…one in which ERs will never want for trade.
For this latest in the annals of gun idiocy, here, presented without comment, is a report from CBS 42 in Birmingham, Alabama:
Birmingham police officers were on patrol in north Birmingham when they observed three employees from a trucking company chasing a trespasser from their property.
The officers interrupted the chase and took guns away from the employees. While trying to remove the bullets from a gun, the officer opened the cylinder and the gun fell apart. That portion of the gun hit the ground and discharged, striking another officer in the leg.
“It was a handgun,” Sgt. Johnny Williams says, “The weapon itself fell apart. It just fell apart.”
Feel safer now?
Image: Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, The Suicide, c. 1836
Arclite
Stand your ground, FTW.
BGinCHI
Hey, doesn’t the 2nd Amendment make it clear that we are supposed to keep a well-lubricated militia?
Alex
Thank God the cops were valuably using their time disarming citizens justifiably protecting their property!
Don’t let the glibness interfere with your brain processes too much, BJ’ers.
Trollhattan
But, somenody’s going to die in a car crash today. So there.
Zifnab
And that’s why crime doesn’t happen anymore. 2nd Amendment works!
gbear
I wish that story had some info about whether the tresspasser was caught and questioned. Now all the gun freaks are going to fill that story’s comments with frantic rants that Obama’s stormtroopers are preventing people from protecting their property.
Edit: But of course they’ll do that here too. Too late with my comment.
Pooh
@Alex: ah lethal force in protection of property. Wait, that’s not a real thing? If only I’d lasted until the second half of the first Crim Proc class I woulda known.
BGinCHI
Worst. Troll. Ever.
Trollhattan
@Zifnab:
They were just applying Sprint Your Ground. Hopefully, no Skittles were harmed in this incident.
Linda Featheringill
If you as an employee are willing to kill someone in order to protect your boss’s property, then you are an idiot.
Ash Can
@Alex: GUBMIT TAYKIN MAH GUNZZZ
Pooh
@Linda Featheringill: as well as looking at 15 to life.
Ash Can
It’s just a shame that the faulty gun injured one of the police officers rather than shooting the dick off the wielder, thus rendering him unable to reproduce the kind of stupidity that causes one to “lawfully protect his property” with a gun that FUCKING FALLS APART and fires bullets at random.
Tom Levenson
@Pooh: All this pushback on the resident troll is on target (sorry), but I’m still having trouble getting over the idea that some chump had a gun at his side more likely to shoot off his own valuables than anything else.
There are so many ways guns can ruin their owners’ days; the concept of “safety” derived from possession of a gun is always one that demands close scrutiny.
jibeaux
@Pooh: Let’s say you rigged a shotgun to the windows of your uninhabited house….
Ah, law school.
Tonal Crow
Th’ problem here is that the police are enforcin’ th’ law ‘ ‘genst law-abidin’ propurty ownrs! Ban the police! Ayn Rand ferever!
scav
@Tom Levenson: To be crude, shooting off that chumps valuables might have been a far far better thing to do for that crumbling bit of ironmongery, at least in terms of overarching public safety. And at what point did tresspass become an automatic capital crime in these here states? Is that why freedom lovers now shoot kids turning into GPS-mislabelled driveways on sight? Is hanging for theft over a shilling back on the books too?
aimai
@Alex:
Its incredibly funny that you think the police know a priori, who is “in the right” in a shoot out. Do you think people are wearing white hats and black hats? Did you not notice the LA police shooting the shit out of the unarmed civilians in two separate incidents of people driving in cars while the police were looking for a black guy?
Punchy
but then
LIAR!
MikeJ
Yesterday was the anniversary of the murder of Trayvon Martin.
Tom Levenson
@Punchy: I’ll refund your fee for this post.
Roger Moore
@Linda Featheringill:
Unless you’re an armed security guard, in which case you may just be doing your job.
Dracula
Any word on that “tresspasser” being someone walking on the sidewalk with a hoodie and Skittles?
Maude
And a grandmother shot her two grandsons then self in car.
Face
@Dracula: My thoughts exactly.
So George Zimmerman got a job with Freightmasters?
Steeplejack
I got nothin’. Seeing if my nym sticks.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: I am no fee’d post, lady.
ranchandsyrup
The only thing that can stop the police is a person with malfunctioning gun. Wait, am I doing that rong?
BGinCHI
@ranchandsyrup: Exactly. A solid hit plus plausible deniability.
Humanities Grad
@Roger Moore:
If you’re an armed and licensed security guard, I’d hope that the firm you work for would provide you with better quality equipment. A hand cannon that falls apart (and then discharges) when being handled isn’t going to inspire self-confidence in one’s ability to do one’s job.
Pooh
@jibeaux: what if its only a bear trap? How does it change if the intruder is a hemophiliac who bleeds out in 3 minutes from a paper cut?
jibeaux
@aimai: You literally couldn’t have made that stuff up. “Okay, we’re looking for a 300# black dude on the lam in a grey Nissan Titan [which is a big-ass truck], let’s go!”
“Mayday, mayday, we’ve got a blue Toyota Tacoma going 7 mph with newspapers coming out the windows, ID on the driver can wait blam blam blam blam times 47 “
Trollhattan
@Humanities Grad:
In my building the security guards are unarmed…well, armed with radios. Just as George Zimmerman should have been.
These folks tend not to be paid well; are there a lot of armed private security guards out there?
Amir Khalid
There’s a missing fact in the story: were the trucking company staff actual security guards authorised to carry firearms? Because a revolver that falls apart on you doesn’t sound like a weapon you’d issue to such guards. But I’d still need that fact in the story to confirm my suspicion.
That aside, stories like this make me wonder if anyone in America should be trusted with firearms, even the police.
ranchandsyrup
@BGinCHI: I guess it’s a weird way to water the tree of liberty–with the blood of police officers due to the tyranny of trespassing. But it may be how Alabama rolls.
Roger Moore
@Humanities Grad:
Hope being the operative principle there. My impression is that the Rent-A-Cop business is founded on the principle of cutting as many corners as possible. They start by offering bottom dollar to people the police passed on, but I’m sure that providing substandard equipment is somewhere down the list.
BGinCHI
@ranchandsyrup: Forget about it, ranch, it’s North Birmingham.
Cassidy
@Trollhattan: Depends on the site. The security company that has the weird, creepy mall cop at your local shopping center also has divisions that do armed, uniform security, tactical response, and [possibly] armed, personal security.
celticdragonchick
It is not mentioned whether the employees were actually brandishing the weapons or had them holstered. The story does not say what the employees job actually was (and some private security do have to furnish their own weapons).
All we know is that nobody was arrested (so we can assume that the employees were not breaking any laws) and one officer was injured while his partner tried to unload a faulty handgun. Not much here to generate outrage, from what I can see.
ranchandsyrup
@BGinCHI: Solid advice. I only hope they don’t make a sequel of this and call it The Two Jethroes.
ETA: The first line of this post initially made me believe it was about Chickens for Checkups.
scav
Interesting factoids from reports gleaned from reports on the workplace shooting in switzerland (Guard and beeb
Cassidy
@Roger Moore:
I can’t speak for equipment, but in all honesty, the difference in quality of handguns isn’t a huge cavern. Even your cheap models work most of the time. As to the second part, security companies provide the same “service” as ambulance companies in that people who are certified/ licensed to do law enforcement can get work while waiting for the local PD’s and SD’s to do a new round of hiring. A good number of LEO’s start off as security guards and prison guards.
Tom Levenson
@celticdragonchick: The point (at least to me) is not outrage; it’s that an armed society is a dangerous one, and the danger can come from the oddest of angles.
I’m not mad that security guards were armed; as you say, I don’t know enough about what actually happened to know what was going on. But that doesn’t obviate the point that the widespread dissemination of guns is a prescription for more events when a gun goes off when or at whom you don’t intend.
celticdragonchick
@jibeaux:
I think 7 officers shot over 100 rounds in that incident. I counted over 45 holes in the back of the truck…and both rear tires were flat while quite a few rounds had been shot all over the neighborhood. All the surrounding homes and automobiles had bullet holes. Meanwhile, the jackass cops at policeone where making snide comments on how long it would be before the “ghetto chicks” filed their lottery lawsuit attacking the poor, put-upon police officers who had almost killed them.
Banal Retentive
It’s Alabama….can we assume the tresspasser was looking to use the outdoor plumbing, needing a place to brush his tooth and readjust his hood and robe?
ranchandsyrup
@jibeaux: Racial profiling of Japanese vehicles.
celticdragonchick
@Tom Levenson:
So why are we even discussing this? The society will not stop being armed, and even if it somehow did, there would still be the occasional accident with weapons and equipment on the part of officials. John Cole could no doubt tell some real nasty stories about accidents in the Army. I knew two officers in the army who were at King Faud AFB in Saudi when a spectaculer accident happened. The DynCorps guys did a power-on check on an Apache helicopter gunship. A hellfire missile promptly lauched off one rail, barely missing a couple of guys working on top of a Chinook bird. The missile plowed into an ammo dump on the other side of the base it blew it to holy hell.
People who have seen crazy shit with weapons in the military look at something like this and just laugh, given that it was only a shot to the leg and everybody got to go home that night.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@celticdragonchick:
I think the point here is that the guard’s gun actually fell apart when inspected and injured someone standing nearby.
So much for those “responsible gun owners” who take care of their equipment. Even a presumed professional couldn’t manage basic maintenance (“Hey, I should make sure this thing won’t fall apart in my hand when I try to use it! … Nah, it’s probably fine.”)
Ash Can
@Maude: Guns made that family SO safe.
MikeJ
@celticdragonchick:
Why did people waste time discussing slavery? Look at how many slaves we have here already. It’s not going to stop just because you talk about it.
Ash Can
@celticdragonchick:
We cannot stop discussing it. The danger within the society increases with the number of guns in it. To basically ignore that is to simply accept the level of danger and the level of death, and to do nothing about it. Yes, there will always be guns in our society, but we have the moral duty to put limits on the damage they do.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@celticdragonchick:
Because my ideal of American suburban life is for it to be exactly like living on an Army base in a combat zone.
Also, I doubt that cop’s wife thought it was as funny as you do when she got a call saying he’d been shot.
Maude
@Ash Can:
And it was for The Children.
flukebucket
@Tom Levenson:
No doubt. We had a guy in my small home town accidentally shoot himself at church last Sunday. Everyone stood up to sing “Just As I Am” and his gun went off in his pocket sending a bullet through his knee. Luckily it was his knee and not the head of one of the children next to him. I don’t know if any souls were saved during that altar call or not.
Patricia Kayden
Off topic, but just read about this wonderful charity for poor pet owners at Joe My God.
https://petfoodstamps.org/Pet_Stamps_Donation.html
ranchandsyrup
Semi related: Reality star and former half term govnur of Near Russia is pimping the “ZOMG teh fed is buying up all the ammo ‘cuz they know that our economy is screwed. GAME OVER” debunked email that my aunt sent me a while back.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/02/sarah-palin-bullet-stockpile-conspiracy/62568/
Ash Can
@Patricia Kayden: I spotted a funny JoeMyGod tweet earlier today. It was something along the lines of “Head of Twitter among companies supporting gay marriage — ZOMG true conservatives/Christians must BOYCOTT Twitter NOW!!” LOL! We can only hope.
Mnemosyne
@jibeaux:
And they couldn’t even manage to cover themselves with a fig leaf and, for example, claim that there was a report of a stolen vehicle that resembled the one they fired on and they were afraid he had changed trucks.
Nope, it was just flat-out idiocy. Which unfortunately is what we’ve come to expect of the LAPD here in the Southland.
Quaker in a Basement
@gbear: ” frantic rants that Obama’s stormtroopers are preventing people from protecting their property.”
The Birmingham, AL police department is made up of Obama stormtroopers? Man, that Kenyan is just as sneaky as they say.
Tonal Crow
@celticdragonchick:
So why are we even discussing this? Republicans will not stop being crazy…. So why are we even discussing this? Jim Crow will never end…. So why are we even discussing this? Women will never have the right to vote…. So why are we even discussing this?
gelfling545
@Alex: 1. Not their property to protect unless they were hired as security. 2. Even if it were, at a place of business when you observe someone on the premises that you do not recognize as authorized to be there, is the wisest course of action to shoot him? How about calling those police who were out patrolling?
Corner Stone
We’re going to believe this? The “cylinder” of a revolver fell to the ground and a bullet was fired when it landed?
Does anyone here care the ratio of likely:unlikely to that being the actual story?
With the hammer cocked and the cylinder opened, the chances of this weapon firing when it hit the ground are rapidly approaching nil.
There just isn’t much here to discuss.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Guns are the only consumer product immune from product liability lawsuits. You can market the most defective gun in the world, one that falls apart when you try to take the bullets out, one that explodes when you fire it, and no one can do jack shit about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@celticdragonchick:
Are you saying that because we cannot reduce the danger to zero, we should do nothing? If so, you are simply wrong. We can never make society complete safe from all dangers but we can, and should, take reasonable actions to reduce the risks that can be reduced. As a gun owner, I am perfectly willing to accept a number of limitations on my ability to wander around town with as many guns as I can carry. Mandatory registration, universal background checks, magazine limitations, mandatory training and licensing, and a ban on civilian access to semi-automatics all are worth looking at and that is just off the top of my head. A gun owners’ rights extend only until they start to interfere with the general welfare of others. We reached that point a while ago.
GregB
Why are we even participating in this blog?
Tonal Crow
@Corner Stone: When a cartridge’s primer hits a rock, there’s some chance that it’ll fire.
Tonal Crow
@Omnes Omnibus:
This argument is a specific form of the very common Republican argument, which goes: because solution S cannot completely solve problem P, it is useless. I am past ill with the credence that our media give this argument.
Tonal Crow
@GregB: I sense that another BJ key-string has just been born.
ranchandsyrup
Great illustration of Rule number 2 of the 15 Rules of Web Disruption.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/11/the-15-rules-of-web-disruption-2/
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: Well, there is a possibility that I might have a heart attack. I cannot eliminate this possibility. Therefore I should eat this stick of butter because fuck it.
Corner Stone
@Tonal Crow: I’m doing my best to refrain here, but this is nonsense.
Nellcote
@Patricia Kayden:
really wish they had picked a different name.
Calouste
@Pooh:
When the Constitution was written, hanging was the penalty for theft of articles with a value of more than 39 shillings. So you can shoot someone for trying to steal something with a value of about $3.50, because it is no worse than the penalty the Founding Fathers would have given him.
/Antonin Scalia, originalist Supreme Court Justice
Cassidy
@celticdragonchick: I don’t know what kind of unit you were in, but negligent discharges were never a laughing matter in mine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alex: Spoof? Please say yes. If not, you should know that there is no common law right to use deadly force to protect property.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: To make sure I am clear, what do you mean? In Texas you can use deadly force to protect certain property after dark.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: If that is the case, then it is a statutory provision. In very broad strokes, under Anglo-American common law, deadly force is only permissible for defense of self or others. Basically, you can’t shoot the guy for taking your TV, but you can if you reasonably believe you or someone else is in danger.
kay
@flukebucket:
I think he should be charged. Failure to control. Just like with a car. The gun goes off, he failed to control it, no further discussion.
He put everyone in that room in danger. He needs a hefty fine, just like any driver would get.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: Reckless endangerment. Res ipsa loquitur should apply.
Chet
So-called “assault rifles” as a category have the lowest rate of injury by accidental discharge. On one hand, that reflects their reliability as civilian-versions-of-milspec-hardware; on the other, it may be that scary, military-style looks effectively discourage carelessness.
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of statistics should realize that far from banning “assault rifles”, we should discourage owning any guns but assault rifles.
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like failure to control because the incident itself is sufficient for the charge.
I got FTC once and I wanted to talk about it. The cop was like “is the car on the road?” Well, no, it’s in this ditch.
That was the end of that discussion, as it should be.
Gravenstone
@Corner Stone: If it was a .22 rimfire, it absolutely could fire on ground impact. Given the fact it fell apart when the cylinder was snapped open, the odds of it being a cheap ass .22 seem not unreasonable. But of course, you’re just being your normal contratian about everything douche self, so by all means carry on.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: Good point. I am persuaded.
@Chet: You aren’t really a stats guy, are you? It’s okay; they aren’t my strength either, but I don’t try to be a douche bag with them.
Gravenstone
@Chet: And of course, here’s NRA asshole shill Chet to chime in on another gun related thread. Throw more chaff, pony. Throw it!
JPL
About twenty minutes into Chris’s show, he had on Neil Heslin.
If you have time, watch his interview and watch the interview after with a doctor who discusses the difference between victims of handgun and the victims of assault weapons.
The show should be online after six and you can find it on, http://tv.msnbc.com/
Origuy
Two cops in Santa Cruz, CA were killed yesterday by a guy wearing body armor while investigating a misdemeanor sexual assault charge.
Snarla
This thread needs some pedantry. It’s King Fahd, not King Faud. The ‘h’ is not silent. It´s فهد.
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Right, omnes, it’s what you said, the thing speaks for itself.
I was outraged with my FTC. I hurt no one! Tried and convicted, right there in the ditch.
I cannot imagine what will happen when one of these concealed carry nitwits kills someone with a negligent discharge.
Trollhattan
@Chet:
Asshat says, “what?”
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I have no doubt about that. His coworkers will be laughing at him for months, though. The sense of humor you find in armed professions is a tad…different…from you or I may take for normal.
celticdragonchick
@Corner Stone:
I don’t know of any instance where a cylinder with a bullet in it has managed to misfire without having some sort of striking mechanism in contact with the bullet. If the cylinder actually fell out and was not in contact with the hammer…then I think you are right here. The cops are trying to make something up because somebody fucked up.
Corner Stone
@Gravenstone: I’ve handled a few tens of thousands of .22 rimfire rounds. Never seen it, never heard of it anecdotally. Separately, I know of no studies that backup your assertion.
celticdragonchick
@ranchandsyrup:
How do you propose to make lethal weapons used by officials fool proof? Mistakes happen in an imperfect world, and eventually you will simply run into diminishing returns and increasing expense while trying to obtain a standard that will never be met. Most of the obvious improvements were made years ago. Now we are talking about technology to keep unauthorized users from taking a gun form an officer, but training and technology only go so far.
lol
@scav:
Doesn’t Switzerland have really tough restrictions on and tracking of *ammunition*?
celticdragonchick
@Cassidy:
The officers and NCO’s would not have been amused (in front of the rest of us), but we would have mocked the person mercilessly. I was in 5/17 Cav, 3/7 Cav, 2/4 Cav and 4/24 Avn Regt. No real difference in attitudes from any that I ever saw.
Omnes Omnibus
@celticdragonchick: H
Who is suggesting this?
ranchandsyrup
@celticdragonchick:
HA! You hit on Rule #3
g
@Alex: Why do you shoot at someone who is running away?
Ruckus
celticdragonchick Says:
Man, get out of my face with that shit. The motherfucker who said that never had to pick up itty bitty pieces of pie on account of your dumb ass.
Things are looking up. For me at least.
g
@Trollhattan:
No, there are not. Not for property protection. It would be highly unlikely to assign an armed guard for overnight security for protecting a building.
celticdragonchick
@ranchandsyrup:
Did I? The concept of diminishing returns is rather well known. Expense and practicality become parameters of what can be reasonably done.
For instance: 100 year flood events occur with some predictability and can be planned for. 1000 year flood events…not so much. It may be desirable from your standpoint to plan and budget for that kind of contingency, but it becomes difficult to sell that to the millions of people who may have to pay for something not likely to occur in their lifetime. Ergo, you do the best you can.
I point out that most of the obvious safety design features for handguns have already been factored in. When was the last time you heard about a Colt revolver blowing up in someone’s hand? Not since they started putting those straps on top like Remington, I would imagine. That leaves increasingly esoteric design improvements that deal with an increasingly limited number of problems that could occur. Sooner or later, you hit a wall of “This feature may save a life once every year or two” and you find that nobody cares to put the extra money into something with such a small chance of improving what the weapon does already.
Corner Stone
@g: What?
ranchandsyrup
@celticdragonchick: Yes, you did. Demanded fool proof solution.
scav
@ranchandsyrup: Hasn’t even provided firm evidence that such diminishing returns have set in, but that, like the assertion that the current situation is the best of all possible worlds so shut the fuck up, must be accepted on cdc’s word alone.
ranchandsyrup
@scav: she feels the diminishing returns in her gut. The all important gut. I’m going to say Good Pie to her and place her in the filter.
jake the snake
This one definitely makes me feel safer in my nice little town.
http://www.kentucky.com/2013/02/27/2534116/off-duty-deputy-involved-in-shooting.html
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
And, of course, because the officers were secretly amused, the person who did the negligent discharge faced no punishment whatsoever, right? They were just allowed to go on their merry way without any disciplinary action and only had to face the mockery of their peers?
Shamash
First, remember that some revolvers have cylinders that are designed to be easily removed. No idea if this is one of them, but the fact that it fell out does not automatically mean a cheap weapon or poor maintenance. Or could just mean a young police officer who was so used to handling semi-autos that he had never dealt with a revolver before.
Second, note that the gun owner did not have the accident. It was the people you trust with guns more than you trust the gun owner who made the mistake and caused the accidental discharge.