Local news reports
A Round Rock police
sergeant is recovering after police say he accidentally shot himself in
the foot at a training session this week.
It happened around 1:45 Tuesday afternoon, at the Williamson County fire range.
Sergeant Sean Johnson was taking part in a glock instructor workshop
with about 40 people, when he shot himself in the right foot.
He was taken to Seton Williamson in Round Rock, and discharged later that night.
Johnson has been with the department since 2006.
Round Rock police are still investigating the incident.
What the hell is there to investigate? You shoot yourself in the foot, you lose the job and your gun rights.
It's that simple.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.
You investigate to see what went wrong to help prevent future incidents.
ReplyDeleteWhy are you so reluctant to hold people accountable for their actions?
DeleteWhere the hell did I say that?
DeleteWe do. We just see a different kind of response as being appropriate and choose not to be as vindictive as you, Mikeb.
DeleteWell, TS, it's inferred in your emphasis on preventing future accidents. My emphasis is in removing the guns from people who fuck up with them.
DeleteI wasn't talking about just this guy's future, but rather learning from on the Job accidents in general. Your obsession with disarmament has caused you to not see the bigger picture.
Delete+1 to what TS said. E.g. Was he using a SERPA holster? That needs to be checked into and the dept. may want to reevaluate if a different type of retention holster would be better to use, or if the risks of the SERPA are worth the dangers.
ReplyDeleteAs for your "Simple" solution, those of us who are rational human beings realize that accidents happen, and we want to evaluate how they happen so that we can try to prevent them. We want to make sure this guy gets good treatment for his foot and try to make sure that neither he, nor any other officers or other citizens, have such accidents again.
You, on the other hand, want to take his career away in a bad job market and take away some of his Constitutional rights based on an accident--one that may have been contributed to by the department's choice of holster. In case there's any confusion, this makes you king of the douches.
These are not accidents. These are acts of gross negligence, always involving the breaking of two or more of the Four Rules.
DeleteWhy don't you want to hold people with guns to a high standard? You break the rules, you lose the guns.
The SERPA issue I brought up has been beat over and over on the Internet, but in case you haven't seen or looked at the discussions, the holsters are designed with a button that must be pressed on the side of the holster to allow the gun to be drawn. The idea is to keep a criminal from taking a gun from a cop or other person carrying in such a holster.
DeleteUsually the button is placed so that the finger lands along the slide of the gun, but one needs to practice drawing MANY times to make sure that this is muscle memory. There are lots of situations where people have accidentally shot themselves in the leg or foot with these holsters because their finger was lined up wrong and dropped into the trigger guard on the draw stroke--hence why many of us prefer not to use such holsters.
That may or may not have been what happened in this case.
REGARDLESS--I'll repeat that you're a supreme jackass for automatically wanting to take the guy's job and rights away. Thank God you're a two bit lawyer who fled to a crappy country in even worse financial straits rather than someone whose proclivities could actually affect people's rights.
Why don't I want to hold people to a high standard? I do want to. If the cause damage, even through a true accident--say a freak ricochet off the backstop that hits someone in the leg--I think they should pay for all damages to that person and have to work off the debt if necessary.
However, I'm not going to try to wreck their life by taking their job or their Constitutional rights away based on an accident, or even on simple or gross negligence.
Why? Because it's natural right, enshrined in the Constitution, and it should not be lost except with a truly good reason and sufficient due process.
Both the reason and the due process should be strong enough to survive a strict scrutiny test like is given to the 1st Amendment. Now I know that you and Laci both have trouble making coherent and valid legal arguments, but you may remember, from all those 1st Amendment cases you read in Law School, that this is a pretty strict test and hard to slip something past the Court.
That's a really convenient philosophy you've got there. It allows you a wide berth to fuck up with your guns.
DeleteI say if you can't follow the 4 Rules of Gun Safety you don't deserve to have guns.
But according to Goldilocks, Jeff Cooper, the author of those four rules, was a racist pig. He certainly was a conservative white guy. But if you'd like to adopt Cooper's views on guns as a whole, that would be a large measure of progress on your part.
DeleteDon't you imagine that his reputation as the guy who shot himself in the foot will be a lesson to him--every time he walks into the break room, for example?
ReplyDeleteBut here's the leftist ideal: His right is taken away; he loses his job, so he has to go on disability and be dependent on the state to live.
There's this concept that underlies effective quality improvement. It's the idea that most (meaning the vast and overwhelming majority) of people want to do a good job and have no intention of screwing up. Proceeding from this belief is the idea that in most instances, a failure/accident/less than ideal outcome is the result of people not having what they need to succeed. As a result, part of investigating an event should always include an examination of the processes involved in the event.
DeleteNow, in the case of firearms, there are a few things I can think of, immediately, that are necessary.
1)Proper initial training
2)Frequent and regular ongoing training and practice
3)Gear that is in good working order and designed for the job the individual is required to do
If we assume the first of these was present in this case (perhaps a reasonable assumption, but not necessarily so) then we are left with the last two.
Someone has already touched on the last one, so I'll touch on the second. I keep hearing from my friends in law enforcement that many departments are not providing or requiring training more than 2 times per year. That is insufficient. If that is the case here, and I don't know if it is, the department needs to provide more training.
None of this should be taken as an excuse of negligence, if any was present. Rather, it shows that many times the answer is not always the quick and easy one we may want.
Greg, Why would Mike ever want this guy on disability? I'm guessing he'd view that as putting the cost of this guy's accident on the public. Mike would probably prefer he starve if he's going to be consistent with his hatred of gun owners.
DeleteYou think there's nothing in between continuing to be a cop and starving?
DeleteYou haven't tried to find a job lately, have you, Mikeb?
DeleteI spent several years working in the OR. Generally speaking all surgical patients are required to give informed consent before surgery can proceed. Part of true informed consent is letting patients know that even if everything is done properly throughout the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative process, the surgery still carries risks. Among those are bleeding, infection, loss of function of one sort or the other, and death.
ReplyDeleteWhile this event may well have been the result of negligence, the fact is, it could have been a true accident. Hopefully, the investigation will determine the facts.
And Greg is right. When you are the one to whom "that thing" happened (that thing is defined by your job and group), your colleagues generally do a good job of reminding you...for years.
Mike, are you willing for a person who engages in hate speech that leads to violence or suicide to lose his or her right to free speech? Shall people who meet in a coffee shop or private home for the purpose of planning a violent crime lose their right to peaceably assemble? Or let's say violence as a result of the actions of these people in both examples was not planned or intended. Let's say it was an unfortunate and undesired result. Shall their actions lead to the loss of these rights?
In some cases yes. But we're talking about guns and holding gun owners responsible for their actions. Why do you resist it so?
DeleteMikeb, I resist you and all of your ilk because of your overall agenda, because of your vindictiveness against gun owners, and because you refuse to address things rationally.
DeleteWhat I resist, Mike, is not responsibility. I resist your desire to rush to strip a person of his or her rights.
DeleteSo, after a proper investigation, if the person had violated the safety rules, you agree with their losing their gun rights?
DeleteIf the event results in a felony conviction, sure. With all due respect to the late Jeff Cooper, his rules of gun safety do not have the force of law nor am I convinced they should.
DeleteI believe they should because I believe in holding people responsible for their actions.
DeleteShall we have the recognized rules of sterile technique in the OR have the weight of law, the violation of which leads to charges? What about those pertaining to sponge and instrument counts? Tell me, mike, which recognized safety rules, which when not followed can lead to injury or death, should have the force of law? Some? All? The ones you happen to support?
DeleteJeff Cooper's.
DeleteInteresting. I would think something that occurred 500,000-750,000 times per year (surgical site infections) would elicit a strong response from those who say the incidence of occurrence makes it reasonable to make the violation of established safety rules a crime.
Delete