Friday, 30 December 2016

Handgun discharges, killing Press Herald columnist M.D. Harmon at his home

quote [ The champion of conservative viewpoints was showing the weapon to a teenage visitor when it went off as the boy handled it, police say.
...
Harmon, a steadfast defender of gun rights and a champion of conservative viewpoints, was a longtime editor and columnist for the Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. He worked for the newspaper for 41 years, and continued to write a weekly column after he retired in 2011.
...Harmon wrote that he had belonged to the National Rifle Association from the day of his first paycheck. ]

The picture of a responsible gun owner.

"handgun discharges", "it went off as the boy handled it"
This passive voice "shit-happens" description of somebody shooting another person to death.

Not dystopian violence - mundane violence.


#gun tragedy
[SFW] [obituaries] [+10 Funny]
[by HoZay@9:16amGMT]

Comments

cb361 said @ 10:45am GMT on 30th Dec [Score:4]
It's how he'd have wanted to go.
lrdcthulu said @ 4:57pm GMT on 30th Dec [Score:2 Insightful]
He stopped being a responsible gun owner right after he let a teenager handle a loaded gun.
King Of The Hill said @ 8:49pm GMT on 30th Dec [Score:2 Insightful]
Bingo.

"Harmon, a steadfast defender of gun rights " ***But not gun safety.

Fucking hell. It is the first rule of gun ownership. As a gun owner myself I consider these morons to be the worse enemy of my rights. I was at a friend's house over the holidays and he had bought a new rifle he wanted to show me. Went back into the room where his gun vault is... Prior to handing it to me he made sure there was no magazine in it, and cleared the action a couple of times. Then he locked the bolt back and handed it to me declaring it empty and I visually verified.

My six year old was with us and I asked her to tell me if the gun was real or not. She said real. I asked her what she was supposed to do if she or her friends ever find a gun laying around and she said "leave the room and find an adult". Fucking isn't hard to instill common sense into someone. If my six year old can get the bare basics right, why can't a fucking adult who happens to be a gun advocate?
HoZay said[1] @ 9:26pm GMT on 30th Dec [Score:1 Underrated]
Everyone would have considered him to be a responsible gun owner, right up to the shooting. Just like most gun owners believe themselves to be a responsible gun owner.
Almost nobody has your high standards.
maximumtodd said @ 9:56pm GMT on 31st Dec
Visually verifying that a gun is unloaded prior to handing it to someone is standard practice among my friends, along with treating the gun as though it is loaded even after the verification.
HoZay said @ 10:13pm GMT on 31st Dec
You probably have smarter friends than I do. I've seen a lot of careless gun-handling over the years.
maximumtodd said[1] @ 9:57pm GMT on 1st Jan
I don't know about smarter, but I did grow up in South Dakota, where you could go hunting at 14 if you had taken the hunter safety course, so most of my friends did. Also, most of the people I hang out with spent at least some time in the military where we received firearms training. I remember the first time I handed a rifle to my wife, who is from the Netherlands. I quickly found myself looking down the end of a barrel. It was only then that I realized that she had probably never held a firearm before. We had a talk and I took her to the range. She now owns a Walther P99 and is a better shot than me.
HoZay said[1] @ 2:10am GMT on 2nd Jan
I was hunting from an early age also, but the only training was from somebody's dad or uncle - quality varied. Everybody was pretty self-confident, though, that it was some other asshole who was dangerous.
mechanical contrivance said @ 8:54pm GMT on 30th Dec
Common sense is not so common. Unfortunately, people without common sense are allowed to own guns.
captainstubing said @ 3:13am GMT on 31st Dec
Is there any way to move the debate in the U.S. away from Pro/Anti gun ownership and more toward simply Pro -really responsible ownership underpinned by genuine and extensive training? Couldn't a fair chunk of people from both sides agree on something like that?

You are then respecting people's right to guns but emphasising the duties that underpin the right; you must demonstrate you are fit to own one, you must demonstrate that a range of safety practices have been internalised, and so on. In the same way you have a right to fly aircraft, but if you wish to exercise it you must obtain a license and that is a serious process. Make obtaining a gun license something that people broadly recognise as a demonstration of skill and application and an indicator that the holder is not just some fuckwit who went to a sporting goods store.

If obtaining a gun license was only possible after serious training I suspect the scene might change somewhat. Rights are respected, duties are properly enforced.
King Of The Hill said @ 3:22am GMT on 31st Dec
Nope...

The pro gun crowd will not accept mandatory training and standardized licensing. They see that as a way of infringing on the 2nd amendment... If you raise the bar to high... If you impart undue costs/burden to own a gun then you are infringing on the rights of the impoverished to own guns.

Second to that, this is widely regulated by the individual states. A universal standard is likely to not be adopted.

Third... I highly doubt that the gun control crowd would be for anything that strengthens the right to own firearms via this sort of enhanced training/licensing. Their goal is bans and they make no secret of it.
milkman666 said @ 3:29pm GMT on 31st Dec
How about treating guns kinda like Utah treats booze? Perhaps not so much in terms of restricting access but taking out the profit motive by taking over retail, wholesale and distribution. Perhaps working on how guns are sold to the public as well.
HoZay said @ 5:22pm GMT on 31st Dec
I think NRA is more about profit motive than gun rights.

What's it like, buying booze in Utah? Is it cheaper, more expensive, better or worse buyer experience?
milkman666 said @ 11:42pm GMT on 31st Dec
I' m not from Utah personally, but a friend of mine is in the liquor trade. So he would see reps being wooed to buy such and such amount of cases from different companies, and there would be the one dude, who represents fucking Utah. He would buy, for the state of Utah. https://abc.utah.gov/about/index.html This site should be slightly more informative.
lilmookieesquire said @ 3:19pm GMT on 30th Dec [Score:1 Underrated]
That's truly living and dying by your own principles.
sanepride said @ 3:19pm GMT on 30th Dec [Score:1 Insightful]
Tempting as it is to mod this 'funny', it's really pretty horrible for the kid who shot him.
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 4:48pm GMT on 30th Dec
I'm sure the NRA is showering him in free guns so he realized what he did was God's will supporting the Second Amendment.
Menchi said @ 2:54pm GMT on 30th Dec
Guns don't kill people! People just happen to die after being shot by a gun, is all.
Bleb said @ 3:06pm GMT on 30th Dec
The first rule of gun ownership is that only the Good Guys are supposed to have them. So either he was oblivious to the fact that the kid was a Bad Guy, or he did know and gave him the gun anyway. Either way, it's his own damn fault.
bbqkink said[1] @ 10:03pm GMT on 30th Dec
Most people who get shot (Die) in this country get shot by their own weapon...most by their own hand. The rest are shot by family members.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEH1nLoC_9c
shiftace said @ 3:54pm GMT on 30th Dec
I'm sure that pointing a loaded gun at Harmon and pulling the trigger had nothing to do with this “accidental tragedy".
7 said @ 4:43pm GMT on 30th Dec
PizzaTheGate said @ 4:49pm GMT on 30th Dec
So OBVIOUSLY this so-called KID was an ASSASSIN FOR THE OBUMMER HUSSAIN!!!! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!
rylex said @ 5:06pm GMT on 30th Dec
guy looks like a pedo. even has the pedosmile.

i question what the kid and his father were doing there in the first place
XregnaR said @ 5:36pm GMT on 30th Dec
It's not like he could actually be able to see that the gun was loaded, squinty bastard.

RIP Squinty.
midden said @ 9:49pm GMT on 30th Dec
"In a 2013 column, for instance, Harmon attacked proposed legislation in Maine that would have required gun owners to take a firearm safety course—in fact, he referred to this section of the legislation as “the worst part of the bill.”

"The advisability of handing a loaded firearm to a teenager who probably hasn't taken a firearm safety course? Something that might've been covered in the kind of firearm safety course Harmon opposed."

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/12/29/24773316/2016-claims-another-soulno-wait-stupidity-and-karma-claims-another-soul
SkierTrash said @ 6:22am GMT on 31st Dec
He died before he could groom the poor young boy to be his lover... so tragic

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