So Much To Talk About Here

So first watch the video. My Goodness it made me itch!

So let’s go over what’s there first. Cop in full uniform is browsing guns in a gun shop. The shop keeper hands the gun to him with a magazine inserted and the slide closed. Video it too grainy to make out the model of gun. If it was something like a Kel-Tec P3AT or Ruger LCR maybe it doesn’t have a slide stop. Still the person behind the counter committed a serious error, but we’ll get to that. Still from the grainy video it looks to me like a Colt Mustang, or a SIG P238…but again the video grainy as hell.

Cop takes the gun, and there 6 people in the frame. He muzzles ALL OF THEM, he then decides that the best place to keep his left hand is in front of the muzzle. He racks the slide…I don’t see a live round get ejected…but this means the gun had a loaded magazine in the well. Bad on the shop for letting this get by inspection, and bad on the person behind the counter for not fully clearing the gun.

Of course bad on the cop for not clearing the gun himself. NEVER trust a gun handed to you, even if the gun is open, or you saw the person clear it. Check for yourself, it only takes a second.

Still the biggest blunder is he then tests the trigger with his hand in front of the muzzle!!! WHY???? The gun discharges, hits the officer in his hand, and thankfully misses the guy in the blue jeans who also happens to be down range.

Now onto the story:

A former Glasgow police officer is suing a Barren County gun store after being handed a loaded gun from under the counter and accidentally shooting his finger off.

Technically speaking the gun WASN’T loaded, and the officer loaded it as he negligently handled the gun.

He then held the gun after receiving it from under the counter. Smith began to examine the gun and then cocked it. The gun was actually loaded and fired, shooting off part of Smith’s index finger.

Smith’s attorney, Alan Simpson, said the incident caused him to lose his job as a police officer, and the suit is to make up for income he’s lost.

I for one am glad this officer is off the street. Do you think he handled his duty weapons any differently than this? Now to be fair, when you’re at a gun shop, it’s a rare occurrence to NOT be muzzled if the shop is doing heavy business. Much of that is shopper negligence, but sometimes it’s just the nature of handling lots of guns in a confined space. Still most of the people who are a bit lax with their muzzle control are newer shooters, not the “only ones” who are allegedly qualified to handle firearms.

The lawsuits claims the Barren Outdoors employee didn’t do a safety check on the gun, and therefore Smith is suing for negligence.

It was indeed negligent, I don’t know if it deserves to go to court. Frankly it’s just good business and self-preservation for gun stores to clear and inspect every firearm before handing them to customers, because if the person is lax with gun handling, like this officer, the first person to be muzzle-swept is the person who handed them the gun. While I can’t fault the customer 100%, because people who venture into gunshops are sometimes BRAND NEW shooters who aren’t familiar with all the way guns work. They may not know how to drop the magazine, or lock the slide back. They may not know all the procedures to clear a gun.

Still given that this guy had a semi-auto of his own on his hip, he DID know how to clear a firearm like this, and probably has a certification on his record. Further I assume during police weapons training and certification they drum into you NEVER to treat a gun as if it’s unloaded, or to simply assume, or take somebody’s word for it that it was unloaded.

I guess I think the suit would make a LOT more sense if the shooter was indeed a brand-new shooter, rather than somebody who has been officially trained to NEVER do all the things that he did on camera.

Last up, I thought I’d share this telling of the story:

A former Glasgow, Scotland police officer is suing a gun shop after he accidently shot his index finger off with a loaded gun handed to him by a clerk.

Officer Darrell Smith walked into Barren Outdoors gun store in March and asked to see a .380 caliber handgun, WBKO-TV reported.

When the clerk handed him the weapon, Smith began to examine it. Upon examining the powerful handgun, he cocked it and the gun went off. Smith shot a portion of his left index finger off.

Heh yeah, a cop from Galsgow SCOTLAND just happened to walk into a gun store in full uniform, that ironically happened to be Glasgow Kentucky! (BTW I knew a woman once who moved from Cambridge England to Cambridge Mass) And of course a pocket .380 is a “powerful Handgun”.

Good job guys! Also go ahead and read the comments if you want some LOLz!

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6 Responses to So Much To Talk About Here

  1. Ok. Putting on judge hat.

    1. The firing of the policeman is unrelated to the gunstore and the gun store cannot be held responsible for the actions of the city. So $0 recovery.It is doubtful that the officer was fired for being temporarily injured. He was likely fired for his own lapse in judgement and that is entirely his own fault. The presence of ammunition provided by the store only helped to demonstrate the officer’s bad judgement.

    2. The Gun store employee and management acted negligently by permitting a loaded gun to be in their “show” inventory and handing a loaded weapon to a customer. Their negligence led to the loss of the officer’s finger, hospital expenses and pan and suffering. So, $50K recovery, give or take.

    3. The Officer was negligent in shooting himself and discharging a weapon in a negligent manner in a public place. If he had not been a well trained officer, schooled in gun safety and the four rules, then he would bear no responsibility. So, he shares 50-50 responsibility for the losses recovered in #2 above.

    Final verdict: The gun store management (25%), employee(25%) and officer (50%)each pay their share of the total award of $50K to the officer. Officer pays the hospital bills from his recovery or reimburses his insurance company from this award if they already paid for this.

  2. TS says:

    I vote for 0% payout from the store. Here’s why: though both sides did something very wrong, i’d like to see a basic test applied to all civil lawsuits. Was the party harmed being an idiot? If the answer is yes, they get nothing. As an analogy, let’s say Wallmart stocked a bottle of antifreeze in the soft drink isle. A big no-no to put poisons where the food is. Now if someone were to take that well-labeled bottle home, pour a nice tall glass, and chug it down- he’s being an idiot. Because “don’t drink antifreeze!”, so no Wallmart doesn’t owe you anything. Now had they actually messed up the packaging and put antifreeze in a Mountain Dew bottle, now whoever did that should lose a lawsuit. It’s applying a “reasonable person” standard, and I feel that would really cut down on frivolous lawsuits, and in turn allow more freedom for society where everyone is constantly trying to protect you from yourself so as not to get sued.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Tell that to the woman who put a cup of coffee between her legs, and gave herself 2nd Degree burns because that McDonalds had their urn temp set “too high”.

      You don’t put a beverage between your legs because it might spill and that will ruin your clothes and your seat…you don’t put a hot beverage between your legs because that shit hurts, and it will ruin your clothes and your seat.

      Still she won and was paid, so precedence is set!

      Or this one! Man I heard about this in Middle School, didn’t realize it was in Maine!

      • TS says:

        Of course, my ideal is no whee near reality. People get rewarded for being idiots all the time. Another great real world example is that tiger attack at the San Francisco zoo a few years back. A tiger escapes and kills one teen and mauls two others. The survivors won a 900K settlement, and the family of the deceased was awarded millions. Sounds fair, everyone should agree that the zoo should have to keep their tigers contained, until you realize that the teens were shooting slingshots at the tiger.

        No! You get nothing! You were shooting slingshots at a fucking tiger- and you think this wouldn’t be a problem because you were raised to believe the world is responsible to protect you and that if someone is going to display a tiger for your amusement, they damn well better be sure they trapped it good enough for you to be able to piss it off to whatever level you see fit.

        Under my rule, they get nothing.

      • Bob S. says:

        Weer’d,

        It gets worse in my opinion. If I remember right, the woman admitted she went to McDonald’s because they had the hottest coffee around

        She admitted that in court. Under Oath.

  3. Pingback: On Frivolous Lawsuits | Weer'd World

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