GunFAIL V

It's time for another entry in our continuing GunFAIL series, and I'm adopting another few changes in format. First, I'm setting aside the domestic violence and murder-suicide reports entirely, although I think they're an especially important category to pay attention to. They deserve coverage, of course, and they do account for a significant portion of gun deaths each week. And I still believe that they represent an important category of GunFAIL, particularly when guns are purchased ostensibly to protect the family and instead end up killing the family. But tracking them is not only enormously taxing emotionionally, but they're not exactly central to the main point of this feature, which really is that even well-meaning and well-intentioned gun owners surprise themselves with accidents far more than we think, and certainly far more often than many of them will admit.

The second change in format takes me back to my preferred approach to presenting these stories, that is, with a one line story of my own. Each entry still includes a link to the original reporting, so you can still get the dry facts of the incidents there.

Even with this new restriction on what sorts of GunFAIL make the cut for this series, I was able to find 50 new examples for you in this entry, the vast majority of which took place just in the week since publication of GunFAIL IV.

Before moving on to the list, I want to acknowledge some other great sources of similar information. Right here on Daily Kos, we have Tom Begnal's series, "Another Day in the (gun crazy) U.S.A." Also among us in the blogosphere are the folks behind Slate's cooperative venture with @GunDeaths, the Today's Accidental Shootings blog, and the OhhShoot blog. In the mainstream media, kudos to Joe Nocera of the New York Times, and NBC News for giving in-depth and continuing coverage to these stories. I like to think we may have had a little something to do with encouraging it, and proving the existence of a "market" for it, so to speak.

And now, this week's Dishonor Roll, below the fold.