Officer Accidentally Fires Gun Inside Hazelwood East High School

[RamboLiberal]

ST. LOUIS, MO (KPLR)— An investigation is underway after a St. Louis county school resource officer fires his weapon inside a North County high school.

A letter went home to parents in the Hazelwood school district on Wednesday afternoon. The shot was fired at Hazelwood East high school around 11am.

The Hazelwood school district says the officers weapon accidentally discharged in a security room near the school's front office. The bullet shot through the office wall and into an adjacent office where a nurse and two students were sitting. No one was injured.

St. Louis county police say the officer was cleaning his 40 caliber semi automatic department issued handgun when it happened. Why he was cleaning his gun inside the school during school hours is now part of the investigation.

http://www.fox2now.com/news/kplr-hazelwood-high-school-officer-shoot-051111,0,5358062.story

Put this guy on parking meter duty!

[MineralMan]

1. Fire his ass for not knowing basic safety rules for firearms.

Also fire his ass for endangering the public through negligence and incompetence. Just fire his ass.

That is all.

[petronius]

11. Yep - this does not strike me as a 'do-over' situation

When your job is to keep the school safe and you start blasting holes in the wall instead, it's time for another job.

(Also, at 11 am, shouldn't he have been out patrolling for rabid squirrels or something, and not lounging up in an office?)

[saras]

2. You can't 'accidentally' fire a gun unless you are an infant

You have to put bullets in the gun, turn the safety off, and pull the trigger.

No accident.

Either stupid, malicious, or both.

He was *cleaning the gun* when it went off?!! Too bad he didn't just get a Darwin award.

[AndyTiedye]

4. So You Keep Telling Us, Yet it Sure Seems to Happen a Lot

Googling "accidental shooting cleaning gun" returns 130,000 results

Of course there would be duplication, but that's still
a lot of gunsmoke and a lot of bullets flying around.

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. Can we say "suicides or negligent discharges, not 'accidents'"?

Good. I knew we could!

[AndyTiedye]

8. If they Didn't Shoot on Purpose it is Still an Accident

It may be an accident due to negligence (most accidents are), but it is still an accident.

[Euromutt]

10. True, but the insistence on the term "negligent discharge"...

...is move on gun enthusiasts' part to constantly remind each other that unintentional discharges don't "just happen" and guns don't "just go off" and that therefore, when your firearm discharges unintentionally, it is your own fault. Not the gun's, not its manufacturer's, yours.

[AndyTiedye]

14. I Am Totally In Favor of Gun Owners Acting More Responsibly

And rules like "don't point your gun at something or someone you don't want to shoot" are necessary because
one way or another, sometimes they do go off when the person holding them didn't want them to.

It does seem most remarkable that you have a consumer product in which the safety mechanisms never fail,
even though we have seen them all fail on occasion in every other kind of device ever manufactured, even nuclear
power plants. Yet even the cheapest Saturday Night Special will never discharge accidentally due to a defect.
Is that why they love their guns so much? Every other consumer product we can buy these days is crap, but
guns are prefect. Amazing.

"and I drew my trembly Webley"

Even if we accept the perfection of these particular mass-produced devices, our bodies are less than perfect.
They don't do exactly what we want them to, especially in stressful situations. Training can help, but only
up to a point. You can't train away clumsy, and poor coordination becomes worse with adrenaline.

You can compensate for a bad aim by using a magazine with more bullets, but where do all the bullets that miss go?

[YllwFvr]

17. A lot of those "it went off"

Is from pulling the trigger

[PavePusher]

13. Out of some 300M guns owned by some 80M people...

that is a statistically tiny issue.

Far more vehicle collisions, or "negligent driving impacts", with far more deaths.

Why don't we start at the top of the danger list and work our way down?

[TheWraith]

12. Not all guns have safeties.

That said, the first thing you have to do to clean a gun is empty it. I suspect that in this case, cleaning his gun was an excuse for negligent handling.

[YllwFvr]

16. Well he was on duty so it was loaded

And many firearms carried by officers dont have safeties

[buddysmellgood]

3. Good thing he had training. If not, that gun would have been going off all the time.

[ileus]

5. ND not AD....ND ND ND.........get it right!

[rl6214]

6. I am the only one professional enough to carry a glock 40cal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IZlcbJwfP4

[Tejas]

9. Probably an NRA member

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:


I KEED!

[krispos42]

15. Cleaning his gun while on duty?

Um... yeah. Good idea.


Not.



It seems to me that a cop's gun and reloads should be cleaned, filled, lubricated, etc. when you show up for work!

[one-eyed fat man]

18. Back in the olden days...

Going "on shift" was like Guard Mount in the Army. There was a sergeant who inspected the serviceability of uniform, arms and ammunition.