The "Responsibility" of Being a "Responsible Gun Owner"
Another Responsible Gun Owner
Because ... training ... er ... um ... right.
The lede, all too familiar, from
HuffPo:
A Pennsylvania state trooper who fatally shot his pregnant wife on Friday afternoon in a small town was cleaning his gun at the time, police say.
According to the report, Joseph Miller failed to recognize that his personal weapon, a .45-caliber pistol, was loaded when he began disassembling the device in order to clean it. JoAnne Miller, 34, died from a gunshot wound to the head;
NBC Philadelphia reports that Mrs. Miller was twenty-three weeeks into a pregnancy expecting the couple's fifth child.
While her baby girl was delivered, she did not survive, according to investigators. Officials say the child never had a heartbeat and never took a breath after the delivery.
While it is unclear exactly how the shooting occurred, authorities say a handgun being handled by Miller's husband, a state trooper, somehow went off inside the home, striking her in the head.
"There is some indication at this point that it was an accidental discharge of the gun," said Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Kevin Steele. "But that's under investigation at this point. I can't go any further than that."
This is a particularly sore spot; the phrase "responsible gun owner" has no real meaning outside political slogans. One would expect that the responsible gun owner, as such, would know whether the heater is hot.
Or, at least, one ought to know where their gun is. That, at least, is the first thing to mind when reading about the death of Carmen Dominiguez:
A Chicago thrift store worker died after a handgun hidden in a donated item of clothing went off and the bullet hit the woman in the chest, police said.
Carmen Dominguez, 54, was sorting through clothing with a fellow colleague at a Unique Thrift Store in Chicago, when she was fatally shot in the chest at 9:42 a.m. on Friday, a Chicago Police Department spokesman said.
The unidentified male coworker found a sock with something heavy inside, and emptied the contents into his hand, police said. The object turned out to be a .22 caliber handgun that went off and hit Dominguez in the chest.
Dominguez was taken to Christ Hospital in serious condition and later died from her injuries, police said.
"Preliminary investigation reveals it was an accidental discharge of a firearm," the Chicago Police Department's Michael Sullivan told ABC News.
(Fields)
Of course, this is Chicago, a fact that for speculative purposes lowers the chance that this gun was accidentally donated by a "responsible gun owner", but the tale comes on the heels of a rather unsettling personal experience.
Recently, there was a serious freak-out in the family when accusations emerged that someone was using heroin. While the heroin accusation itself has writhed to deathly stillness in the glaring light of facts—no tracks where there should be—there is still something
exceptionally bizarre going on.
In the middle of that, however, is the question of a firearm.
A mentally unstable accused drug addict in possession of a .38 revolver belonging to her father.
"Well, I think I took it back after that ...."
It's an old episode involving a drunken mother threatening to shoot the father of her child. With that very gun. In trying to mitigate everyone's concern, the registered owner of the gun claimed to have taken it back. Through intervening years, though, hints have arisen suggesting the weapon is back in this unstable person's hands. With accusations of addiction, theft, and all sorts of chaos, amid fears that intervention might put an addict into flight, the question of where the gun was became paramount.
The first inquiry evoked foggy uncertainty: "Well, I think I took it back ...."
Reminded that his daughter had spoken repeatedly as if she was in possession of the thing, his memory stayed foggy.
When it was pointed out that the fear was not being shot during intervention, but that the gun might be used in a suicide, or sold onto the market and thus bringing authorities to
his door, as the last known registered owner?
Well, if his daughter commits suicide because she feels cornered over addiction, or sells the gun for a fix, that might reflect poorly on
him.
His memory cleared up instantly: He never took the gun back, or else he gave it back to her, and either way we need to make certain we know where it is.
I still have
no idea where the gun is.
But it sort of blows my mind.
Look, there are days when I misplace my keys, or lose track of my iPhone. I can lose my wallet somewhere in a ten square-foot area simply by blinking. But these things weren't crafted with the specific intention of killing something. (No, really, a snub .38 revolver is
not a hunting or target-shooting gun; it's designed to put extraneous holes in people at short range.)
The questions seem simple to me:
How do you not
know where your gun is?
Or:
How did you come to think it wasn't loaded?
Then again, I'm not a firearm owner; perhaps there is something wrong with the question that I won't see until I declare myself a "responsible gun owner".
Of course, anyone can claim to be a "responsible gun owner", and then one day they may not be. A dead wife, a stillborn child; God works in mysterious ways.
____________________
Notes:
The Huffington Post. "Pennsylvania State Trooper Fatally Shot Pregnant Wife While Cleaning Gun: Police". March 10, 2014. HuffingtonPost.com. March 10, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/trooper-shot-wife-pregnant-pennsylvania_n_4934916.html
Chang, David. "Pregnant Wife of State Trooper Shot, Killed". NBC Philadelphia. March 10, 2014. NBCPhiladelphia.com. March 10, 2014. http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Pregnant-Woman-Shot-in-the-Head-249046731.html
Fields, Liz. "Gun Hidden in Donated Sock Kills Woman in Thrift Store". ABC News. March 8, 2014. ABCNews.Go.com. March 10, 2014. http://abcnews.go.com/US/gun-hidden-donated-sock-kills-woman-thrift-store/story?id=22832549