He shot all of us in the foot

Daughter Kim told me about this yesterday. Great. Just great:

An Idaho State University assistant professor with a concealed-carry gun permit shot himself in the foot with a semiautomatic handgun that accidentally discharged from inside his pocket in a chemistry classroom full of students, police said on Wednesday.

I expect it will be years before the damage done by this accident will fade away.

Don’t be stupid and ruin things for everyone. Use a quality holster whenever and wherever you carry a handgun.

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26 thoughts on “He shot all of us in the foot

  1. I think a restaurant or other business could properly indicate its support for the 2A while still discouraging this kind of dumbassery or showboating with a sign indicating “Holstered Firearms OK”. Open carry, concealed carry… fine, as long as its in an actual holster.

  2. I read this too, the first thing my wife said when she too read this was, “why didn’t he have a holster ?” On the flip side on FB, a local WSU proff (he supports 594 btw too) said that it’s too bad Idaho is wasted on Idahoans… Yep the damage is done!

  3. HOW does the HAPPEN? Wouldn’t the piece need to be cocked and unlocked? What was he carrying? Aren’t most “pocket” pistols DAO nowadays?

    The Beretta Tomcat is DA, and so it can be carried cocked and locked. If the safety gets flicked off, which can happen fairly easily in the pocket, then it’s ready to pop if something gets to the trigger. I always carried mine hammer down, loaded chamber, safety on, in a holster, so to take a shot all you had to do was pull it out, flick off the safety as you bring it to bear, and fire DA for the first shot (“firecocking”, as Cooper put it).

    I suppose we should avoid wondering aloud whether this was intentional, so as to galvanize the anti-gun sentiment on campus and he simply did it wrong, hitting himself in the foot. The timing of the event is what strikes me. I guess you’d have to know the guy and his history, whether he’s a recent “convert” or what.

  4. Unless the guy has a history of pro-gun rights activism, this is so “perfectly stupid” I think it’s a plant, a guy willing to literally “take one for the team” to make pro-gun-rights people look bad.
    The mind boggles, no matter which way things go.

  5. So now the true reason that universities fight tooth and nail against carrying on campus becomes clear. They have no fear of the students, it’s the drooling idiot faculty and staff they worry about.

    • They have no fear of the students, it’s the drooling idiot faculty and staff they worry about.

      That actually wouldn’t be very surprising to anyone who realizes exactly how vicious and downright nasty faculty politics can get. Tenure and research grant fights would make Machiavelli proud.

  6. I’ve been reminding people of how different classes of gun owners are treated when accidents happen. Four years ago, Bannock Count Sheriff Lorin Nielsen shot himself in the hand. At the time, he said “You know, I’ve handled guns all my adult life. I put one on every day and even the days I’m not on duty, I usually have one on me. Mistakes can happen.”

    There weren’t any demands that the legislature disarm sheriffs and their deputies. The sheriff made a few jokes (“I shot the sheriff but I did not shoot the deputy”), the state police quickly absolved him of any wrongdoing (what a surprise) and the story quickly disappeared. Nothing to see here, move along.

    And in an ironic twist, the sheriff who shot himself in the hand is the one who issued the enhanced permit to the professor who shot himself in the foot.

    It’s unlikely that this was a plant. ISU President Vailas seems eager to make this story disappear. “Vailas said Wednesday that the past is the past and ISU is in compliance with the new law and the incident Tuesday was an unfortunate accident.”

    That’s probably because this wasn’t supposed to happen. It was the immature students who would shoot a professor over a bad grade or take target practice on campus after the bars close. They told us that professors took safety seriously and that they should be the ones to decide how to keep students safe in the classroom.

    But one story in the Idaho State Journal illustrates why the “educators” have been adamant about keeping guns off campus. “Taylor Hansen of Chubbuck is a freshman at ISU and she said in response to the new law, her parents plan to buy her a gun. ‘I’m a girl and I’m little,” Hansen said. ‘But I’m going to take some safety courses so I don’t shoot myself in the foot.'” The next generation is reflexively anti-gun. And that scares them to death. They don’t want the Taylor Hansens of the world infecting the other students.

    • Huh. Interesting background. Makes sense. Thanks. Perhaps it is extremely ironic, and a good thing the first accident was faculty. It would be quite a twist if that’s how it all works out, on par with M Night Shyamalan directing a Sean Bean movie and having him live.

  7. Meanwhile nearly 100 people die in auto accidents every day and it’s not a political issue, nor do members of the AAA feel the need to defend themselves. Image if the media were to take that on, chronicling the daily carnage and the effects on family and so on. There’s enough material to have 24 hour carnage, pain and suffering reports all year long every year with no repeats and still never cover every incident. They could have people screaming for a ban on the wheel, in no time flat, and there’s no specific, constitutionally protected right to drive.

    • If the opportunity ever presents itself, I am going to make similar comparisons between the wine and beer my leftist brother and his Stalinist wife have in their home and the NRA vis a vis drunk drivers and criminals using guns to rob rape and murder. It will, I predict, strike them as a strange and false comparison, but they will be unable to say why or how, exactly. They take their marching orders from CNN and MSNBC.

      • If your sister-in-law is really a Stalinist, or hard core socialist, you should really encourage her to read The Gulag Archipelago. It shows how things actually work. It’s been slow going for me, but fascinating.
        The fatalistic “you today, me tomorrow” attitude so many of the functionaries had as they processed their fellow citizen is just mind-blowing.

  8. So Reuters, the “so-called” news organization provided the story for Yahoo news. The first two paragraphs qualify as news, but the commentary starts in the third paragraph:
    “The instructor, who was treated and released from a local hospital, possessed a so-called enhanced concealed-carry permit that allowed him to carry a hidden gun …”
    So the enhanced permit is only “so-called” and the concealed gun is “hidden.”
    But wait! There’s more!
    In the next paragraph we learn that it was that dastardly “Republican-led legislature” that passed the new law over the objections of the academic experts.
    The comments are also a hoot. One claims that all Glocks contain a grip safety and another claims that all knowledgeable gunowners know never to chamber a round until you’re ready to shoot.

    • “another claims that all knowledgeable gunowners know never to chamber a round until you’re ready to shoot”

      It’s interesting you bring that up. The program coordinator of the law enforcement program at ISU (also Idaho POST master firearms instructor and Inkom chief of police) teaches the enhanced concealed carry class. He says to do just that: carry a gun with an empty chamber and learn how to rack the slide after drawing the pistol from the holster.

      When asked what to do if the other hand is busy fighting of the attacker, he said there are several simple ways to rack the slide without using two hands.

      The other instructor explained that we had to shoot 98 rounds to qualify, kind of laughed it off, and then said we could shoot them all into the ground for all he cares.

      So maybe the professor got his training in Pocatello. He just forget to keep the chamber empty. He was able to hit the ground though.

        • He said one way was to catch the rear sight on your pant leg or pocket. I should have asked him to demonstrate.

          Fighting off the attacker with one hand, drawing and racking the slide with the other, that’s going to work out well. For the attacker.

          • I trust you did go to a real instructor afterwards, right? And told everyone you know that this person is incompetent, knows nothing about firearms, and will NEVER be qualified to teach firearms?

    • The article is correct in one respect. I don;t chamber a round until I’m ready to shoot.

      Of course, if I’m wearing the weapon, then by definition, I am “ready to shoot”. . . if necessary.

  9. I spent nearly 20 years affiliated with Idaho State University. The things I saw there were more reminiscent of organized crime. I have little trouble believing that this professor did so on purpose at the behest of his masters in the criminal organization that runs ISU. He could have refused, but if he did, they would take rather rash steps to do everything they can to ruin his life and future employment possibilities.

    ISU is actually rather fond of such loyalty tests. Pass the test, you get a big promotion. Fail, and they destroy your life. Around Pocatello, it’s pretty much an open secret.

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