Alternate headline: “Wow! What an idiot!
Michael Gardner, an elected commissioner in Ector County, Texas, was officiating at his nephew’s wedding in Nebraska and had the cool idea of calling the throng of 200 guests gathered at the outdoor ceremony to order by shooting a pistol into the air. Gardner cocked back the hammer of the weapon but it slipped—he had never fired the Pietta 1860 revolver before—and the gun went off prematurely. Worse yet, the blank he thought he was shooting off was home-made (for a borrowed gun he was unfamiliar with, remember) and wasn’t nearly blank enough. As a result, his misfire shot his 12-year-old grandson in the shoulder.
Other than that, the wedding went off without a hitch.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Gardner said he regretted using a homemade blank, since he had never made one before, and also using a gun that didn’t belong to him and that he had never used . Then there was that shooting his grandson thing. He regrets that too. Luckily, the boy is okay.
Gardner was charged with felony child abuse committed negligently and resulting in serious bodily injury. He turned himself in to authorities the day after the wedding and was released on a $10,000 bond. Gardner could face up to three years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both. He says that the shooting has put his political future in jeopardy.
Ya think?
He also said, incredibly, “Accidents happen.” Well, that accident never happens unless some idiot has the brilliant idea of firing a gun to start a wedding.
Stories like this are why the rest of the world thinks Americans are nuts.
Ethics Alarms 
This sounds eerily similar to the circumstances of Alec Baldwin’s accidental killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins: The Pietta replica revolver, pulling back the hammer and letting it slip, the round that was supposed to be harmless but wasn’t.
At the time, I pointed out that the quarter-cock and half-cock sears make it impossible for a dropped hammer to strike the primer unless the trigger is being held down.
And firing a weapon in the air is foolishly negligent. That bullet will eventually come down and could do on a person, causing serious injury or death.
Guns do not need to be fired in the air as part of any celebration.
You’re obviously not a Mexican bandito.
Or Yosemite Sam. Only in my dreams…
All I can say is proper care needs to be taken to shoot up into the air. If you don’t, you might accidentally shoot the invisible man who is supposed to lead you to El Guapo’s hideout.
GREAT HORNY TOADS!!!!
I could defend this situation if a starter pistol was used, and everyone in attendance was expecting the starter pistol. Regardless, I would have recommended a PA system to gather together everyone, instead of the Alec Baldwin signaling system. Regardless, he should have resigned. Someone who thinks that it is acceptable to use a homemade blank in an unfamiliar firearm in any situation outside of an extremely controlled firing range under strict safety rules is not fit to take care of a pet rock, much less be a public official.
I believe he was from Texas and the shooting was in Nebraska. There is no Ector county in Iowa.
Thanks, Jerry. Fixed.
Any firearm safety training whatsoever should have been enough to convince that nitwit not to do that. The rules for safe firearm handling aren’t complicated: My father started indoctrinating my sister and me about them when we were small children. It’s a shame that no one ever taught that guy properly.
Yep:
Rule 1: Assume the gun is loaded. Rule 2: Always refer to Rule 1. jvb
Americans are just slightly less nuts.
Video footage from Amman shows a wedding attendee with an assault rifle firing into the air. He lowered the barrel and squeezes off a round into the groom. He then proceeds to raise it back into the air and continues dancing.
Video is elsewhere, and article downplays the event. https://jordantimes.com/news/local/maan-wedding-turns-tragic-after-groom-killed-celebratory-gunfire%C2%A0
Where can you even start with everything this guy did wrong?
(1) Let’s shoot off the gun to gather everyone together. OK, if this is a theme wedding, maybe. But you need to do some planning with this. The person firing the gun needs to be away from everyone, not flag anyone, and fire a blank into the air.
(2) A homemade blank when he didn’t know how to make a blank. This is just stupid. They sell blanks, buy one. If you have experience doing this, fine. It isn’t that hard. For his application, all he needed to do was put a primer only in the shell. No powder was needed. The problem with a blank is that if you use powder, you have to put in a wad of felt or something to keep the powder in because you aren’t going to load a bullet. USING A WAD OF HOT GLUE IS BEYOND STUPID. That is going to make a projectile that will go up…and come down.
(3) Why was the gun pointed at anyone at all?
(4) Cocking the gun while it is pointed at someone. Why?
(5) Finger inside the trigger guard. Why?
(6) Unfamiliar, borrowed gun. Why? If you don’t have an appropriate gun for this, allow someone who does to do it. You never know the condition of a borrowed gun. The owner may ‘just know’ that the safety doesn’t work (for example).
So, he had to do 6 stupid things without doing 1 nonstupid thing to make this happen.
#7: Not simply using a starter’s pistol. I still don’t get that one. That’s what they’re for. They are cheap. They can’t hurt anyone unless you sick it in your ear.
I assumed the gun in question was a Colt New Army replica and this must be a Western ‘theme wedding’. Now that I look this up, it is a cap-and-ball revolver. That makes this infinitely more stupid. He could have just capped it with no powder or ball to make a ‘bang’. If he wanted a blank to have the big smoke blast from the black powder, those guns are often loaded with the felt wads over the powder already. There was no need to add a blob of hot glue, just extra wads! This is mind-numbingly stupid. It is like if you didn’t know what you were doing, you would still do it better than that.
Oh, that wasn’t a ‘misfire’. That is called a ‘negligent discharge’.