Talk about a man-bites-dog story

Every once in a while. Correction. This is loaded-gun-loaded, blood-soaked America we're talking here. With fair regularity, we see a report of a horrific shooting incident in which someone is unintentionally shot and, as often as not, killed.

The two-year-old finds a Glock in their mother's purse and kills her while they're in the cereal aisle at the grocery shopping. The four-year-old takes a loaded Luger out of the bedside table in their parents bedroom and blows their six-year-old sibling's head off. 

Then there are, of course, all the accidental discharges. The gun just "goes off" while someone's cleaning it, and there's one dead spouse on the floor. A gun enthusiast is demonstrating how safe guns are to a gun-shy friend when, BOOM. Too bad they didn't know it was loaded.

Stories like these are so common that they barely make the news. 

Accidental - let alone deliberate - shootings are pretty much yawners these days. If a mass murder only includes four deaths (the FBI definition), it's not that interesting. It's got to be at least a dozen or so to capture our attention.

What we really need are some man-bites-dog stories.

Like this one:

A bizarre incident out of Nebraska is drawing attention after police say a dog accidentally discharged a shotgun inside a truck parked at a convenience store, injuring a woman stopped nearby in traffic.

...At the time of the blast, a woman was reportedly sitting at a nearby traffic light with her arm resting out the window when one pellet struck her in the upper right arm. Authorities said the injury was not believed to be life-threatening, and she was transported to Regional West Medical Center by a family member. (Source: Guessing Headlights)

Talk about an innocent bystander. (Talk about a lawsuit. Does Morgan and Morgan handle dog-shooting suits?)

Fortunately, nobody was killed. And while that almost goes without saying in a situation involving an accidental shotgun blast in public, this really could have ended far worse for everyone involved. 

That's for sure.

But given the weird nature of it, this story got surprisingly little play. Maybe if the woman had died. Maybe if the shot had killed a bus driver who'd driven off the road and all their passengers were killed. Especialy if it were a school bus with kiddos on board. Maybe then the dog-shoots-woman story would have been more widely reported.

But this was just another ho-hummer out of Gunville.

Hope the woman's okay. And hope the dog's okay, too. 

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Image Source: Justin McBrayer