16 Apr 99

Another way of looking at “gun safety” This from a good friend who is a physician:

“Any garden-variety idiot can do surgery WITHOUT complications. The unmistakable mark of the master surgeon is his ability to deal effectively with the complications that are inexorably associated with surgery. No matter how masterful you are, your surgical episodes will include “complications” with depressing regularity, and you’ve got to be fully prepared to deal with them when they rear their ugly heads.

Surgical complications are not always life-threatening. Firearms training “complications” usually are. So, what do you do, as the supervisor of inexperienced individuals handling guns? I’d call ADs a “complication,” wouldn’t you? Thus, one of the “rules” must be, since ADs will happen, guns must be continuously pointed in a safe direction, and students must learn, from the beginning, that this is critically important.

Once again, any garden-variety idiot can handle guns and not have an accident, ninety-nine percent of the time. We must educate students that the remaining one percent is as important as the first ninety-nine. Ask anyone who has had an AD!”

/John