First, to be clear, the photo above is NOT from the incident in question … but it is an example of some of the dumb things people have done with firearms during training.
That said … this week in Massachusetts a civilian “observer” was shot by police doing an ad hoc room clearing exercise in an improvised training facility. I have seen many such facilities used over time. I will not in this brief article give my opinion on them, however in this instance such a facility was a contributing factor to a negligent shooting of a non participating observer.
We say that we come into this world, or any high risk endeavor, with an empty Experience Rolodex and a Bucketful of Luck. It is our job to replace whatever Luck we pull out of our Bucket with the requisite Experience that should, til the end of time, sit in our Experiential Rolodex to be used to fend off any future disaster or the necessity to grab another handful of Luck out of the bucket.
The attached story is one such example of a police department in the northeast getting very lucky. The only thing that stopped somebody from getting killed was the location that the bullet that unintentionally struck him hit. I would call that a big old handful of luck.
I am always astounded at how law enforcement agencies “get away” virtually scott free with firearms “accidents” where if anything similar to this happened in the armed civilian community, ESPECIALLY in the northeast, criminal charges against the perpetrator would beat the victim to the hospital and the limited gun rights the person pulling the trigger ever had would be a distant memory.
Anyways … politics aside, here is a cautionary tale of improvised training by people who weren’t very good at it. They shot a person, and they all got lucky it wasn’t worse.
Click the link below for the full story
https://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/08/athol_police_accidential_shoot.html