Darwin Award

1. Always assume it's loaded.

2. Don't point it any anything you don't intend to kill.

That gun didn't kill anyone; his own stupidity did.

Yeah, this was user error: GIGO. It's not the machine.

"Lewis County" is all you need to know about this story.

Gun don't kill people, but gun safes on the other hand....

Some people are just to stupid to live.

You people! Clearly this was a totally unpredictable freak accident that no one could have foreseen.
Surely you’ve all carried bundles of loaded rifles around like a stacks of kindling wood.

Too bad he wasn't near any Viagra-using pit bulls when he did that ...

@9 - actually, yes, I have.

Damn, you sloggers are a bunch of heartless fools. He was a novice and no idea of what could go wrong. How many of you have been in a similar situation? I'm, not speaking guns - but how about clearing out a shed and fiding a rattlesnake that bites you? It's a sad story. He should have consulted a professional, but how often do WE always do that?

Guns don't kill people; people WITH guns kill people - sometimes themselves.

Or their kids blow off their feet.

@12 heartless maybe, but anyone who buys guns and doesn't respect the fact that there can be FATAL results for not following the most basic safety procedures is a tragic accident waiting to happen. At least this time, it was the owner that paid the price for carelessness and not his kid or neighbor.

Why don't firearms include anything constituting a nuclear arsenal? They don't kill people, either.

A gun is just a tool. It's the bullets that kill people.

Maybe we should tax bullets the way we tax cigarettes?

Let's see... A pack a day for about 20 years would have a reasonable chance of injuring or killing you. At $4/pack in combined federal, state and local taxes... That's $29,200.

And... one bullet stands a reasonable chance of injuring or killing someone. Hmm... that's a lot of money. Maybe we could do it on a deposit basis? That is, if you submit an affidavit from the range master, along with the spent slug from the target, you could get your deposit back? Or, from the game warden with a copy of your hunting license...

Nope, @17, that'll never work. It's too easy to make your own ammo.

@18, I'd love to see you make your own center-fire primer.

Nah, why make them when you can buy them so inexpensively? I've literally got thousands of them here.

@20, Being as those are the hardest to make at home, those are the key component that would have to be regulated/taxed the same as whole bullets. Kind of like a receiver compared to a rifle.

Anyway, just a pipe dream.

I think the important question we need to be asking is this: just what did that guy do to piss that rifle off so much? Was there... inappropriate touching, maybe?