“An off-duty Kansas City police officer suffered a slight foot wound Wednesday when his service weapon inadvertently discharged,” kansascity.com reports. “Kansas City police said the officer had stopped by a credit union in the 8500 block of Bannister Road and was visiting outside with another officer when the accident occurred. The injury was described as a graze wound and did not require a trip to the emergency room. No one else was injured.” You see how corrosive these passively constructed ND stories are? Not only . . .
do they absolve the shooter from any responsibility, they make it seem like guns are really, really dangerous in and of themselves. They play into the antis’ relentless refrain that you’re safer without a gun than with one.
So no, not enough said. What was the officer’s name? What disciplinary action will his superiors take? Desk jobs for both officers until retraining is complete? Oh sorry. Got carried a little carried away there . . . [h/t PM]
if enough people flood the next city council meeting and demand accountability, maybe the sheeple will notice
“But, but, but isn’t that meeting the same night ‘American Idol’ is on? Hmmm….sawwrrryy…..can’t make it. Busy”, said the typical resident of that town.
More and more careless guns running around going off all over the place. These poorly trained guns are giving the decent ones a bad name and obviously need more training before leaving the manufacturer.
Zero accountability is the LEO game. One set of rules to serve themselves and protect their pensions. Another set for those pesky citizens that pay salaries. If citizens played the look at my gun game, would be hauled off to jail, fined, and made to do community service.
Sounds like a case of Glock Leg to me …… and they still push those pieces of crap.
Funny, millions of people carry Glocks without a problem.
Never had a single problem with the Glocks I have owned. As good and safe as any other pistol is.
^ +1000 I have two Glocks and they seem to work just as well as my SIGs, Springfeilds, etc. My finger and real holsters are my safeties!
Sounds like a case of No Brain to me.
It doesn’t matter what brand of gun an idiot has when they have a ND or what the design of it is. It is not the fault of the gun regardless of whether it was pushed on him or not. An inanimate object cannot put the N in Negligent.
Damn Glocks, always pulling their own triggers. Idiot.
You guys don’t get out too much, do ya? I didn’t make that term up, it’s an industry standard expression.
Everybody’s heard the term before. However, rather than interpret it as being associated with a defect in the firearm’s design, namely the partial tension on the striker and the absence of a standard external safety, these responders interpret “Glock Leg” to indicate the outcome of a gunowner who fails to adhere to the four safety rules.
Really, once you’ve crossed the threshold into negligent handling of a firearm, is it fair to blame the tool for not possessing yet another and fourth mechanical safety to save you from your foolish self? Glocks, with their pre-tensioned strikers and no standard external safety, were designed for military and then law enforcement applications to provide rapid presentation and follow up shots of consistent trigger weight. Basically, professional level performance for, well, professionals.
Lots and lots of pieces of equipment exist out there in both consumer and professional versions. There are some shortcuts and advanced features typically on the professional version, like select fire on rifles, which a professional’s training is supposedly sufficient to handle. It isn’t Glock’s fault that the so-called professional in this case couldn’t safely handle a firearm that countless other professionals handle just fine, not to mention millions of consumers.
While your post was quite accurate, it still didn’t address the issue that I brought up. Sure you can’t “blame” Glock for their quirky design, but then why should we blame nitroglycerin for going off over a bumpy road? And do we blame Glock’s sales division for cutting special deals just to flood US police departments with their products/
That’s a false analogy. Nitro was inherently unstable and usable with only extreme caution and near zero margin for error. Glocks, on the other hand, are inherently stable (THREE major mechanical safeties and drop safe!) and usable with no greater degree of caution than the four rules routinely taught to, understood and practiced by eight year old children. Huge difference.
The “Glock Leg” outliers make for funny stories and a few cautionary videos, but what’s more important is to view the design in the proper context, which would include injuries avoided by carrying a Glock versus another design. You’d have to look at how many firearms presentations got hung up on one’s clothes for the safety snagging on something. You’d have to look at how many follow up shots went awry for the shooter jerking the second, much lighter, trigger weight. These have real world consequences for shooters and bystanders.
As for flooding the market, I don’t even know what to say about that. That’s competition. Other manufacturers, some with decades or a century+ headstart in the firearms industry over Glock, are free to match Glick’s prices for firearms you may deem more safe. After all, many of them have matched Glock’s polymer frame, striker fired, no standard safety, pistol design. To each his own, I say, but always follow the universal rules and always know hiw your firearm functions.
Well, all that is terrific and you’ve certainly done your homework, but it doesn’t change anything. Three safeties on the Glock can’t address every situation. It’s like Congress; they write a law that sounds all warm a fuzzy, then have to keep writing more laws to compensate for the initial law’s deficiencies, and then, like our immigration policy, in the end, ignore the laws altogether.
In this case, I refer to people traditionally making the choice to put a loaded magazine in place, but leaving the slide unracked. Then, there is having it racked, but with the safety on. Some revolver people leave a single round out of the barrel.
The Glock is like bypassing both of those forms of discipline and making the assumption that an officer’s knee jerk reaction will always be the correct one for the situation, which, sorry to say, doesn’t always happen. I think that knowing the potential lethality of the item in question, I, myself, would prefer to have people have to make that necessary cognitive step before pulling the trigger because if they aren’t able to do that, and they are incapable of making that sound cognitive decision, they shouldn’t have been issued a firearm in the first place.
What we, the taxpayers, are paying for is someone who has the training and experience to be able to make “rational” decisions under pressure, whereas just trying to converse with the average person on the street during the heat of action would be like trying to have a conversation with a bowl of Jello.
He should’ve had a Lorcin instead Amirite?
Your post sounds like a case of Blaming The Instrument For Operating As Designed to me.
Can’t we somehow stop the Glock on Cop violence??????!!! This Green (well probably Fritos-jammed yellow) on Blue attacks have to end!! Oh the humanity. . .
(on a serious note) I sincerely hope the officer is better than ok, I hope not even his pride has been hurt, I am grateful to my God, that he has been returned safe to his loved ones. I further sincerely believe that, the fastest way to having an incident such as this yourself, is saying it could never happen to you.
So let’s all treat it like a training incident, and press-on together.
If it’s a cop:
If it’s not a cop:
Pretty much spot on, there
For the non-cop story, you might have added:
The FBI and ATF is investigating if the suspect was in the process of robbing the credit union.
excellent post
Spot on post. The ol’ double standard pass the buck and cover up.
touche’ – Plus, there’d be the “although the “shooter” only sustained minor injuries in the incident, he later succumbed to the internal injuries sustained during the subsequent body-cavity searches by the police and the media”
Not a lot of information in that ‘news’ story. All we know is… oops.
Wow.
My department suspends employees without pay, puts the report in their personnel file, and makes the employee take remedial firearms training. I know because we send a departmental wide memo summarizing disciplinary actions.
But no one never, ever gets fired, right? Shoot your gun “accidentally” and it’s “more training” for LEOs. For those of us you pay your salaries and fund your insane pensions it’s a charge of of some sort involving illegal discharge of a firearm. We don’t get 2nd chances yet you LEOs are supposed to be the “highly trained’ experts. Oligarchy, it’s not just for the rich……..
Cops are going to look after their own. Just like any other profession. I don’t fault the police officers for the pensions they have or blame non-management officers for the actions of Top Men letting their officers get away with almost anything. Sure, I blame the offending officer for his actions, but if you want to bitch about pay and pensions, there’s a couple of (long gone) politicians behind it. If you want to bitch about cops not getting fired/charged over certain conduct, blame the jaded public and the rah rah media. When enough public pressure is exerted, even cops get charged with a crime.
That’s my point it shouldn’t take “public pressure” to get a Cop charged, he is still a citizen and civilian. That’s the big problem.
The truly tragic part of the story you cite above is people get killed every year and no one says a thing (including the Flash Bang in the toddler’s crib) I am glad this clown will be held accountable but maybe we should start looking at people deaths also…..
Take a look at this article. Forgot the misconduct, scroll down and look at the salaries these guys make. No wonder they feel they can do what they want and are never held accountable……
http://data.newsday.com/crime/police-misconduct/
You’re right, it shouldn’t. But this is the world in which we live, so “public pressure” is about the only avenue we have at this point because the media hearts them some government force. There are essentially two ways that pressure gets exerted in today’s public arena, the outrage manufacturing media can do it (but that’s out) or the citizenry can actually start giving a shit for more than 15 minutes.
I agree, but again public pressure to end no knock raids and the war on drugs will do far more to end innocent people being swatted than just bitching about LEO salaries or pensions. The puppycide issue is just the low-hanging fruit on a tree of greater problems.
I think we’re having two different conversations here. You want to blame officers like Accur81 for the department protectionism culture, but when good officers speak up against a department, they lose their jobs and the public doesn’t seem to care enough to stand by those good officers. What precedent does that set? I completely agree that these bad officers should be held accountable (along with the top brass, badge-wearing bureaucrats and their elected counterparts), but like any other bureaucracy, institutional change rarely comes from within. That’s just the unfortunate reality in today’s world.
“But no one never, ever gets fired, right?”
Do you know how much money it costs to train a police officer from the ground up? A helluva lot less than to do some sort of remedial training. Those tens of thousands of dollars add up in municipality’s budget.
But at what point does anyone say, “You can’t fix STUPID.”
In many municipalities, doing a bad thing intentionally can get one fired or charged.
A mistake, however, prompts an attempt to “repair” the officer rather than eliminate them.
Repeated mistakes will lead to a job as a telephone sanitizer or desk jockey.
Hate much?
Mayor Sly James is a member of MAIG/Everytown and the Kansas City Star leans so far left California recently asked it if it needed a tow to shore. The editorial slant of their coverage of any story reflects this.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Police are more than equal, that they are endowed by their Union with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are a pension for Life, Liberty to do get away with anything and the pursuit of Overtime.
Was there a dog trying to hump his leg at the time?
When the Simpsons began so did the parody of Chief Clancy Wiggum. Now it’s not so much a parody but a daily reality. Maybe RF could call it the Wiggum Award.Sad ain’t it?
OK. So the pistol leaped out of its holster, did a jig at the foot of its carrier’s feet; ran around for a moment before reaching with both arms (because pistols’ arms are realy small) and pulling its own trigger.
At what point did the aforementioned now-toeless-bastard carrier put his booger hook on the bang switch (always wanted to say that – booger hook; bang switch)?
Statistically cookoffs are rare. Cookoffs without someone first cognizantly putting a finger on the trigger are even rarer.
User interaction is required before the firearm goes boom.
Maybe the guns need to take classes on gun safety like the ones the cops are supposed to take that makes them qualified to handle things that go boom.
Dear Mr. Farago,
You run the most successful gun blog in the world, so may I humbly request that you use some of that banner ad money you’ve been raking in to file a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit about this, and all similar cases, where public officials are engaged in cover-ups designed only to protect their own, at the expense of their constituents’ safety?
Actions speak louder than words.
Sincerely,
Sergeant Slab Rankle
Or, just buy more guns and ammo, ; )
If the other stuff ever gets sorted, it’ll just be another sign of the apocalypse.
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