Saturday, October 13, 2012

Accidental Shooting of West Virginia Man by Himself - He's Dead

Local news reports
David J. Holiday Jr., 53, was pronounced dead after the incident that investigators are describing as a tragic accident.

Sgt. Seth Place of the Morgan County Sheriff's Department said that Morgan County 911 received the call reporting the accidental shooting at 7:05 p.m. Wednesday night.

The accident occurred at Holiday's residence, located on Amoretta Lane off Highland Ridge Road in Morgan County. Place said it is believed that Holiday, described as a gun enthusiast, had invited some friends over to his residence for the purpose of either selling or giving away some firearms.

Place said it is believed the friends arrived sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Wednesday. While Holiday was showing the pistols to his friends, witnesses told police that he stated he always keeps the firearms in his house unloaded.

According to Place, a witness said at one point Holiday picked up one of the pistols and raised it just above his head.

At that point the gun, which Holiday believed to be unloaded, discharged and he suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
He was a military veteran, a gun enthusiast and still he shot himself in the head unintentionally.If someone who knew what he was doing around guns could do something so stupid, imagine all the less experienced gun owners out there.

Guns are dangerous.  Gun owners, as a whole, are not as safe as the gun-rights crowd keep saying they are.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.


  1. "Gun owners, as a whole, are not as safe as the gun-rights crowd keep saying they are."

    According to the Centers for Disease Control, citizens who own firearms are incredibly safe. In recent years about 600 people per year die from unintentional gunshot wounds. Since about 80 million people own firearms, that is an exceedingly small number. Assuming that armed citizens (rather than criminals, law enforcement officers, or military personnel) are responsible for all 600 unintentional deaths, that means only 0.00075% of armed citizens unintentionally killed someone. That accident rate is lower than any other accidental cause of death.

    1. You can't divide by every single person who owns a gun. You might as well divide by all the stars on the galaxy.

      Most of the gun owners agree with the reasonable suggestions of the gun control crowd. Many of them have a gun somewhere but never practice with it or clean it.

      You guys really have to stop claiming all 80 million as your own.

    2. He’s got a point, Greg. Let’s call it 0.0015% to be safe.

    3. That wasn't my comment, but I'll go with it, more or less. Mikeb, I can divide by the number of gun owners. That's the relevant number. What do stars in the galaxy have to do with gun safety? You said that gun owners aren't as safe as we claim. If I divide the number of accidents by the number of owners, that establishes the accident rate.

      Are you really that unfamiliar with the methods for analyzing data?

    4. Good one, TS. That got a laugh out of me.

  2. Your problem is that you see training as infallible. Wherever it fails, it means there wasn’t enough of it- including police training, military training, FBI training, even Secret Service trainings. The Secret Service are some of the most trained, and screened, people on the planet, yet they are still capable of have a brain fart and leaving a gun in the bathroom. Is your answer really that they should have been able to screen him out? Or that more training would have prevented that?

    Look, training is a good thing, but it is not a catch-all. You have to follow the training in order for it to work, and unless you have a way to override the free will of people there will be some mess ups. But rather than accepting that training is infallible, you say “if this can happen, imagine how stupid the untrained are”. It doesn’t take any training to know not to put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, Mike.

    MikeB: “Most of the gun owners agree with the reasonable suggestions of the gun control crowd.”

    And what’s with the implication that people who agree with you can’t have accidents? Maybe instead of mandatory training, you should require mandatory agreement to cut down on accidents.

    1. The point that Mikeb continually fails to get is that if most American gun owners want the kinds of control that he advocates, they'd vote in politicians who would enact those laws.

    2. That's not exactly right, Greg. It's not that simple. The lobbying interests far outweigh the simple desires of your average joe.

    3. Mikeb, that makes no sense. Lobbyists have no more votes than anyone else. They give lots of money to those who support their causes, but it's still the responsibility of each voter to be informed and to make an individual choice. In that respect, we get the government that we deserve. But my point remains. If the people wanted gun control, they would have it.