I just heard on the news how yet another individual has shot themselves while "cleaning their gun" Having many eons experience cleaning weapons I fail to see how this happens. Even if you ignored the basic rule of making sure it was unloaded before starting and were just wiping down the outside what would possess someone to point it at their stomach and pull the trigger. Or how would someone be running a cleaning rod down the barrel, hit an obstruction (live round) and pull the trigger to see what's up? Or why would someone be running a cleaning rod down the barrel without the action at least being open? None of this makes sense to me, usually the very act of cleaning requires it to be unloaded first.
I strongly suspect that these people were goofing around, drunk or on drugs trying to duplicate some impossible stunt they saw on TV or the movies and in the process shot themselves, when this happens I tend to think the standard statement to the police is "Oh poor me I was just cleaning it when it went off" instead of " Ahhh.... officer I was smoking dope while practicing quick draw and shot my foot" or "Officer my buddies and I were drinking and I was brandishing it around and fell down and shot my friend" but instead they claim to have been cleaning it. This kind of information gets spread around and makes the dumb public think guns are so unsafe and unpredictable that they will fire for no reason. Who knows maybe it's less paper work for the police to write it up as a cleaning accident. If it wasn't for the Second Amendment I would say some people are too stupid to have guns.
