[uncltodd]

With you, Will.

IMHO, you cannot shoot yourself "cleaning" a handgun or long-gun.

You might be "playing with it" or "messing with it" or just "dicking with it" in front of friends. You might be enebriated or high. Young and stupid, old and stupid.

You might get dead, or maybe a friend.

To me, this falls back on parents, on upbringing.

You wanna handle my handgun/longgun? Fine. I work the action, make sure it is empty, then hand it to you.

I expect you to do what I just did, work the action and make sure it is empty.

This is MANDATORY. Or you just go in the kitchen, drink coffee, and go home.

There are 12-year-old kids that I trust behind me with a loaded 12-Ga.

I have friends in their 50's that I would not trust behind me with a slingshot.

An aside to 4Pipes, a minor's firearm fatality in my neck of the woods is almost always classified as a "gun-cleaning accident."

Thirty years ago I was outraged at such blatant forensic lies, but...

About 10 years ago, a good friend's teenage son was showing off his new scattergun to his buddies, did something stupid, and wound up dead in his upstairs bedroom. High school honour student. His whole life in front of him.

Coroner said, "gun-cleaning accident."

He was dead, you don't get any older than that, Will can relate.

In this instance, the kid was dead, he left a grieving family, and the Deputy Coroner did...

Something I think most of us would do, he signed off on the least painful report the family could receive.

I did not say it was "right," or legal, or proper, I'm saying he did what I would have done.

And then gone home and got drunk on my butt.

UT