There are hundreds of millions of gun owners in this country, and not one of them will have an accident today. The only misuse of guns comes in environments where there are drugs, alcohol, bad parents, and undisciplined children. Period. – Ted Nugent
Dogs can be known to get into trouble, but one in Oklahoma recently went a bit too far.
Startled puppy shoots owner
Handguns and puppies don’t go together. That should be pretty apparent.
If it wasn’t, it should be now to a 44-year-old woman who was accidentally shot by a dog while she and a man she is a caretaker for were stopped in their vehicle for a train to pass in Enid, Okla., last week.
The woman was in the passenger seat when the 7-month-old puppy of the driver, 79, became spooked by the train and jumped from the back seat onto a folding center console, causing a .22 caliber handgun under the console to fire. Cloth from the seat covers also could have gotten into the trigger well of the gun, causing it to discharge, police said.
The dog is a yellow Lab named Molly, and at 7 months old is bigger than a typical puppy is. The woman was hit in the left thigh, police said. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she was doing fine after surgery, Oklahoma TV station KFOR reported.
“This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a dog shooting a person,” Sgt. Robert Norton of the Enid police department told another TV station, KOCO.
The vehicle’s driver took off his belt and used it as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding while talking to a 911 dispatcher.
Audio of the call shows the man calming asking for help, despite some swearing by the distraught victim.
Being startled and shooting a gun isn’t limited to dogs.
The Washington Post reports that last week a man, 61, in Gulf Breeze, Fla., was startled by a man jumping out of the bushes for a birthday surprise, and he shot the person dead.
The bullet hit the man “straight in the heart,” a sheriff’s deputy said, and he died instantly. The victim was the shooter’s son-in-law, who flew with his wife to Florida for a surprise birthday visit.
The father-in-law, who was turning 62, was first startled by someone banging on his back door at around 11:30 p.m. He took a gun outside to see what was happening and saw someone jump out of the bushes.
This was two hours after another relative pounded on his front door and they had an argument, which police said could have contributed to the later shooting.
Police said they didn’t plan on filing charges, calling the shooting a “tragic accident.”