

      • “…why is it so hard to keep your finger off of the trigger?”

        Easy: Lack of training, lack of practice, no muscle memory.

        • And the number one reason so many Democrats demand more gun control; they’re impulsive and can’t control themselves. If they can’t trust themselvs to safely handle a firearm, then surely the great unwashed can’t either. Besides, they’re “scary”.

      • “every time the trigger was pulled it was on purpose.”

        +1,000,000,000,000,000!

        That’s the secret to never, ever having an accident. Just be sure that whatever you do, you do it on purpose.

        • Seriousness. Or lack thereof, if you will. Seems I wrote something about this very point not long ago.

  3. Why is it so hard to clear a gun for some people? WHY WHY WHY WHY?

    Easiest thing in the world. Check twenty times over it only takes a few seconds. Geez.
    She even had another person there she could have shown clear to.

    These are the same people who lock their children in their cars when it’s 110 degrees out. The same people who ride Segweys off cliffs. The same people who walk off the edge of the Grand Canyon while texting.

  4. How does “pulled the trigger and it went off” initiate a statement like “I know from personal experience how easy it is to discharge a firearm accidentally”? If she pulled the trigger, there was nothing “accidental” about it. Period. End of discussion.

    • I’d be somewhat irritated at a gun that didn’t go off when I pulled the trigger. I’m not sure why she’s so upset about “working as designed.”

      • Because, once again, one of the people who make the laws we have to live by displays their utter stupidity in public?

    • It was not negligence – it was ignorance.

      I read the entire article and at she mentioned that even though she has had the training and gotten her CCW permit, the mechanics of a semi-auto (she called it an automatic) pistol were too much for her to comprehend. She claimed she was unloading the pistol because she didn’t like it and was intending to sell it. My question, who the hell talked her into that pistol in the first place and then didn’t make sure she knew how the damned thing worked?

      At any rate she claimed, “It’s all good now, I’m going to get a revolver.”

      • And then she’ll “accidentally” pull the trigger to see how many times it will fire – probably in the middle of a Legislative meeting – hopefully only the Dems in her immediate vicinity will have their lead deficiency corrected.

  6. How hard is it to drop a magazine, rack the slide a few times, and physically check the chamber with a finger?

  7. Drop the mag, rack, rack, lock slide, inspect chamber and mag well for brass. It’s NOT rocket surgery, people!

  8. “I know from personal experience how easy it is to discharge a firearm accidentally.”

    Negligently maybe, but in my experience it’s damn hard to make a firearm go off accidentally. It usually involves pulling the trigger in some way….oh, wait….

  10. These are the morons writing legislation intended to infringe our 2A rights… and doing so under the guise of “gun safety.” Aaaaaaaaaaargh!

    • I used to read things like this and think: “And then they voted.”

      I may have to amend that to: “And then they got elected.”

    • But that’s exactly why they write that legislation – because they know from firsthand experience how dangerous firearms can be – look, one just “went off” in my hand. Ahhhhh! We need to restrict these things is the FIRST thing that comes into their minds. Personal Responsibility is somewhere waaaay down the list, maybe not even on there.

  11. I had an irresponsible gun owner moment myself once. That’s why there are FOUR rules. I fucked up one of them, and the other three kept me and everyone else safe. It’s called layers of safety, and if you have several, you avoid potentially bad outcomes.

    • I once nearly had an ND. While target shooting at the range, one of my spent brass bounced off the wall and made the one in a million tip-in to land inside my glasses. As I was in the act of shooting, my finger was on the trigger as I started trying to get the burning brass off my cheek, but even so I managed to not pull the trigger and the barrel moved from pointing down range.

  13. So, for the children mind you, I suggest we push legislation to encourage actual gun safety courses (which teach the appropriate four rules, how to properly and safely handle firearms, learn to unload, learn basic mechanics of cartridges and firing mechanisms) be taught in every school in America right along side of poison safety, fire drills, D.A.R.E. and drivers ed. If every American had a general competency by the time they were in high school we might possibly make some headway….for the children.

    • I would love if our legislators had to sit through the courses they approved. Maybe they’d learn something.

      • Only if you conducted the courses inside a Faraday Cage to prevent texting/calling, and cattle-prodded every hung over pol who fell asleep.

  14. “I was purposefully disarming it to put it up because I didn’t like it and didn’t want to use it anymore,” Combs explained that she was planning on selling the gun.

    “Why at that particular moment? I kind of had it on my brain. I had it in my purse,” Combs said. “I carried it usually, and I thought I want to put that sucker away. And I did. And I was going through the process as I have been trained to do, had it pointed in the proper direction like I’ve been trained, was disarming it like Ive been trained to do, and …like I said I am a gun owner …. it happens.”
    http://www.whas11.com/news/local/Ky-state-representatives-gun-accidently-fires-in-Capitol-building-239271511.html
    ———————————————————

    This woman is so full of crap.

    • “like I’ve been trained, was disarming it like Ive been trained to do, and …like I said I am a gun owner …. it happens.”

      Owning a piano doesn’t make you a musician.

  15. Is she a CC card holder for that weapon? If yes then she needs her ticket pulled. And aren’t government buildings total no carry zones? Ought to be some criminal charges for THAT, too.

    Went to her webpage and lo&behold it has not been updated since 2011, and can’t find a listing of her vote record. Hmmmmm, wonder how many times she has called for her constituents Constitutional Rights to be abridged?

    • 2Hotel9, several states allow at least legislators and their staff to carry concealed in government buildings if they have a CCW. Missouri is one, and at the county and city level elected officials can also carry concealed in government buildings provided they have their CCW. I got it expanded at my city to include any city employee with a CCW and I’m working on removing the restriction on anyone with a CCW to carry in city hall.

    • In Texas, anyone with a concealed carry license can carry in the state capitol. IIRC, the gun has to be put in a locker before you enter the senate or house chamber, but anywhere else in the capitol is ok to carry.

  16. I’m fairly certain that any “regular” person who “accidentally” fired a gun in the Kentucky Capital Annex would be charged with a felony.

  17. If she owns a gun, she is probably at least leaning in the right direction 2A wise.. But that ND might make her think that, “if this can happen even to me, maybe guns are too dangerous for the average citizen to own”. As a way to shed her shame.

  19. Just shows the redundancy in the “cardinal rules”. You can violate a couple and still not get someone killed. Well, at least she dropped the magazine out. If she had left it in, she probably would’ve kept pulling the trigger to see if it was still loaded 😉

    • You can carry in the capitol in Kentucky…I do it all the time. You show the State Trooper at the door your gun and your CCW license and he says, “Go ahead.” As for her constituents, she is a D in a very R part of the state. Aside from her extreme personal carelessness, she just got herself re-elected for life.

    • Checked the comments. Counted 9 or 10 possible KY residents, and only 3 or 4 of those appear to be in her district, and her constituents don’t appear to be hating on her. The guy with the most comments was from Seattle, go figure!

      • That’s because her statement was essentially ” stuff happens and I still believe in RKBA” no buts included. A dem in KY is more conservative than then any republican north east of here.

        • I know. If my house was 300 yds to the south, I would be in her district. I just wonder if it was the pink LCP?

        • It probably is pink. She wants desperately to get rid of it so other women will quit laughing at her for buying a pink pistol. My wife and the other women in the club will shoot you with the laser beam eyes for suggesting such.

  21. NDs do happen, but not out of the blue. They happen when someone males a mistake.

    The problem with this one is her failure to own her mistake.

  23. If I had a box 22LR everytime some idiot says “it went off” then I could end the shortage. OF COURSE IT FIRED! THAT IS WHAT IT IS SUPPOSD TO DO WHEN YOU PULL THE TRIGGER!

  24. “I know from personal experience how easy it is to discharge a firearm accidentally”

    Just keep your damn booger hook off the bang switch! Its really not that hard to avoid ND’s!

  25. Wait, wait, whoa! If you or I had an “oopsie” at work, we’d be fired so fast that our collective ass would still be smoking when we got home. She blasts one out in her office (which the people of KYown) and she gets a free pass? Someone tell me how this makes any sense, please.

    • Rejoice in the fact that she had a weapon to clear. The more members of Congress who regularly purchase, carry and feed firearms on a regular basis the better our chances of maintaining our god given rights. We can always learn from our mistakes.

      • She isn’t learning from her mistakes. She’s acting as if the evil gun tried to kill someone of it’s own accord but (thank god!) she was pointing it away from people so it didn’t succeed.

  28. I dig the trophies! I think it should have the infamous backwards-facing pistol.
    At least this moron followed one of the 4 rules.

  29. In her defense, nowhere in the LCP instructional guide does it say “do not absently pull trigger whilst sitting in a federal building surrounded by colleagues.” So, when you get right down to it, it’s Rugers fault. Sheeeeeeesh.

    • No, no, no. Its Bush’s fault! His Republican War On Women caused her to feel insecure so she got a gun. Really. How many times must you have this ‘splained?!?!?

  31. If a branch falls on your head while walking in the woods, that is an accident. This was not an accident.

      • Bill, don’t give them any ideas. They will try their damnedest to do just that. We got more than enough stupid laws from way too many moron congress critters all the way down to the local level without giving them ammunition to add another one to the list. Please, I beg of you.
        “God is great, beer is good and people are stupid”

  32. While the nice lady deserves our ridicule for her negligent discharge, it illustrates a much larger failure: minimization and marginalization of gun culture in our general society.

    The very first thing that we (the armed Intelligentsia) should illustrate to everyone is how to clear a firearm. Whoever provided that handgun to that lady should have demonstrated how to clear that firearm before handing it to her. Further, they should have asked her to demonstrate that she had then learned how to clear that handgun before sending her on her way.

    It’s not hard. Every time someone hands a firearm to someone else, demonstrate that the firearm is unloaded and hand it to them with the action open. This should be second nature for everyone that handles firearms. This must be an integral part of gun culture that must permeate everywhere.

    • Uncommon sense, shouldn’t she have had to prove she knew how to clear a weapon in her CCW class before getting the license?

      • Rick,

        I think it depends on where she went for training and which instructor taught her class … assuming she actually even attended training. (I hear stories once in a while where someone issues a training certificate to a “V.I.P.” without the actual training … because the V.I.P.’s time is to valuable to waste on training of course.)

        But the method that I described is rock solid. Everyone who has a firearm shows other people how to clear it before handing it to them. Likewise, people of the gun must demand that a person demonstrate a firearm is unloaded before accepting it. If the person handing the gun over doesn’t know how to do that, then the person accepting the gun can show them.

        If you think about it, this is just basic etiquette anyway. Before handing anything to another person, you should show them how it works.

        • It is how I have always handled firearms, even after being told, in US Army, that it was repetitive and unneeded among trained people. Top and Bn SGM always said good job. You can guess who I listened to.

      • Rick,
        In Kentucky, your instructor can’t fail you for being ignorant, incompetent or even downright dangerous on the subject of the permit class. During a break, our instructor (who just so happens is also the director of the Dept. of Corrections for Ky.) told us that he’s had people in class who barely knew which end to point at the target, been muzzle-swept with loaded weapons on the firing line, etc.
        Just as long as you can sit butt-numbed through the videos of government employees reading the statutes to you, score 70% on a 100-question test (scored before you leave) and put 11/20 shots on a full-sized B-21 silhouette target from 21 feet, you’re in! Also, there’s the State Police background check after passing the class, but I digest…
        There is simply no way an instructor can fail someone for being an ignorant menace, more’s the pity.

        • Perhaps this type of moronic behavior is what the President is aiming at in his latest Executive Orders. This is probably now a notifiable Psychiatric condition – Hoploanarmodios – incompetence with weapons. Do not resuscitate (career).

  34. Note that the AP story portrays Combs as a pro-2A Democrat. My guess is this is largely because that’s the political wind in KY and being an anti would limit her career choices in that state.

    Notice too that KY MDA called for her to resign because of the incident, no doubt thinking they’d love to have an anti-gun Democrat replace Combs.

    Stupid is as stupid does, but resigning is not an appropriate option. If she wants to prove her pro gun bona-fides to her constituency, hitting the local range (or even a cooperating law enforcement agency being as she is a state legislator and all) for remedial training, practice and to gain experience would go a long way to putting this stupid deadly mistake behind her. A serious effort at improving her gun handling skills coupled with a little publicity might improve her image among her constituents – unless she has other issues.

    It’s her move. Sink or swim.

  35. Don’t think it’s unloaded, don’t be sure it’s unloaded. Check it and MAKE sure.

  36. I know from personal experience how I negligently fired my Springfield M-1A. Over 30 yrs ago, and still in the US Navy, a friend and I were in my enclosed carport and I was showing it to him. No magazine was inserted, he was standing to my right and a little behind me. I was safety conscious enough to not allow him to stand next to, or in front of me. I shouldered the weapon and aimed it towards the patior door. I’ll never know why “I” put my finger on the trigger and slowly “squeezed” it. You can figure out the rest.

    I’ve never held that 9lb weapon so steady, I was frozen in place until I heard the patio door’s tempered glass cracking and watched it turn into little pieces and drop to the floor. At that moment I realized “why” it happened all the things “I neglected” to do that would have prevented it.

    There is a funny and, thankfully, safe part of this story. I had burglar bars installed on all windows and doors. The house came that way. The bullet hit one of the bars and shattered, safety part of this story, The funny part, the shattered pieces peppered the front of a Navy buddy’s car I was holding for him as he was out to sea. You should have seen the look on his face when he came back and I told him “Jerry, I shot your car”. At first he didn’t believe me and left the space we were in on his ship. After a while he came back and ask if I really did that. Had to say “yes”. 10 yrs later I sold all my guns, ignored the warnings of the first gun ban. I didn’t own any, what did I care.

    Sandy hook and the same thing threatened again. I started to purchase guns and rifles. As my familiarity with guns had deteriorated over the last 20+ years I felt like I had never handled a gun in my life. I was nervous and fearful. But practice and familiarity training has made me comfortable enough to take my daughter out to the range and teach her how to shoot a variety of weapons and calibers.

    Do I now check the chamber of any gun I hold, heck yes!. But then again, 30+ yrs ago it was an automatic response, this “I” failed once.

  38. And now, ladies and gentlemen, you understand why S&W puts that infuriating magazine disconnect into their semi-autos. Because of people like this.

    • Man, I hate those things… I don’t like external or grip safeties either, but mag disconnect safeties are just plain asinine.

  39. “Let he who is without stones, cast the first sin.” Or something. I forget.

    I sent her a tactful and POLITE Email without any name-calling (you should read some of the garbage on her Facebook account) explaining that what she did was negligent, not ‘an accident,’ and why. I also commended her for her courage in admitting that SHE PULLED THE TRIGGER and that the Evil Gun didn’t just ‘go off’ like they always do in most of these incidents.

    There, but for the Grace of Whoever, go any one of us, given one moment of stupidity, inattention, unfamiliarity, familiar contempt, old age, youth, distraction, slippery fingers, warts, indigestion, illness, Insertus Cranius Rectus, or Men Don’t NEED To Read The Instructions First Syndrome.

  40. Several Qs enter my small mind:
    1) How did she purchase? (She’s insane, right?)
    2) How did she get a CCL? (She’s insane, right?)
    3) How did she get elected? (Oh, right. She’s insane.)
    4) Can she be recalled? (She’s insane, remember?)

    • All excellent points! I have yet to find a public record of her votes as a legislator. FB page? Yep. A webpage, woefully un-updated, but so far no easily found record of votes, on particular issues.

  41. When an elected official advertises that he/she carries a firearm on a regular basis he should be encouraged if supporting second amendment rights or exposed for hypocrisy for their record against it. Either way its a win for us. They can’t have it both ways and we shouldn’t let them try.

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