Ignorance And Gun Handling

This story is a MESS!

A 45-year-old Cleveland woman is charged with negligent homicide, a first-degree misdemeanor, in the fatal shooting of her daughter’s 19-year-old boyfriend.

How’d that go down? Listen to this?

David Moore was shot in the forehead Jan. 27, when Harris-Arnold was handling her .32-caliber Cobra handgun near her daughter, Moore and a friend of Moore’s at her home in the 4600 block of Storer Avenue.

The teens had asked Harris-Arnold how to get a “gun permit” and whether you had to get the gun first or the permit first, prosecutor’s spokeswoman Maria Russo said.

“They also asked to see the defendant’s permit, which was in the gun case,” Russo said. (Russo doesn’t know what document was actually in the gun case, as a permit is not required to have guns, though Cleveland asks residents to register them. Harris-Arnold does not have a concealed-carry permit, according to the county sheriff’s spokesman.)

Harris-Arnold’s daughter got the weapon out of a safe, brought it into the living room and Harris-Arnold showed the “permit” to the teens. She told them she had never fired or cleaned the gun and there was one bullet in the chamber, Russo said.

Moore, who lived in the home, and his friend briefly handled the gun and tried to remove the empty magazine, before Harris-Arnold had them put the gun down. She picked it up to put it away, stood from her chair and it fired, Russo said.

The bullet struck Moore in the right side of the forehead as he stood in the doorway to a bedroom.

No idea if this is potentially murder. Certainly this story is an odd one. Cobra’s .32s are very similar to the famous Raven Potmetal guns, and while those guns are of VERY poor quality, the story as it sounds would require the gun to be pointed at the young man and the trigger pulled. Certainly this is NOT a malfunction of the gun.

Further I wonder what the “Permit” is. Could it be the 4473 she got from the gun shop when she got the gun, or could it be the mythical cleaning product that is involved with “I was cleaning my gun and it went off” story, many of which involve splashing some Hoppes #9 around the house after you did something stupid with a gun…or attempting to field strip a striker-fired gun that requires you to pull the trigger, without first removing the round from the chamber.

Messed UP!

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0 Responses to Ignorance And Gun Handling

  1. “She told them she had never fired or cleaned the gun and there was one bullet in the chamber, Russo said.”

    If this is in fact true, I can imagine that she probably had absolutely NO firearms safety training. An accidental discharge is bound to happen when someone who knows absolutely nothing about guns goes and plays with a loaded gun.

    Hell, those of us who know how to handle a firearm reduce extrenious contact with our weapons to mitigate the possibility of a momentary lapse of judgement.

    s

  2. Wally says:

    Not that I can add much to this, but the gun dealer/store is required to retain the 4473.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Gotcha. Being a Masshole I know I get a copy of the Mass Registration 1099 form. Didn’t know if there was a similar ATF receipt with the gun data and proof of NICS approval.

      Short answer, they had no idea what they were doing.

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