Man accidentally shot child while officiating wedding near Lincoln, deputy says

Child molesters hate you right now

thoughts and prayers

Birth control?

More like birther control

What are you some kind of city boy that buys his blanks at the store?

A homemade cartridge with a conventional bullet replaced with a glue projectile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Lee#Death

In a film shoot prior to the fatal scene, the gun that was used as a prop (a real revolver) was loaded with improperly made dummy rounds, improvised from live cartridges that had the powder charges removed by the special effects crew, so in close-ups the revolver would show normal-looking ammunition. However, the crew neglected to remove the primers from the cartridges, and at some point before the fatal event, one of the rounds had been fired. Although there were no powder charges, the energy from the ignited primer was enough to separate the bullet from the casing and push it part-way into the gun barrel, where it got stuck—a dangerous condition known as a squib load.

During the fatal scene, which called for the revolver to be fired at Lee from a distance of 3.6–4.5 meters (12–15 ft), the dummy cartridges were replaced with blank rounds, which contained a powder charge and the primer, but no solid bullet, allowing the gun to be fired with sound and flash effects without the risk of an actual projectile. However, the gun was not properly checked and cleared before the blank was fired, and the dummy bullet previously lodged in the barrel was then propelled forward by the blank's propellant and shot out the muzzle with almost the same force as if the round were live, striking Lee in the abdomen.[101][102]

So two blanks, one with no powder and the other with no bullet, effectively formed one round of live ammunition. What a truly wild story.

It says they meant to point it upward and it slipped but "not drawing a gun in a crowd" would have been better.

Gun safety rules.

1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction;
2. ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot
3. ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

Every gun is considered loaded until proven otherwise. Every pull of the trigger will cost $10,000, as lawyers become involved, per NRA literature. Hearing damage by firing close to people is another risk.

I miss being able to watch Farscape the first time.

The guy at least had the foresight not to stick a real bullet in there

The next one might not because America's gun laws -- especially in Texas -- are based on voluntarily following good practises.

Whenever something like this happens, pro-gun people flock to the comments to pat themselves on the back by telling everyone that they would never do that with a gun because they have trigger discipline and they treat guns with respect.

But so what? They might never drive drunk but that doesn't mean we can abolish DUI laws.

What laws did this guy break and what is his punishment? Was it illegal to make his own sketchy blanks? Was it illegal to injure an innocent person with a firearm? Was it illegal to have a firearm at a wedding or to brandish it? Is he going to be prevented from owning firearms in the future now that he has proven to be a dumb fuck?

And most importantly, what is the pro-gun community going to do to prevent things like this happening again?

But we know the answer. He probably broke zero laws and will still be able to own all the guns he wants and take them to all the weddings he wants. His punishment will be minor or non-existent. The pro-gun community will do absolutely nothing to address the shortcomings of their laws, they'll just tut about it on the internet.

Republicans value $16 million a year and a voting bloc that will tolerate anything over people's lives. The gun lobby values profits over people's lives.

But the pro-gun community sells people out for convenience.

And the rest of the world is right.

Banjo music starts playing

I live in Texas which is now permitless carry.

I still have a license to carry because I fucking should have one.

Sorta, yep! It happened in two parts - for one scene the gun had homemade cartridges with primer and and an actual bullet, but no gunpowder, so that the ammo looked real in close-ups of the gun. At some point that round was fired and the primer was enough to discharge the bullet, which lodged itself in the barrel.

Then, later on in another scene, they loaded the same gun with blanks full of powder and primer but no bullet, so when fired they'd get the usual bang and flash. Except, since there was a bullet lodged in the barrel, the blank round still had enough force to propel the bullet out the rest of the way and into Brandon Lee.

It happened in such a freaky way that it feels like there must be more to it, but just as likely human stupidity and bad luck.

Sort of. He was actually killed by a bullet that had lodged in the barrel from a previous issue with the weapon. The blank just fired the bullet that was lodged in the barrel.

People have killed themselves with blanks though, usually screwing around pretending to commit suicide and then accidentally doing it. I remember reading about an actor that put pistol loaded with blanks up to his head and pulled the trigger. There's enough gas force coming out the end to put a hole in you at that range.

If this idiot didn't have a gun in this situation, no one would have gotten shot.

Generally when people say or suggest that, "Guns are a problem," they don't mean the literal inanimate objects are the sole issue; it's a shorthand way to refer to many things including access to firearms, lack of background checks, proper training, lobbying, and much more.

Which is why nobody is demanding guns are thrown in jail, they're demanding laws that make even a token effort to minimise the risk to the public.

But the pro-gun community responds with vapid "guns don't kill people, people kill people" talking points, fed to them by a gun lobby that doesn't care what kills people, as long as the profits keep soaring.

Legal gun owners kill people, with guns.

They make up 80% of mass shooters but when you ask the pro-gun community what they're going to change to stop legal gun owners doing mass shootings, they proudly boast "nothing" -- they're content to keep selling guns to blatantly dangerous people and letting people die.

Children are killing themselves in record numbers using their father's legally owned guns but when you ask the pro-gun community what they're going to do about poorly secured firearms, they proudly boast "nothing" -- they want to keep guns in gloveboxes and bedsides lest they miss their chance at a "get out of murder free" and they don't care if criminals and kids get their hands on them.

And of course, every week there's a new story about a legal gun owner doing something stupid with a gun but when you ask the gun community what they're going to do about stupid people with guns, once again they proudly boast "nothing". They'll double over to suck their own dicks because it wasn't them but they won't budge an inch to ensure "responsible gun owners" are actually responsible.

So fuck em and their second amendment. They've been insisting they had all the answers for 20 years and they've fixed exactly nothing, so I've got no idea why they're welcome in the conversation at all, let alone dictating when it can happen and what can be discussed.

If they throw a tantrum about their rights, fuck em still. Statistically they've repeatedly voted to trample the rights of others and even if they haven't, their guns did nothing to stop it happening, despite what we were promised.

If they want to follow through on their threats to become domestic terrorists, fuck em even harder. It shows they were never as far from firing on innocent people as they claimed and if they want to die in a hail of bullets, at least it's them dying for their guns for once.

This person should never be allowed a firearm again right? He has abused our rights and therefor can not be trusted with the responsibility. Yet still those “rights shall not be infringed” folk will fight for him to carry whatever he wants.

Everyone is stupid though, or will be. Humans are fragile and will deteriorate to the point of loss of control or sense of reality. It is the future we all share. Most of us will not die with our dignity intact.

How you going to let such dumb, fragile, emotional, unstable animals carry killing machines just whenever? Of course this is what happened.

If he had a spoon instead of a gun, would the kid still have been shot?

Propose a solution then. How do we stop this from happening again? We cannot simply say "ah well this is the price of gun ownership" and do nothing.

It's absolutely unacceptable, and a growing number of Americans, especially young people, do not want this to continue.

Gun proponents thus have a choice. Find a way for this to not be the price of gun ownership, or see gun ownership go away. If you do nothing, the extreme solutions to confiscate guns and the like are more likely to happen.

Ffs so you know how pedantic you sound right now? Yes technically a gun just sitting somewhere locked and unloaded is usually not the issue the problem is they are freaken everywhere. There is probably enough rounds of ammo in civilian hands in the US to literally wipe out humanity. When you have this much of something even if an absurdly small percentage is misused it means it will happen every day.

So we need to decide who gets guns then, right? Some kind of control?

Picture if he didn’t have a gun how this situation would have went.

The problem is that an idiot with no brain cells was allowed to have a gun.

Americans have an estimated 120 guns per 100 citizens, almost double that of the country with the second highest amount of firearms per capita.

Tell me again how that isn't a problem.

Track and field race officials.

But they use special starter pistols.

I'd wager he saw it in a movie and prepared a special blank, waiting for exactly the right moment to get their attention.

lol

Right, there are. None of those countries merit emulation. On the contrary, they're blueprints for what not to do, so...

Yeah, and those folks aren't firing blanks.

Yes and that makes it better somehow?

Even then this is not acceptable. And wasn't there the rule that you never point a firearm at people you don't intend to shoot, even when the weapon is not loaded?

Why do Americans blatantly ignore the reasons that repeatedly (daily!) show that not every yokel should have access to firearms in the first place?

Even a properly made blank can cause serious injury.

Why hasn't anyone argued that guns like this are not arms, but decorations and props which don't deserve amendment protection?

Could be both, but yeah, you're not wrong.

With a properly functioning blank, there shouldn't be any projectile coming out of the muzzle. This guy made his own with gunpowder and glue, so apparently there was some kind of glue blob that was a projectile.

Technically Brandon Lee was killed by a bullet. They removed the powder but left the bullet (for appearance sake since it was a revolver and would be noticeable). Since there was no powder the bullet didn't fire out of the gun when the trigger was pulled but the primer (which wasn't removed) igniting created enough force to put the bullet in the barrel where it got jammed.

No one noticed the jammed bullet, and when they next fired it with blanks this time (powder charge, no bullets) the powder was now forceful enough to fire the bullet out of the gun.

Essentially they accidentally made a revolver into a breach loaded firearm.

Ask Brandon Lee Jon-Erik Hexum.

His death was a squib load, which is where a bullet is lodged in the barrel, not in the casing. The blast from the blank projected the bullet out of the barrel.

But yes, just the blast can kill too.