Comment

Amazon Deal of the Day - Canon EOS T4i 18MP Camera w/Lens and Accessories - 40% Off!

145
Shiplord Kirel: From behind wingnut lines12/16/2012 3:50:04 pm PST

Ah, gun safety. One advantage of being old is that you can reasonably invoke personal experience with all sorts of things.
I posted this a couple of years ago.

I think I’ve told the story before of how I survived a similar shooting in 1982. I was going to the range with a co-worker. We were in my driveway loading our guns into the trunk of his car when his .45 pistol discharged. The bullet hit me in the left thigh, puncturing but not severing the femoral artery. I didn’t realize at first that I had been hit. I thought I had caught the muzzle blast but no worse than that. I looked down though and saw blood spurting out of a jagged hole in my blue jeans. Oh shit, I thought, this is going to be bad.
I told the unfortunate shooter to go into the house and call an ambulance. The imbecile panicked and started running around in circles.
I managed to get into the house under my own power and called an ambulance. About then the pain set in, it was like someone had jammed a red-hot poker through my leg and was twisting it. Blood was running off my clothes and soaking not just the couch where I was lying but the floor around it.
I heard sirens then and realized I had forgotten to tell the dispatcher that the shooting was an accident.
Neighbors told me later what happened next. About 5 police cars converged on the house with lights and sirens on. The panic-stricken shooter was standing in the front yard, .45 still in hand. The cops leveled their shotguns on him, pinned him to the ground, and handcuffed him. They soon found me barely conscious in the house. At that point I was thinking about letting the shooter spend a few days meditating on gun safety in the county jail. I relented though and told the cops what had happened. I don’t remember the ambulance ride to the hospital.

I was up and around in a week or so but it took several months to fully recover. The shooter was an NRA member and had firearms liability insurance. They picked up the hospital bills and my lost time.
The local cops and the municipal court took a very dim view of all this. The shooter was charged with reckless conduct resulting in bodily injury, discharging a firearm within the city limits, and a few minor offenses. He got probation and about a thousand dollars worth of fines.
The cops recovered the bullet and eventually gave it to me. They had found it almost undamaged in my front yard. I still have it.

I thought the other chap involved in this knew how to handle guns; life-long shooter, NRA member, multiple handgun owner etc. I was wrong. He actually had no formal training at all, he had learned from relatives and by trial and error (a serious error in this case). I neglected to mention in the original post that our employer fired him: Shooting a co-worker is grounds for termination, even in Texas.

Another thing I took this from this was an enhanced appreciation for blood donors. I don’t remember how much it took to replace what I had left in the driveway, the yard, the house, the ambulance, and the ER. It was a hell of a lot though and I would certainly have died without it.
Many thanks, donors.