Dog fires rifle and kills man...
I'm not sure how the 2nd amendment plays out for dogs, but owner negligence definitely comes to mind. Two men on a weekend hunting trip in Kansas when the fatality occurred.Joseph Austin Smith was the passenger in a truck. in the backseat was the driver's rifle, hunting gear and his dog. The dog steps on the rifle and it discharges striking Smith in the back.
Sheriff's arrived, start CPR but it was too late. Smith died at the scene.
I read 2 stories about this tragedy, but neither gave the name of the driver. Probably a good thing as I'd wager when the gun safety advocates catch hold of this story, he'll be wishing he was dead.
All sorts of reasons why, but the owner/driver didn't follow the most basic rule of owning a gun.
Dog fires rifle and kills man. While it may sound funny... it's far from it.
Comments (17)
Do you think the dog was jealous because he didn't get to sit in the front?
1. how safety could be off
2. how a gun on the back seat could be pointing forward at a sufficient angle
The owner of the truck was in the driver's seat.
His friend Joseph Austin Smith was in the front passenger seat.
The owners dog was in the back seat.
The hunting gear was in the back seat.
The gun (a rifle) was in the back seat.
How everything was stacked in the back seat wasn't described in the story, nor was it known if the vehicle was parked or moving when the gun went off.
The dog stepped on the gun, it discharges and the bullet hits Smith.
Smith was 32, a plumber and also musician.
1. how safety could be off
2. how a gun on the back seat could be pointing forward at a sufficient angle
Anyway the most convenient solution is a technology that makes it much harder to fire a gun without meaning to. There must be something they can do.
It's what Gavin de Becker would call satellite information.
If the only current evidence is the testimony of the surviving witness, establishing that the vehicle was moving at the time corroborates the driver's story. He couldn't drive and shoot the passenger from the back seat at the same time.
I imagine there'll be a whole load of skid mark, foot print and other forensic investigation going on.
And more than this we seem to believe things don't happen by accident they can only happen by design. It's modern convenience that has us believe that nothing happens by accident but at the same time the modern world is massive, massive and chaotic which is to say full of surprises. Where your bubble ends it meets something completely different, completely random I would actually define the modern world by the contrast between the bubble and the random. Everything is in on your terms up to a certain distance away from you, and then suddenly not at all on your terms things happen that have never happened before in the whole of human history. Nothing can happen by accident because of the bubble, but then so much does happen by accident because of the sheer size and complexity of the world. The bubble dominates our psychology, narcissism dominates our psychology, but actually so much has never been less on our terms when you really think about them. Take the internet. Echo chambers would have you believe everything happens by design and not at all by accident, but in the bigger picture we know that it doesn't we know that it's like a box of chocolates. Outside of the echo chambers the internet is synonymous with life itself, it's something which emphasizes the fact that anything could happen.
I just picked up on the satellite information and it's implications.
If the driver's story checks out, they may not have any suspicion and list it as such.
Who owned the rifle? How can you position a long gun in a backseat of a pickup truck that has it's business end pointing at someone in the front seat.
I can see how a dog can trip a trigger on a long gun if the rifle is placed across the floor or seat of the vehicle.
a ricochet is unlikely if they used the ballistic tipped rounds seen in one of the articles photos. If the rifle as a 22 cal a ricochet is possible.
How do we know if someone else wasn't in the backseat when the rifle was discharged?
Did the bullet leave the vehicle?
I Googled to see if there was a followup to the original story, but found nothing.
Speculating, if the rifle was propped up on the floor behind the passenger... you know the rest.
I Googled to see if there was a followup to the original story, but found nothing.
Speculating, if the rifle was propped up on the floor behind the passenger... you know the rest.
Most people would put the long rifle unloaded in a zipped up soft case or in a closed hard case while in a moving vehicle )it it’s not secured in a rack.)
Anyway the most convenient solution is a technology that makes it much harder to fire a gun without meaning to. There must be something they can do.
1. Secure your weapon. Every time.
2. Never - NEVER transport a loaded weapon.
2 simple things he could have done but didn't.
tragic result.
my rifles are ALL empty and lock in hard cases when being transported.
i hate to say it, but this article is the stuff criminal investigations are made of.