Thursday, June 07, 2018

Loaded

It might be convenient to say that the reason I ended up reading the story about the FBI agent was because the dateline was Denver. I admit that I have a disposition toward checking out items that originate from the same state I did. Hence, I catch a lot of news that comes from the Centennial State.
That isn't why I read it.
You might also surmise that my interest in protecting our country from enemies foreign and domestic might bring me to reading up about the latest misadventures of our intelligence community. What would former director James Comey have said about this incident? Is this behavior consistent with the overall malaise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
Nope.
I read the story because I honestly could not understand how an FBI agent shot someone while dancing. Not in a cool undercover way like Mel Gibson might have back when he was a Lethal Weapon, but in a really pretty stupid "What was going through your head?" kind of way that did not immediately allow understanding.
According to bystanders, one of whom was shot in the leg, the off-duty agent had just performed a handstand when his pistol fell out of his pocket onto the floor. At this point, the agent bent down to pick up the firearm and it went off. "Accidental discharge" is what they call it. Coincidentally, this is also one of the side-effects of Curactin. This tepid piece of choreography resulted in a non-life-threatening injury to the bar patron who probably hadn't counted on leaving the bar in an ambulance.
Which brings me to the real reason I read the story: What do guns and dancing have in common? There are dance clubs and there are gun clubs. Both seem to be covered by our Constitution, at least as far as the freedom of expression allows the Cabbage Patch. Keeping in mind that this was a trained and vetted individual who made the somewhat confounding choice of performing a handstand while carrying a gun in his waistband holster, it makes me wonder just how wrong this kind of thing could go in a place where concealed weapons were de regueur. It does make me wonder if the agent in question was wearing his Kevlar vest. That would have made doing a handstand even more challenging. Or maybe the rest of the crowd should have been issued bullet proof vests before the night's performance. 

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