Ten of the 64 guns discovered by TSA agents at airports across the country, during the week of 10/09 through 10/15/15.
Ten of the 64 guns discovered by TSA agents at airports across the country, during the week of 10/09 through 10/15/15.

Sorry I'm late. The gun crowd has been keeping me busier than usual, lately. But I'd like to catch up a little, and I've got my fingers crossed that I can knock out two of these installments and get back up to speed.

The self-inflicted shootings are really racking up the numbers toward the end of the year. It's hunting season now, and I think that magnifies the problem. In fact, five of our GunFAILs were hunting accidents, two of which were fatal. During the week of this installment, it was still early in the season, but we still found 20+ people who accidentally shot themselves. Seems like 23 or so for sure, with another two incidents that are highly suggestive of self-inflicted injury, but where the language of the report is less than 100 percent clear on the question of who pulled the trigger. Or rather, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the gun "suddenly went off," as the saying goes.

In a countdown of other familiar categories, six people were accidentally shot by family members, five people accidentally discharged guns while cleaning them, four people were accidentally shot while sitting in cars (well, one was in a golf cart), three each were accidentally shot while target shooting or had accidental discharges while at work, two were accidentally shot in bars, and just one left a loaded gun behind in a public bathroom.

The week also included two GunFAILs by cops and/or security guards, two movie theater GunFAILs, two GunFAIL shootings by toddlers, and two Salina, Kansas GunFAILs.

One of the hunting accidents this week actually prompted the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department to move to ban hunting for the period during which its personnel are restocking the forests with game birds. Yes, this is a thing which had not yet been done, because Live Free or Die. But apparently, the risk that someone would Die got to be too great when people actually began shooting at pheasants still in the process of being released by Fish and Game biologists, which is in fact something of a risk to the Fish and Game biologists, who are not even in season.

Our title story is that of Cody Denault, the good guy who brought his gun with him into the "gun-free zone" of the Starplex Cinema at the Central Mall in Salina, Kansas, because reasons. Cody is ex-military, you see, so he's trained, and you can trust him ... to make his own tourniquet. At least he was prepared with a sturdy belt, which is amazing in hindsight, given that he didn't bother preparing so much when it came to buying a holster for his pocketed Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm. (The same gun Veronica Rutledge was carrying in her purse when her 2-year-old found it there and killed her with it in a Hayden, Indiana Idaho Walmart last December, by the way.) Anyway, it was a foolish mistake, but Cody wants you to know that it's not an indicator of his skill with guns. He's totally awesome normally. So awesome, in fact, that he felt safe in ignoring the private property owner's posted firearms restrictions, not bothering with a holster, keeping a round chambered, and blindly fidgeting with his gun in his pocket. It's just one of those unavoidable accidents that in so doing he accidentally both disengaged the safety and somehow activated the trigger. There was no real way—other than obeying the law with respect to the weapons prohibition, buying a holster that would have shielded the trigger, or just resisting the urge to finger his weapon in the theater—to have prevented this. But at least he lived the dream and proved the theory: a good guy with a gun finally took out a theater shooter.

(See the original article for the details of 47 recent, nasty gun fails.)