Peck reports: "If the gun advocates behind this year's inaugural Gun Appreciation Day had hoped to use the day's festivities to build support for their anti-regulation platform, they are going to have to wait another year."

Lisa Deleon of Las Vegas examines a shotgun at the Sarsilmaz booth at the National Shooting Sports Foundation's 35th annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show at the Sands Expo and Convention Center January 16, 2013 in Las Vegas. (photo: David Becker/UPI)

5 People Shot at 3 Different Gun Shows on Gun Appreciation Day

By Adam Peck, ThinkProgress

22 January 13

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f the gun advocates behind this year's inaugural Gun Appreciation Day had hoped to use the day's festivities to build support for their anti-regulation platform, they are going to have to wait another year.

Emergency personnel had to be called to the scene of the Dixie Gun and Knife Show in Raleigh, North Carolina after a gun accidentally discharged and shot three people at the show's safety check-in booth just after 1 pm. Both victims were transported to an area hospital, and the Raleigh Fire Department announced that the show would be closed for the rest of the day.

Gun Appreciation Day is the combined effort of dozens of far-right organizations who have been vocal opponents of gun control advocates' efforts to reduce the number of dangerous weapons on our streets and prevent them from ending up in the hands of people with criminal backgrounds or a history of mental illness. In response to a renewed push for sensible reforms of gun laws after the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, groups like the National Rifle Association and the founders of Gun Appreciation Day have instead advocated for an increase in the number of guns in public places like elementary schools, arguing - falsely - that more guns will mean more protection for individuals.

But today's unfortunate accident, which took place at a safety check in surrounded by hundreds of people who presumably have at least some training on how to properly handle a dangerous weapon, undermines that case. Earlier this week, an armed security officer at a Michigan charter school accidentally left his gun in a restroom that is regularly used by students as young as five years old.

A representative from Political Media, the group responsible for organizing Gun Appreciation Day, was not immediately available for comment.

Two similar incidents occurred at entirely separate gun shows in the Midwest, one in the Cleveland suburb of Medina, Ohio and the other at the state fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Indiana. In Ohio, the local ABC affiliate reports that one individual was brought to a hospital by EMS, and in Indiana Channel 8 WISH says that an individual shot himself in the hand while trying to reload his gun in the show parking lot. That brings the tally to 4 victims of gun violence so far at three different gun shows during the country�s first Gun Appreciation Day.

CNN is reporting that three people were injured at the gun show in Raleigh, not two as originally reported. All were victims of a shotgun that fired while the owner was removing it from a case.

Comments

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-14 # BKnowswhitt 2019-08-21 22:22

Yeah Climate does change. But not because of increased atmospheric CO2. See this site .. this guy is the real deal and he tells why he started it to counter the lying. He worked with Hansen and others. And he debunks it all is degreed in the field and tells it like it is: http://realclimatologists.org/Articles/2019/07/20/The_Fifteenth_Hottest_Third_Tuesday_In_July_Since_Records_Began_Last_August/

+3 # MFM 2019-08-24 13:12

Please. The greenhouse effect has been known for a very long time. The more CO2 you pour into the atmosphere, the more "blanket" you create to trap heat. Of course climate changes, but we are on a steep upward slope, and we know what contributes to it. Not only fossil fuel emissions, of course, but also agricultural practices and deforestation. Must we continue to debate the existence of gravity, too?

0 # economagic 2019-08-24 19:27

Of course--the effect has been known since the mid-19th century, when the very definition of energy and the conservation laws were still getting their finishing touches. And by the turn of the 20th century the Swedish chemist Arrhenius put fairly accurate numbers to the effect. But the psycho-ceramics will never be convinced, on this issue, "creation science," or anything else that conflicts with their "Belief System" (BS).

+3 # Kootenay Coyote 2019-08-22 08:34

Challenging argument but reliable.

-1 # Citizen Mike 2019-08-24 08:11

We're done, that's it. There will be few human survivors, all reduced to a stone age style of life. We should prepare sheltered inscribed tablets with info that will allow them to reconstruct civilization if their numbers increase over the centuries following the coming planetary disaster.

0 # economagic 2019-08-24 14:02

Good article, at least touching on the fact that "science" is not in the business of producing the cut-and-dried results most people and even some scientists imagine. There have been a couple of other articles in sources available to the general public in the past year or two that make this point, but it is not nearly enough.

The problem is that science, especially at pre-college levels, is often taught as a collection of settled, undisputable facts, while it is better understood as a process or method of uncovering and validating new knowledge, if not necessarily verifying it once and for all. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 generated some much better curricula, which when implemented by properly trained teachers produced citizens with much more sound grasps of what science is and what its findings mean. Unfortunately a great many teachers were not prepared for the new approach, and within a couple of decades it almost completely disappeared. Efforts to revise such curricula have been made. But the general chaos in education created in the past 30-40 years by politicians with no background in teaching and no interest in anything but their personal and ideological opinions and beliefs, along with TV and other screens, has made meaningful education almost a dodo bird in this country.

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