This country has a strong gun culture.  Fortunately in the case of most people serious about guns, it is accompanied by an equally strong gun safety culture, characterized by the level of caution and professionalism and respect you should use towards any deadly tool.  Unfortunately, America is also choked with slobs, Travis-Bickle-wannabees, and nimrods who think that hold-the-pistol-sideways-like-a-ganga thing looks cool.  Many such people are careless about gun safety.

Now, carelessness is not a uniquely American trait.  But I am beginning to suspect that proud, defiant carelessness — and sympathy for the same — are. 

Case in point:  dipshit-with-a-badge Anderson Alexander, a NYPD detective who shot himself while sticking a gun into his waistband, and then convinced a New York jury (presumably by using shiny objects, or perhaps bright colors and movements) to give him $4.5 million on the theory that the fault lay with a defective chair, not with the defective detective who shoved a loaded gun into his waistband with (depending on the model of the gun) the safety off or his finger in an unsafe position. More:

Holiday decorations were still around that New Year’s Day as Alexander’s partner, Peter Schrammel, handed him his 40-ounce gun for safe-keeping.

Alexander’s service weapon was in a hip holster so, without standing up, he put Schrammel’s in his waistband. As he leaned back, the chair back slipped and jerked him backward.

As he tried to right himself, his finger slipped under the finger guard and the bullet discharged into Alexander’s left leg, shattering a bone in his knee joint.

And it’s the chair’s fault. Similarly, if I had been trimming my nose hairs in the chair with a straight razor, and had the same thing happen to me, the removal of my nose would have been the chair’s fault.

So Alexander gets $4.5 to supplement his new day job. Which is … wait for it …

Alexander, 49, who retired on a three-quarters-pay disability pension, moved to South Carolina, where he works as a sheriff’s deputy. He declined comment.

One hopes the Sheriff’s Department is not letting him use handguns. Perhaps they’ll restrict him to dogs or fire hoses or something.

Anyway, Alexander can at least brag that he did not shoot himself in the course of demonstrating gun safety, like Lee Paige, a DEA agent and former pro football player who shot himself in the leg with a Glock .40 whilst educating children about drugs and guns.

The shooting occurred moments after Paige told the children that he was the only person in the room professional enough to carry the weapon.

Sometimes God speaks with a louder voice than other times. Anyway, because this is America, where the condition of being an amusing and ironic fuckup is not. your. fault., Paige sued the DEA for releasing the video of his oopsie, which he complains has made him the subject of widespread ridicule. And he says that as if it is wrong.

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