A Texas grandfather who was about to officiate a wedding in Nebraska errantly shot and wounded his own 12-year-old grandson when he tried to fire a gun in the air to get the attention of guests Saturday, according to authorities.
Odessa, Texas resident Michael Gardner, 62, is facing legal trouble after the Pietta 1860 snub nose revolver went off around 5 p.m. and accidentally struck the young boy in the shoulder at Hillside Events, Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office chief deputy Ben Houchin said during a press conference Monday.
The gun fired a blank round that had black powder in the casing that was glued together, the sheriff’s official said.
Before the attention-catching shot, guests were scattered around the Denton, Nebraska venue because the nuptials started late after someone forgot the wedding rings, Houchin explained.
“When he decided to cock back the hammer of this revolver it slipped and it shot his grandson in the left shoulder, causing an injury,” Houchin said, later adding. “What we believe is the glue injured the child.”
The injury was non-life threatening, though the boy still required hospitalization.
“We do not believe Michael intended to hurt his grandchild, but the act was not very smart,” Houchin said.
Gardner was still slapped with a child abuse charge because of the carelessness and the injury to the youngster, the chief deputy said. He surrendered to authorities Monday.
“It’s just kind of neglectful to take a gun out that has blanks and fire it amongst people,” he said.
Go ahead and block me too.
You’re saying all gun owners have incidents at some point, but that’s just availability bias. You don’t see stories on the news of the millions of gun owners who never have incidents.
I have also taken gun safety classes and never had an incident. My guns live in a safe and are only taken out when it is time to use them for sport, which hasn’t been in over a decade, actually.
No responsibile gun owner would use a gun firing to get the attention of a group, so the “all gun owners are responsible until there’s an incident” argument doesn’t really hold water here. The guy in the story broke several gun safety rules here. Rules that in my 10+ years of gun use I have never broken once.
Edit: not sure why this old post showed up in my feed. Oh well.