“Trooper David Kedra was shot in the chest during a training exercise at the Montgomery County Public Safety Training Complex on the 1100 block of Conshohocken Road around 4:45 p.m.”, 6abc.com reports. “Sources say he was in a classroom for a demonstration of how to break down and clean his service weapon. They say an experienced state police firearms instructor was handling a gun that somehow misfired. The bullet hit trooper Kedra in the chest.” “He died serving the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan said. Bull . . .
Kedra died needlessly at the hands of a firearms instructor who had no business teaching anyone anything. “Somehow misfired” = “discharged a bullet when the trigger was pulled” TTAG tipster DG points out. “We know 100 percent that the instructor muzzled a student, and that he pointed a gun at a student and pulled the trigger.” A [sugar-coated] fact that somehow didn’t make it onto the evening news.
I feel sorry for all concerned, but who hired this “experienced firearms instructor”? Promoted him? Failed to monitor him? And what are the odds the instructor will face homicide charges? Or lose his job? When it comes to police training firearms “accidents” (i.e. negligent discharges) it’s what happens next that determines whether or not that injury or death was in vain.
These guys don’t deserve an IGOTD trophy. Even though they do.
“Fallen trooper” how about blown away in a classroom by a negligent instructor. Manslaughter and your new roommate is bubba.
Yes, I’m wondering how this doesn’t end up with a negligent-act manslaughter charge.
Many of the folks at PoliceOne.com sure see this different than pretty much everyone else. It is as if they a bit reluctant to ever blame one of their own for anything.
You’d think the blue wall would weaken a bit, when the cop kills another cop.
You weren’t kidding about seeing it differently. Check out this comment…
“Very sad news. It happens every now and then though.”
Un-F*cking Believable.
I’m a greenhorn compared to most of you, but isn’t the FIRST thing you do when field stripping a weapon to make certain that it’s not loaded? You never point a weapon at anything other than a target/”safe direction”, always assume every weapon is loaded… on and on. This is pathetically sad. “Fallen trooper” is distilled bullshit IMHO.
This doesn’t exactly apply to this particular case, but you often see reports of someone ‘accidentally’ shooting themselves while ‘cleaning’ their gun. I’m convinced that 99% of the time the press is politely covering up the deceased’s suicide.
Gun cleaning “accidents” are staged so the survivors can claim insurance. Always have your cleaning kit out and remove the magazine when you decide to off yourself. Wrap a bore snake around your off hand.
Now that I think of it I heard once that the practice was started by police. When one of their own committed suicide they’d make the claim so the widow wouldn’t be denied the LEO’s pension.
I’m guessing at some point someone probably actually has accidentally shot themselves while cleaning a firearm, but the odds and the sheer stupidity necessary to pull that off is pretty astronomical.
These are the same police who carry a street-acquired drop piece, so they always have corroboration for their “he pulled a gun, I had to shoot” claim. It could be you.
This is the second death this year due to a PSP negligent discharge. Earlier a trooper killed his wife while cleaning his weapon at home.
Was this an “accident” like the suicides mentioned above?
Yeah when teaching firearms safety, it’s inadvisable to ignore every single basic firearm safety rule. Hopefully every other person in the classroom will never have a negligent discharge. They’ve been “scared straight” so-to-speak
Clearly an unintended education. I hope they don’t learn that they can skate from the consequences of their actions due to a uniform.
Talk about a class of mindless drones.
They watched him violate one rule, then a second, and then they got their stupid prize on violation #3.
Yes. Before cleaning or dry firing, remove the magazine, lock the slide to the rear, verify visually that there is not a round in the chamber, then rack the slide a few more times, just to be sure. It’s not that effing hard, but somehow people mess it up every damn day, and shoot themselves or someone else while cleaning the gun or whatever the hell they’re doing.
But even if you somehow fail to unload your gun and verify it, obeying the simple safety rule of NEVER POINT YOUR WEAPON AT ANYTHING YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO KILL will prevent these stupid accidents.
Completely preventable on more than one level. I hope the “experienced instructor” gets charged with manslaughter at least.
“Yes. Before cleaning or dry firing, remove the magazine, lock the slide to the rear, verify visually that there is not a round in the chamber, then rack the slide a few more times, just to be sure. It’s not that effing hard, but somehow people mess it up every damn day, and shoot themselves or someone else while cleaning the gun or whatever the hell they’re doing.”
I’ve never really understood the “rack the slide a few more times” unless you are demonstrating to someone else it is clear (someone who can’t see through the chamber, barrel, and magazine well that it is clear).
Maybe it is certain firearms? Every one I own, it is extremely obvious it is empty when it is locked open.
It’s a mental cue. It prevents you from thinking, “Oh I probably cleared it.” after the slide goes back home. Now you have something that took more than a second to do, and made a bunch of noise, so you can clearly think back 10 seconds later and go “I definitely cleared it.” also it removes a chance you might casually look down at a gun you KNOW is unloaded now, and not notice that the extractor failed to strip the round.
Mental cue? How about when the slide is locked back you not only look but you stick your little finger in there and feel an empty chamber. You can rack the slide all you want but if the extractor didn’t work the first time, it may never work. You don’t look to see if a round is in the chamber. You look to see an empty chamber and you feel an empty chamber. I don’t see how making noise is supposed to get you to realize this.
But then, you still don’t point it at someone and pull the trigger.
“It’s a mental cue. It prevents you from thinking, “Oh I probably cleared it.” after the slide goes back home. Now you have something that took more than a second to do, and made a bunch of noise, so you can clearly think back 10 seconds later and go “I definitely cleared it.””
Exactly this. I do it just to be ABSOLUTELY sure, to make sure it sticks in my mind that yes, I did clear this weapon. Besides, it takes three seconds and costs me nothing, so why not do it?
first thing you do is drop the mag, clear the round in the chamber, and MOVE THE DAMN LOADED MAG TO ANOTHER PLACE !!!!!
Even my kids know this. Just the other day, one of my gun slides came back from Trijicon. I went to the range to test it. When I came home, my 9 yr old daughter’s friend was over. She asked what I was doing when I went to the basement. She wanted to watch me clean my gun. On her own, my daughter explained the safety rules to her, went and got me an empty mag, and then took the loaded mag away and pur it in another room. Yes, a 9 yr old understood this.
Sorry, but there need to murder 2 charges and the idiot instructor needs to lose his pension, which should go to the family of the fallen trooper.
He may have been demonstrating an “out of battery” pistol won’t fire. Not how you prove that. I would really like to know what was going on.
Especially with something like a Glock where you have to pull the trigger to take it down, you make sure THREE TIMES before dropping that striker.
Bringing live ammo into a training classroom.
Mistake number one.
Wonder if moms will count this as a senseless gun death?
“Only the police should have guns…”
Yup. Another death happened at the Baltimore academy a year or two ago due to the same mistake.
This one IS a senseless gun death. And preventable. Somebody needs to become a poster boy.
More than that, at 26 years old, he is nearly young enough to be listed in the “Child gun accidents” stat that all the Antis are using these days. I am sure they could fudge the number by 1 more year. Just this once.
It wasn’t the State Police Firearms Instructor. The article clearly states it was “a gun that somehow misfired.” Because “misfired” obviously means the gun shot a bullet all by itself.
Clearly, this was unavoidable. Guns are dangerous because they misfire randomly. They cannot be trusted. Duh.
Died in service… Died being instructed by someone who should be wearing a helmet and water wings while eating soup.
Water wings!! Soup!! Great visual…laffed out loud, I did. A sad incident, though.
I see nothing odd about calling that “Dying in the line of duty.”
That poor baby-faced trooper didn’t get to choose to go to the class or to be taught by that instructor. He was ordered by his superiors to attend a class that they had arranged with an instructor they had trained… or at least vetted. He did not volunteer, He was VolunTOLD. Therefore he died while performing the duties assigned to him by his superiors…
I always understood a “misfire” meant nothing happened when the trigger was pulled. Guess I’m not qualified to be a journalist…
Or possibly overqualified. I bet you know the difference between rubber bullets and ear plugs, too, which would make you a shoe in for the chief editor position!
@Gordon Wagner – emphatically yes! My 7yo daughter and 9yo son know this, it shouldn’t be too much to expect a “firearms instructor” to know it. Sometimes I swear the experts are far more dangerous than the students.
Don’t hold your breath on that whole ‘death not being in vain’ thing.
I don’t mean to be an asshole about this, but this was not a “misfire.” This was a negligent discharge which cost someone their life. Normally I’d like to pretend that I’d expect more than this out of police, especially from a “firearms instructor” but I honestly don’t. This is to be expected.
Negligent discharge is a sanitization of manslaughter in this case.
The problem with someone like that is complacency. It’s why commercial pilots use checklists, even if they’ve landed the same aircraft hundreds (or even thousands) of times. It’s so easy to gloss over one minor step. When pilots do it, you have an aircraft that approaches with the landing gear up, or the flaps set wrong. When a firearms instructor does it, you have a weapon that damn well should have been unloaded killing someone.
He’d done it so many times he thought he had it down.
Complacency, yes. Wouldn’t you hold an Instructor to ‘get it right- every time. Every. Damn. Time. Cos iffn you don’t, eventually someone might get… Yeah, they did. Too high a standard? Then GTFO.
“The department regrets to inform you that your son/father/husband is dead because our leadership is stupid.”
I’m not the biggest fan of law enforcement, but this is something that needs to be brought up for prosecution. No instructor I know would make this mistake. He broke 3 of the 4 rules, and someone needlessly died for it. Yes, you need to pull the trigger on a glock in order to disassemble it, but you ALWAYS rack the slide several times, and visually inspect the chamber to verify that it is not loaded. Then and only then do you point the gun in a safe direction and dry fire for disassembly. This is criminal negligent homicide, plain and simple. Had this been an non-law enforcement instructor, the prosecutor would be chewing at the bit to charge him.
Score another one for Glock.
Glocks do seem to have more than their share of negligent discharges.
Passively Constructed Negligent Discharge Comment of the Day
“Glocks have …ND’s.”. So…its the gun’s fault then? Gee…who does that sound like?
Certainly we should blame the gun for the killing, right? Because then we can be just like MDA.
@KB Dave, a poor design is a poor design is a poor design. Sorry.
I live in the county where the accident took place. The class listed for the day in question was a transition class, familiarization to the Sig 227.
The 227 does not require pulling the trigger to disassemble. Of course the pistol should be cleared and double-checked first, nonetheless.
@ropingdown, if that be the case and the accident involved something other than Glock, then I retract. But I’m betting it was a Glock.
Why score one for Glock? Wasn’t the class a “transition to the Sig 227” class, preparing troopers on the newly-selected and purchased Sig pistol which is replacing the Glock 21’s of the PA State Police?
Maybe the instructer let muscle memory and rote get to him. He had a sig in his hand but did the glock drill for disassembly?
That would be my guess too, with no other information to go on. Perhaps he took up a newly casual attitude about clearing, thinking “I don’t need to physically check clear. After all, this weapon doesn’t require a trigger pull to disassemble!” Join that attitude when clearing to your surmised memory-installed old Glock trigger pull, and bang.
Actually, the PSP is transitioning to the Sig P227 from Glock 21s. I believe the class instruction was about using the 227.
PSP has been switching over to Sig 227 since earlier this year so not so fast on that one.
That’s my understanding as well. Ive got multiple Glocks, as well as a Sig 227. None have “accidentally discharged.”
When we train we first unload. Next, we show clear to a supervisor. Tends to cut down on ND’s.
Our ceiling does have a few holes from Taser probes, but that’s not nearly as dangerous as a handgun. The Taser ND’s are supposed to be treated as seriously as a firearm, but it doesn’t happen. Still, if you blast off a Taser (by negligence) you can expect a censureable form in your personnel folder and remedial training. Plus you’ll get ripped on by the rest of the crew.
I’ve not ever ND’d a Taser, either. Funny thing, they also tend to go off when you pull the trigger.
Maybe this instructor wasn’t properly trained. Maybe he was. Either way, I take this another way: Anyone can mess up, so don’t take even your most familiar and well-known firearm for granted. Always actively think about what you are doing. Like my friend who flew small planes. He’s always go over the pre-flight check list in the same order, step at a time.
“Haven’t you done this dozens of times?”
“Yep, and I hope to be alive to do it dozens of times more.”
“a demonstration of how to break down and clean his service weapon”
Im getting a sense of the classic failed to clear weapon, which requires the trigger to be pulled during field stripping…
Sucks for all involved, its always sad when the negligence of one human costs the life of another instead.
One of the reasons the Sig was attractive to the PASP was that the trigger did not need to be pulled to strip the weapon. Just lock the slide back, pull the disassembly lever, pull the slide back just a tad farther, then run the slide/barrel off the gun.
Just saw this and your comment above about the class being for transition, man that is EVEN more damning than before…
I wonder what the “instructor” will be charged with.
“that somehow misfired”
Buuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllsssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttt
I work firearms retail. Probably 50 to60% of the people I show handguns to immediately put their fingers on the trigger. There are cops in this group. I always hand them with slide open or cylinder out. This allows them to check the firearm and gives me an immediate sense of their level of experience with firearms. The majority of them try to close the slide with their fingers on the trigger. I’ve also seen try to disassemble handguns (usually Glocks) without removing the magazine. (Again, cops in this group)
A couple of nights ago, a father was looking at a SR22 for his daughters, 10 and 8. I saw better trigger finger and muzzle control out of these girls than most of the adults I see. I made sure to praise them and their father.
I have a friend who was firearms instructor for a Sherriff’s dept.(since retired) He bemoaned the fact that the Sherriff would not release funds for or require more training and that very few of the deputies were interested in additional training.
And people bitch and complain about cold ranges and cold classrooms. This is why we have cold places and why the four rules always apply.
I want to know the instructors name and address, if it was a non LEO all that information would most likely be in the article.
Oh sorry, I missed it, his name is “experienced state police firearms instructor”.
So not only do the police not know how to shoot straight, but their trainers are shooting them know?
I’m going to guess it was a Glock (or pistol that requires trigger pull to disassemble) and Dopey the Firearms instructor just flat didn’t check his weapon on top of muzzling his students. The biggest mistake of course is violating a sterile classroom and bringing a weapon with live ammo in it in the first place.
Broke every single one of the four rules on top of that… so much fail.
How about Sig P227.
Yes. In the NRA personal protection series I took at my local club, not only was there no ammo outside the range, but in the classroom area every time anyone handled a weapon (instructors included), the first step was to show clear and have it confirmed by at least two people. I would assume this would be standard practice.
I knew better at 5 years old. Police, AND the general public need to be better informed on actual firearms safety and handling. Guns aren’t mysterious magical death devices that spontaneously kill. I’d venture to say that >99.9% of “the weapon somehow went off” has to do with some dufus breaking more than 1 of the golden rules at a time.
And this was a “police instructor”
I bet he wasn’t a “gun guy”
It’s not been a good week for the Pennsylvania State Police. Actually it hasn’t been a good month. Not sure how much national coverage this has received but the PSP has been after a war reenactor “survivalist” that sniped and killed one officer and wounded another for about 3 weeks now in the Poconos. This week two officers were injured when they fell through a rotten tree stand. Lots of state and federal law enforcement tied up in the search and now tourism is taking a hit. Everytime the official spokesman for the PA state police opens his mouth, it just gets worse for them.
Some instructor!!! He is what us military guys call a Blue Falcon(Buddy Fucker)!!!!!! How did a dumbass like him end up instructing a weapons class!!!!! Examples of negligence like this makes it harder and harder to fight for our god given 2nd amendment rights…… People learn your equipment!!!!!!
“somehow misfired”. right.
You or I would get charged with a crime. Serving huh? And I can’t tell you if it was the vaunted perfection of a Glock brand Glock…
Back in the late 90’s here in SC, the concealed weapon class instructor was not paying attention while teaching and chambered a round, then waved the gun around pointing it at people while talking in a small classroom. They said he was ex LEO and a NRA certified instructor. He was offended when I called him out about the bullet, and racked the slide to prove the gun was not loaded. You should have seen his face when the bullet fell to the floor.
To the Glock bashers: If you can’t safely dry fire a firearm, you should not be handling any firearm of any manufacture or design without close, competent supervision. Neither the brand nor the design of the pistol involved in this shooting (which was likely not a Glock) contributed to this man’s death. If you think about it critically, hopefully you will see that.
I totally agree. To be intellectually consistent, these people should be advocating magazine disconnects, one of the more stupid “safety” features. Just because a design is less complicated and requires a dry fire to field strip, in no way makes it inherently less safe. The more stupid-person-protectors a gun has, the more complacent users may become.
Of course, he won’t ever be brought up on manslaughter charges like he damned-well should be, and we damned-well would be. No. They’ll just bury it under the “thin” blue line and screw over the slain officer’s family, and probably even threaten them if they ever wanted to push the issue as they damned-well should.
For what its worth, I sent this to News 6
I read with sadness and surprise of the death of Trooper Kendra. I was equally disturbed by your station’s unwillingness to call out the obvious. That this was NOT an unavoidable tragedy. It was the direct result of the instructor’s gross GROSS negligence.
For trooper Kendra to have died the instructor had to have broken 2 of the 3 primary rules of safe gun handling. Including:
1) don’t let the muzzle sweep anything you don’t want to kill
2) treat every gun as if it was loaded.
Trooper Kendra needlessly died because an instructor negligently
1) Cleaned a gun in the presence of ammunition
2) failed to properly clear his firearm
3) Pointed his firearm at trooper Kendra
4) PULLED THE TRIGGER.
Guns don’t go off themselves. They go off when the trigger is pulled.
This was not an accident. It was a 100% avoidable tragedy. The person who killed trooper Kendra should be charged with negligent homicide. If he is a trooper himself, he should be summarily fired. You should bring this up to your viewers, rather than parroting the State Police press release word for word.
So if I understand this correctly.. Before I can disassemble the dangerous Glock, I have to point it at a human and pull the trigger. Is that right? Sure would be nice if there was some way to unload it first. Mm…bad design. The preceding was a sarcastic comment. If someone can’t figure out how to unload thier weapons without pulling the trigger, please proceed to the nearest gun buy back event and join that group. Its where they belong.
“Police training” is an oxymoron, like “living dead.”
You know what kept me and other soldiers from misfires in the range, a 120-230 lbs individual who would scream on you just for looking at them too long!!!!!! So you mean to tell me they need drill sergeant’s on the police force????!!!!
Exactly right – I always appoint myself safety officer if someone is handling a weapon – I will LOUDLY correct unsafe gun handling and if it is an “expert” ask him just what the F his qualifications are and if he is truly as big an idiot as he just demonstrated and then demand he acknowledge his transgression. That may get that “expert” and any chain of command pissed at you but maybe it will sharpen his mind. I trained my daughter to do the same…..she usually has a bit more tact but I have seen her correct men many years her senior who thought of themselves as expert. Nothing takes an “expert” down several notches like a young lady explaining to them what they just did wrong and that she expects them not to do it again.
If it was a civilian, you could bet your sweet Bippy he or she wouldn’t be “unnamed”.
The minimum should be name and charged with involuntary manslaughter.
At an unnamed Air Force base a “qualified instructor” picked up a fake pistol and fired a shot that just missed a guys head. After remedial training he returned as an instructor. A trooper was cleaning an MP 4? and as he was cleaning it a bullet was launched through the wall.
Some people should not have cars, drugs, fat foods, seimming pools, children, 4 year college degrees, guns, etc.
The killers name should be public.
I never go to the range on holidays or weekends, lowers the odds of . . . . .
“He died serving the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” He died serving the ego of an idiot.
Sure, make it sound like some crazy, unstable gun went off on it’s own. Don’t make the firearms instructor suffer any consequences for his stupidity. Who wants to be around this guy in his next class?
How does one kill a Pa. St Trooper and get away with it? By doing so in front of as many Pa Troopers as possible.
The story/comments are absurd & shameful. Accidents happen to the best of us. The only comments, should be how tragic this situation is for all involved.
Accidents happen to the best of us.
Bull. Follow simple safety rules, and accidents cannot and will not happen. This was not an accident, it was a consequence of negligence.
It’s easy to say, right. Maybe you’re not human, Chip? Never cut your finger, never have car accident, never slip and fall on ice before? If only you followed basic common sense. It’s called an accident.
It’s life. No need to sensationalize.
If only you followed basic common sense. It’s called an accident.
No. It isn’t. It’s called negligence.
1. ALWAYS ASSUME EVERY GUN IS LOADED
That’s the first thing any person is ever taught about handling firearms. Every gun is loaded. Even if you just unloaded and checked it. Period. No exceptions.
2. NEVER POINT THE MUZZLE AT SOMETHING YOU DON’T WANT TO DESTROY
This is the second thing any person is ever taught about handling firearms. Because you always assume any firearm is loaded (see #1), pointing the muzzle at something you don’t want to destroy is always dangerous, and must always be avoided.
3. KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL/UNLESS YOU WANT TO DISCHARGE THE FIREARM
Guns don’t “accidentally” discharge. They don’t go bang unless the trigger is squeezed. But when you do squeeze the trigger, the gun goes bang. Always. (Refer to rule #1.)
Not following those three rules is never accidental, and is always negligent. Always. If you can’t follow those three rules, then you have no business handling firearms. Ever.
But it’s even worse than that. There shouldn’t have even been any ammunition in the room to begin with. Because there’s a safety rule regarding disassembling/cleaning firearms:
HAVE NO AMMUNITION ANYWHERE NEAR YOU WHEN DISASSEMBLING/CLEANING A FIREARM
Why was the gun loaded? Why was there ammunition anywhere even in the room? It was instructional training, not live-fire.
There was absolutely nothing accidental about what happened. It was negligent. If you don’t understand that, either you don’t know safe firearm handling (in which case I hope you don’t handle firearms), or you do know, but have ulterior reasons for referring to what happened as an accident.
I had this same argument with people on another post. The auto “accident” analogy keeps coming up but most auto accidents are also cases of negligence. Hitting a deer that leaps in front of you is an accident. Changing lanes when you don’t have clearance or going to fast to negotiate a curve on a wet road is negligence.
I hate this “shit happens” attitude with firearms.
“Maybe you’re not human”
Machines fail, even robots. Humans have cognitive thought. Never compromise safety with a firearm. So if you negligently discharge your pistol, your defense will be “nobody’s perfect”?
“Never cut your finger, never have car accident, never slip and fall on ice before?”
I can’t put a hole in my neighbor’s house if I get careless cutting vegetables.
Most car wrecks are due to negligence and all unexpected discharges of firearms are negligence.
I have slipped and fallen on ice and…I was ice skating. It could be prevented too if you want to make four rules of walking. 1) Assume all of the ground is frozen. 2) Never walk or skate on ice unless you are willing to slip and fall. 3) Never skate fast in one direction unless you are able to turn or stop. 4) On a frozen lake, know how thick the ice is and how deep the water is underneath.
Do you see how ridiculous your argument is? There is risk in everything but firearms have to be treated differently than driving or walking on ice or playing football or swimming etc. There is just no reason to take risks with guns. That should be basic common sense. Think about a mechanic working on a powered machine. There is a procedure called “Lock Out Tag Out” before and after any maintenance is done. Not following this procedure is negligence.
So Chip can read and regergatate common knowledge, while Michael in GA makes useless assumptions & inferences. You missed my point. It wasn’t the “Shit happens” philosophy. We don’t know the facts of the story. I was simply saying that accidents do happen and this could be an accident (provided common courtesy of having benefit of doubt).
You’re arguing over a choice of words, that you and others on this site have deemed useful to distance yourselves from the reality of firearms. Yes Negligent discharges, occur, not every discharge is negligent.
As an active shooter. I have attended several firearms courses, led by respected instructors. I witnessed an accidental discharge by an instructor that caused injury to himself. This was deemed an accident by all who witnessed.
As long as we’re making assumptions, about guns, cars, robots, humans, knives, swimming, machinery, etc.. I’ll make one. The PA instructor dropped the magazine, racked the slide, looked in the chamber for a round; deemed the gun empty/safe. But wait his vision failed him, he didn’t see the round, he dry fires the weapon, and thus a tragic accident.
We don’t know the facts of the story.
Yes, we do. The instructor had an uncleared firearm, pointed the muzzle in the direction of a human being, and pulled the trigger.
I was simply saying that accidents do happen and this could be an accident (provided common courtesy of having benefit of doubt).
Except that it’s not an “accident”. You don’t get the “benefit of the doubt” when dealing with a tool that inherently represents deadly force. You are responsible for what happens with that tool while it is in your possession.
I witnessed an accidental discharge by an instructor that caused injury to himself. This was deemed an accident by all who witnessed.
Good for the witnesses, but they’re all wrong. What you witnessed was what is referred to as a near miss: an inherently unsafe act that, through luck, did not result in injury or loss of life.
But wait his vision failed him, he didn’t see the round, he dry fires the weapon, and thus a tragic accident.
If his vision failed him, then he still must assume the weapon is loaded. If his vision was perfect, he still must treat the firearm as if it were loaded.
If he dry-fired the weapon, why did he have it pointed at another human being’s chest?!?
The instructor committed at least two inherently unsafe acts, and potentially a third. As a direct result of those actions, he negligently discharged his firearm, and killed a man.
Not an accident.
More assumptions, Chip. I heard the instructor was pointing the weapon down range, when the trooper tripped over a burmese python (a recent escapee from the near by zoo) falling into the line of fire.
God I hate myself for that comment, no disrespect to parties.
Also remember, it’s in human nature to make mistakes. Mistakes in judgement, etc…
I agree to disagree.
“God I hate myself for that comment, no disrespect to parties.”
Too late.
“Also remember, it’s in human nature to make mistakes. Mistakes in judgement, etc…”
No one says these negligent acts are done on purpose. That doesn’t excuse being negligent. And that doesn’t mean that they are not 100% avoidable. I am not afraid to say that I will never be negligent with a gun. That should be a pledge.
“I agree to disagree.”
You can lead a horse to water…
You can tell someone the truth about guns…
Wait, if the gun misfired, then how did the bullet get discharged? Geez, the gun is a tool specifically designed to kill, treat it and respect it as such. A knife is meant to cut, that why I don’t juggle with them because I acknowledge and respect their ability to slice my fingers off. Things like this will continue to happen until true responsibility is accepted by the brass in the form of resignation and the criminal charge to the offenders.
Civilians are red,
Cops are blue,
An accidental death for a cop is a murder charge for YOU!
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