Don't ya hate it when this happens?
Texas firearms instructor makes ‘classic mistake’ of shooting himself while teaching kids
Sergeant Heath Vanek — an 11-year veteran with the force, the last five of which he’s served as its firearms instructor — will require at least two months to recover from the surgery to repair the self-inflicted wound on his left hand.
This guy does the training.
He's the one who instills responsibility in the constabulary's gun-wielders. Nonetheless he managed to shoot himself in his hand IN FRONT of his own kids while 'trying' to 'clear the weapon'.
This is the one we hear about so often: "I was trying to clean my gun when it went off. I thought it was unloaded. I was trying to unload it/ I was making sure it was unloaded."
Chief Devlin then added, “[w]e are humans too. We are not infallible. We make mistakes, and when we mess up, we mess up and do our best to correct it and get back to giving the public the best service we can.”
- - - -
There will be an internal investigation into the shooting, but Chief Devlin noted that it occurred while Vanek was off the clock, and that the weapon involved was not his service pistol. Vanek could face actions ranging from counseling to termination, though Chief Devlin doesn’t anticipate the penalty to be that severe.
Hey...stuff happens. We're the ultimate in responsible gun ownership, but, you know, it happens. It is what it is.
And because of a collection of procedural trivia they are thinking this isn't really all that serious.
Nobody died, this time.
Had someone died - like one of this officers own children, would they still be sounding like this?
It is far past time to jack up the consequences on these sorts of failures as the potential consequences are so tragic and avoidable.
This officer should be suspended, drug-tested, and pending a review, re-trained on firearms from the ground up.
At the very minimum.
It is not sufficient to just slide by on good luck.