About 20 elderly people sat down for an early Thanksgiving meal Thursday at a church in East Tennessee, unaware that the pleasant afternoon would take a grim turn.
During their meal, they decided to discuss gun safety in light of recent mass shootings — an idea that came to them after a neighboring county’s sheriff’s department chose to hold similar seminars at its local churches, said Tellico Plains Police Chief Russ Parks.
“Well, I’ve got my gun on me,” an 81-year-old member of First United Methodist Church in Tellico Plains said, according to Parks, whose department investigated the incident. He pulled out his holster, which held a .38-caliber Ruger handgun. He removed the magazine, cleared the chamber and showed the gun to the other parishioners. They talked about how to safely bring guns to church — and how sad it was that so many people nationwide had been killed in recent mass shootings. Earlier this month, a gunman killed 26 people when he opened fire with an assault-style gun during Sunday service at a small Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Tex.
The 81-year-old man put the magazine back into the gun and put the gun back in the holster, Parks said. Later, while people were cleaning up, a church member who had missed the demonstration asked to see the weapon.
Just as he was about to show it to the church member, the man accidentally pulled the trigger without realizing the gun was loaded.
A bullet fired across the palm of the 81-year-old’s hand and toward his 80-year-old wife, who was sitting in a wheelchair next to him. It ripped through her lower left abdomen, out the right side of her abdomen, into her right forearm and out the backside of her forearm. The bullet then struck the wall and ricocheted, landing under the wife’s wheelchair, Parks said.
This of course is the kind of thing that I have predicted would happen if more people start carrying guns into churches, theaters, malls, and public schools.
But that does not make me any more intelligent than the guy who predicts that if you stand in the rain you are likely to get wet.
It is just common sense.
More guns, simply means more shootings.
People seem to think that guns work like crucifixes do in the movies to ward off vampires, in that simply wearing one keeps you safe from attack.
But that is not the case. If you have a gun on your person you are endangering everybody in your vicinity.
However, this being Texas, I doubt that is the lesson these people will learn from this.
I imagine that next you will see this man's wife strapped with a holster so that she can return fire if her husband "accidentally" shoots at her again.
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