Gun Show Sootings On Gun Appreciation Day?

Our friends on the left have been almost gleeful this Gun Appreciation Day aggregating shootings at gun shows which, they feel, proves that all this 2nd amendment stuff is a pile of dangerous horse puckey.

According to them, five people were shot at gun shows. Which sounds bad. Gun fire breaking out a gun shows? That sounds nothing like the sort of calm, responsible gun ownership 2nd amendment advocates talk about. The problem, of course, is that if we look at the reality of what happened it wasn’t nearly so serious.

At the gun show in North Carolina, for instance, three people were sprayed with bird shot when a shotgun accidentally went off:

A man identified as Gary Lynn Wilson, 36, of Wilmington, brought the 12-gauge shotgun to the show at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds and was attempting to remove it from its case when the weapon went off shortly after 1 p.m., police said.

Linwood Hester, 50, of Durham, was struck in the left hand by birdshot, according to Joel Keith, police chief with the state Department of Agriculture. The birdshot also struck a woman identified as Janet Hoover, 54, of Benson, and Jake Alderman, a retired sheriff’s deputy from Wake Forest who was working at the event.

At the gun show in Indiana, a man accidentally shoot his friend with his handgun after leaving the gun show, and in Ohio the shooting was also accidental:

And in Ohio, a gun dealer in Medina was checking out a semi-automatic handgun he had bought when he accidentally pulled the trigger, injuring his friend, police said. The gun’s magazine had been removed from the firearm, but one round remained in the chamber, police said.

Now, to be sure, accidental shootings are no laughing matter. But let’s keep these things in context. While accidental shootings do result in about 600 deaths annually, that’s far fewer than the number of people who die from car accidents (about 42,000), poisoning (39,000), falls (25,000), fires (2,700), choking (2,500) and drowning (2,000).

Americans own 50% of all the guns on the face of the earth. That we, despite that, have only 600 or so deaths a year due to accidental shootings is remarkable.