A hunter in Iowa made his bid for a Darwin Award a couple of weeks ago when his loaded gun was shot back at him—by his trusty dog.
Ken Lonneman, a DNR conservation officer, told CBS News that four hunters and two dogs were looking for the game birds when one of the hunters placed a loaded shotgun on the ground.
It went off when one of the dogs stepped on the trigger guard. Lonneman said it's unclear which dog discharged the shot.
Any Second Amendment advocate worth his or her salt will remind you that there are no gun laws that would have prevented this accident—and they would be right. But one interesting thing about guns is that when people have “accidents” with guns, it means someone was shot. The wounded man is fine
"I don't know if we can blame the dog in this case," Lonneman said. "If we're going to blame anyone, I would say the hunters were at fault here" for apparently not activating the gun's safety mechanism before putting it on the ground.
Guns don’t kill people. Dogs with guns kill people.
When you have a country with as many people, guns and dogs as we do, this type of thing is going to happen from time to time. It does happen elsewhere too. For instance, a French hunter had to have his hand amputated in 2012 after his dog jumped on him, setting off his shotgun. A New Zealand man was shot by his dog in 2010. These international cases aren't included in the table above.
But we've got a lot more guns here in America than people in other countries do -- almost half the world's private stock, by some estimates. So it stands to reason that firearm accidents involving dogs will be more common here too. It's not scientific proof of anything, but simply a reminder that guns are an ever-present element of many Americans lives.
That’s from two years ago and since we haven’t done anything but build and buy and circulate more guns since then, it’s a safe bet that this will not change. Of course, the war between dogs with guns and men with guns has been one-sided for many years now: The National explained last year that, on average, American law enforcement kills around 25 dogs every day.