Apparently, a man in St. Paul, Minnesota, was playing basketball in the gym of his local school on Family Night when his gun ‘went off,’ shooting him in the leg. As those of you who have been following the adventures of Alec Baldwin know, a gun doesn’t just ‘go off’. Someone has to pull the trigger.
It is being reported that the man was ‘carrying the handgun on his body’, but ‘not in a holster’. I’m having trouble imagining how that worked unless it was (1) loose in a pocket or (2) tucked into his waistband, Mexican Carry style. Neither of those seems compatible with being on a basketball court.
In either case, I’m reminded of something that I read once in an article by Roy Huntington, the former editor of American Handgunner. In his many years as a police officer, Huntington never saw a bad guy carrying a gun in a holster.
I’ve always seen that as a handy rule of thumb. And I guess that remains true if we expand the word ‘bad’ to include stupid as well as criminal.
Public Service Announcement: If you want to carry a handgun, please carry it in a holster that covers the trigger. Incidents like this one make us all look bad. The rights you save may be your own. Or, more importantly, mine.