Posted on 01/05/2012 12:35:45 PM PST by South40
OK then change my rule #1 to assume all guns are loaded, same result either way.
I will say that I religiously check to so if a gun is loaded even when I have just sat it down for a second. This has served me well in life.
I got an early out after project transition.
Project Transition was training at a civilian job of your choice and collecting your military check for it, for 6 weeks, odd but cool for me, I got to spend my time observing and doing whatever I wanted to do, at the largest mental facility west of the Mississippi River, in Washington state in late 1973.
Especially #3:
3) Never shoot yourself in the head to try and impress women
Better he was weeded out over booze and broads than in combat with comrades.
If he had just completed BUD/S ya just gotta wonder if that firearms safety training might need to include something along the lines of, “DO...NOT...place a firearm to your head...”
That’s the same way the guitarist for Chicago did it, but he was at a party. It’s a little mistake, generalizing from some pistols with mag disconnect safeties, to all pistols being safe with no mag in the well.
But that still leaves him pointing a gun at his head. Sheesh.
Yep, lots of us have probably done stupid sh** in our life times, but not as stupid as this guy because we are still here to comment about it. Face it, this was either a very dumb a**ed move on the swabbie's part or he committed suicide and tried to make it look like an accident. I think he was just drunk and stupid, a fatal combination in many cases.
Fortunately for others in his seal unit he never got to go into combat and have his stupidity endanger his shipmates.
I was working with another guy one evening at Camp Fuchinobe, Japan, in 1968. All the day ladies were gone and it was pretty quiet. All of a sudden, one of our MPs, a SP4, came into the operations spaces, took out his .45, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger. My buddy and I had no time to react and we were horror-stricken, until we heard the click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber. The soldier thought it was hilarious but Jim and I just about expired ourselves due to myocardial infarctions.
You think HE’S old? I graduated from basic (3725th BMTS) on D Day, 1960!
There’s no such thing as shooting yourself in the head by accident. Instead, it should be referred to as shooting yourself in the head by stupidity.
Not sure if you would remember actor Pete Duel who shot himself in the head in the 70s. It was ruled a suicide. I don’t recall if it was ruled accidental but I do recall that many thought it was.
There is if he was attempting to shoot himself in the neck and shot himself in the head instead. :P
This guy, along with the numbnut SF guy who tried to board an aircraft with explosives, makes me wonder what we are recruiting for SpecOps today.
Certainly not with a gun! He was a drunk idiot.
LOL - still, that is death by stupidity.
Back in the 1970’s a friend of my younger brother (high school aged), who had been out shooting handguns with other friends in the afternoon, brought a 44 to a party that same evening. He was goofing off with the 44, playing like he was going to shoot himself in the head, trying to get a reaction from the girls at the party. The gun discharged into his head, killing him. Handguns, and long guns for that matter, should NEVER be used as toys or for amusement. The young man was the younger brother of one of my friends. At the time I was in Minot N.D. in the Air Force (Security Police). A Airman on my flight (E3 in rank) “accidentally” discharged his M16 while sitting in a patrol vehicle, putting a hole through the roof of the pickup’s cab. The round missed going through the bottom of his jaw by millimeters.
That airman at Minot should’ve rushed right off base to the nearest 7-11 and bought a lottery ticket. Hope the rest of the kids at that party learned a life lesson about guns.
Seriously! He didn't even get written up for this breach of safety. He got off by claiming he wasn't provided the safety briefing on weapons safety that we all got each guardmount. This was because he had gone out with the shift change crew (the tower security officer, the entry controller, and the flight shift area NCO - they went out before the guardmount to ready the area for the oncoming shift so that the switchover took less time). This incident took place in the B52 alert pad (where the nuke loaded B52's were parked). After this incident NO ONE was allowed to go out to the alert security areas to get everything ready for the shift change. This added 45 minutes to the changeover. All four security flights were pissed.
We have only one story here, and it is not from the Navy man or his roommate. The only one telling the story is the strange woman that he brought home.
It is a very strange story. While there are people who have killed themselves by pointing an “unloaded” gun at their head, and pulling the trigger, they tend to be movie stars, and are quite rare in number.
I hope that the police investigate this very, very thoroughly.
That's not necessarily true. Forensics, blood spatter, GSR testing (gun shot residue) all could tell the story that the gun was in his hand when it fired a bullet into his head. It's also possible that the woman had zero blood on her and she had zero time to clean it off had it been as the roommate entered the room immediately after hearing the shot.
I considered the possibility that the woman could have been lying and it's certainly possible that some of her story is untrue. It's also possible that the investigators are inept. Anything is possible. Apparently, forensics tell a story that meshes with hers.
One more thing. Are you familiar with the two deaths that occurred in Coronado last year? Many believe the real story in those deaths has not been told and that the police bungled the investigation. The same police investigated this scene/incident so their conclusions are probably equally as suspect.
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