Our
View: DEA agent shoots, stay out of
Florida
Why
is it most of this country’s oddest
tidbits of news happen in Florida? Maybe
it’s the humidity or the alligators,
but a now humorous but what could have
been a potentially dangerous event that
happened last week only proves once again
why we should stay out of the Sunshine
State.
According to The Associated Press last week, a Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) “agent who accidentally shot himself in the foot while demonstrating
gun safety to school children is suing the agency, saying video of the incident
has made him the joke of the Internet.”
The DEA officer, Lee Paige, 45, was making a presentation in, you guessed it,
Orlando, Fla. Floridians strike again, this time without a hurricane.
AP also reported, “Moments before the shooting, the 14-year agency veteran
was displaying his firearm and telling students he was the only one in the
room professional enough to handle a gun.”
There are many morals to this story. One is egos and guns don’t mix.
Paige’s experience should have taught him better.
He said, “I was at the point of attempting to demonstrate how the gun
could be disassembled and put back together. It is something I had done hundreds
of times throughout my career.”
His 100-fold experience should have told him a motto among sane gun handlers:
treat every gun as if it were loaded. Surely his ego, which was painfully apparent
when he said he was the only one in the room full of children who could handle
a gun properly, got the worst of him and caused him to both endanger himself
and those around him.
Speaking of which, how could any rational person, DEA agent or otherwise, think
he or she has the right to walk into a room full of children with a loaded
gun? Think about this scenario one more time: a supposedly gun-savvy man walks
into a room of children with a loaded gun that could potentially kill people,
tries to demonstrate gun safety, shoots himself and then blames his own employer.
What has this world come to? Our poor Floridian residents, as if humidity,
hurricanes, tornadoes, crocodiles, alligators, anacondas, sharks, jellyfish
and delirious old people weren’t enough, now have to watch out for friendly
fire from their bumbling law enforcement. Perhaps our brave soldiers in Iraq
should instead be protecting Orlando.
Paige’s grounds for suing seem dubious at best. His lawsuit says he “is
the target of jokes, derision, ridicule and disparaging comments” because
of the publicity. His case seeks an unspecified amount.” AP also reported
he cannot work undercover anymore because of his exposure.
This man deserves the ridicule he had coming to him when he shot his own foot
in front of school children. He deserves
to get the butt-end of late-night talk show jokes. He also deserves to be fired.
While he may be receiving the first two, the DEA interestingly enough has not
fired him. He was only suspended for five days without pay after the accident.
What? Suspended for five days? Five days for putting children’s lives
in danger from a loaded weapon? Five days for disobeying the principles of
gun safety while promoting gun safety no less? It’s shameful.
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