"Baldwin described for Stephanopoulos how he pulled the revolver’s hammer back as far as he could “without cocking the actual gun.” He kept asking Hutchins, “Can you see that?”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Hutchins allegedly answered, according to Baldwin.
“I let go of the hammer. Bang! The gun goes off,” Baldwin told Stephanopoulos."
The more I think about it, you could fire a revolver that way without touching the trigger. If he had pulled the hammer back all the way until it clicked into the fully cocked position, the hammer would have stayed there until the trigger was pulled or the gun was manually un-cocked, unless the mechanism was defective. It sounds like he released the hammer prematurely, which means he didn't understand how the gun worked. Of course, it shouldn't have been loaded with live rounds in the first place, but it wouldn't hurt to give actors some training before they let them handle firearms.
Guns that have external hammers don't generally have an additional safety device to prevent them from firing unintentionally, one exception I can think of is the old army .45 semiautomatic handgun. In the case of a single action revolver, the hammer must be manually cocked before the first round is fired, and again before each subsequent round. If you cock such a gun, and then decide not to fire it, you must manually un-cock it to render it safe to carry. First you firmly hold the hammer back with your thumb, then you hold the trigger back with the trigger finger of the same hand while gently easing the hammer forward until it reaches the end of its travel. If your thumb slips off the hammer during this process, the gun will almost certainly fire, so it's important to keep the gun pointed in a safe direction the whole time. It's not a good idea to do this indoors, say in your bathroom, because you could accidently shoot a hole in your bathtub and the floor beneath it and, if the guys at work find out about it, they will never let you hear the end of it.......or so I have been told.
I don't think the Oxford, Michigan school shooter did any brandishing. Ironically, while Michigan law prohibits carrying a concealed weapon into a school, it allows openly carrying a weapon into a school, at least on paper. Last I heard, our legislature was working on resolving this discrepancy, but they couldn't agree whether they should allow the concealed carry or prohibit the open carry.
According to Wiki, the brown marmorated stinkbugs haven't spread this far north yet, but it's only a matter of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment