Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Firearm Safety at the White House

I try to maintain a recurring theme of firearm safety in my commentary. Even though there has been almost a 92% decrease in accidental/negligent firearm-related fatalities since 1930, we can still do better.

The best way to prevent negligent firearm discharges is to follow the Four Rules of Safe Gun Handling. Each and every gun owner is obligated to not only know and follow these four rules, but to teach those who may have access to those firearms the rules.

It seems the Secret Service needs to spend some class time working on this very issue.

From Reuters:


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Secret Service officers were injured on Tuesday after a gun held by another Secret Service officer accidentally fired inside the White House gate, according to a spokesman, Darrin Blackford...

..."It appears that at approximately 2:10 p.m. (1810 GMT) there was an accidental discharge of a service issued weapon, which occurred inside the Southwest Gate at a security post near the White House," Blackford said.
First off - the public would be much better served if these journalist and "official spokespersons" would remove the phrase "accidental discharge" from their vocabulary. This was no accident, it was negligence. Incidents such as this one should be reported as negligence so folks who do not understand firearms can at least learn that firearms do not just "go off" accidentally.

Second - Can you imagine the reaction if this has occurred while the President was in the Rose Garden giving a press conference?

I expect the Secret Service to be better trained and more familiar with firearms than this. They are, after all, the last line of defense for our President.

As a concerned citizen, I feel it is my duty to offer the following video as a training aid to the Secret Service (and anyone else who owns firearms).

Enjoy


For more information on firearm safety, go here.

Thanks to The War on Guns for the link to the article.

Thanks to Xavier for the video.

1 comment:

Gunny John said...

The four safety rules are designed to be "no brainers." It's a shame that some folks take a "no brain" approach to firearms. Thankfully, those instances are rare.