Man shoots himself in concealed carry class

Just a little blurb in the local news today:

A 52-year-old man is recovering at a Lincoln hospital Sunday night after accidentally shooting himself in the leg.

It happened at Big Shots Indoor Shooting Range shortly after 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

Lincoln Police said the 52-year-old was taking a concealed carry class, when he went to put the .22 caliber gun in a holster on his hip and it went off.

Hey, accidents happen. But that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? In a nation swamped with guns, obsessed with guns, more accidents happen all the time. And this guy apparently wants to carry his gun with him everywhere he goes!

Why? Does he think he's living in a Mad Max movie? Does he really think he needs a gun at hand, every minute of the day, to defend himself from... what? A 'bad guy with a gun'? ("The only thing which can stop a bad guy with a gun is the police common sense gun laws mental health screening early childhood education a good guy with a gun.") Or does he just want to feel macho?

Luckily, he only shot himself, not his own kid or someone else's kid. And he needs to have a gun at hand, in case he wants to shoot some random guy walking down the sidewalk looking black suspicious. Or in case he suddenly gets angry at his wife, or coworker, or someone he encounters in a bar, or even himself.

I don't know what his reasons are. Maybe it's just a political statement. But it's still likely to be a result of hysteria and fear, hyped by the cynical for profit and political power.

And this random shooting is so common in Nebraska - in all of America - that it gets no more than a brief mention in the local news. Other outlets kept buried the fact that this happened in a concealed carry class. The headline - "Man Recovering After Accidental Shooting" - could be from any day, anywhere in America. Ho-hum. Even a "Dog Bites Man" article would be far more unusual than that!

Of course, when some lunatic takes these readily-available guns - no, we just can't prohibit assault weapons or machine pistols designed solely for mass murder, can we? - and kills a whole bunch of children, then that gets the headlines. Briefly. We have a very short attention span here in America, and if it's not your own kid, who cares, right?