From: Jon Templeman
Edinburgh
I was shocked to read on therepublic.com about the Madison County prosecutor who negligently fired his handgun in a restaurant while leaving. To see someone that professed to have over 30 years of experience handling firearms would have been involved in such an incident as what was described left me speechless.
What was just as shocking though was how Mr. Cummings, who is a former police officer and current prosecutor, portrayed the incident as an “accident.” An accident implies something that isn’t preventable, and what he did by carrying a loaded firearm in his pocket without a holster was completely preventable.
It is a blatant safety violation to carry a firearm in the manner that Mr. Cummings chose to do. For him to state that he is going to have the firearm inspected by an armorer is only displacing accountability where it squarely falls, on his shoulders.
The article said no one was injured, but that is inaccurate. This anecdote will be used by those that oppose legally armed citizens as an example of how even a highly trained professional can have an accident, and, therefore, the average citizen can’t be trusted with firearms in public. This was not an accident. This was a negligent discharge of a firearm due to one individual’s poor choice.
