Never point the muzzle of a weapon at anything you aren't willing to destroy

[coloradokevin]

Seriously, this stunt is hard to understand in its sheer stupidity. I'm on Youtube a lot, and I understand that people do a lot of silly pranks to try to get famous on Youtube. Shooting a "50 caliber handgun" (no idea what it was) at a book being held by your boyfriend, and assuming the book would stop the bullet, is just so incredibly stupid.

Sadly, this resulted in one honorary Darwin Award winner (sounds like his girlfriend was pregnant, so he technically beat natural selection on this one), and one winner of a Criminally Negligent Homicide case.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/06/2...n-stunt-gone-wrong-leaves-boyfriend-dead.html

 

[Michael Tinker Pearce]

I really wanted to make a flip answer to this, but it's just too horrible. That poor girl...

 

[Speedo66]

From what I just read in The NY Times, he held a 1 1/2" book in front of his chest while imploring her to shoot him with a .50 Desert Eagle.

Obviously, neither one of them actually knew anything about firearms, or at least that particular gun.

 

[Lafitte]

Stupid people do stupid things.

Lafitte

 

[stoky]

............but did it go viral?

 

[Curator]

Darwin award?

 

[stoky]

Darwin award?

It's an "award" given for people offing themselves doing stupid things, the implication being that they won't pass on the stupid gene.

 

[Slamfire]

Very sad, but people learn their physics from Movies or TV shows. Anyone remember the movie "Animal House". Niedermeyer points a M1917 at Flounder, fires a 30-06, and the bullet is deflected by the glass bottle in Flounder's hand?

Hardly anyone I knew thought that was impossible, or even thought about it.

 

[Ironicaintit]

ow wow that's sad. poor dumb kids.

 

[22250Rem]

Sad and tragic...... It's hard to believe that degree of ignorance regarding firearms. Perhaps my disbelief stems from having been around and using firearms for most of my life. If those two had been a little more familiar with their "subject matter" this could have been avoided.

 

[Jack B.]

She should not be allowed to raise the child after the child is born.

 

[red rick]

It is hard too believe that there are people that dumb in this world . I don't feel sorry for them , I feel sorry that she is going to bring a child into this world with their genes .

 

[John_R]

Know your target and what's behind it.

 

[hdwhit]

The part that surprises me is the last line:

The couple had apparently tested the stunt before attempting it on video.

The test must have been "successful" otherwise they would not have moved on to attempting to film it, so now I'm going to spend the rest of the morning wondering how they tested it "successfully" and yet didn't get similar results in practice.

 

[ilbob]

the level of stupid in some people is difficult to accept.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

It's a sad story.
Ryan Laughlin , "STUNT GONE WRONG: Pregnant girlfriend shoots and accidentally kills boyfriend", Valley News Live, 27 Jun 2017.
http://www.valleynewslive.com/conte...-after-being-shot-in-the-chest-431170773.html
"They were trying to achieve YouTube fame. To rack up views, subscribers and notoriety, they tried amping up their pranks. "

I think it's a sad commentary on the obsession with internet fame: let's do a crazy stunt that'll go viral and win followers. Stupidity + Ego boost.
And it is a object lesson on the first steps of basic gun safety:
Treat all guns with the respect due lethal weapons.
Never point the muzzle at anything you can't fix a hole in.

That's why I would avoid stunts involving guns (like showing off body armor stopping a bullet). I would not want to inspire those last words "I can top that. Here, hold my beer."

It was not accidental: it was negligent. What kind of test did they do? Did they test the stunt by shooting into a book backed by more resistence than a human chest?

Faced with something like this, you can uselessly cry or rage or fall back on gallows humor (Darwin Theory: survival of the fittest; "Darwin Award": the unfit self-eliminate). I worked with a gal at The Press who had worked for a medical examiner at a morgue; sweet gal, but, man, the jokes they used to make it through the work day.

 

[Hanzo581]

I don't know what to say about this. I think we've all done silly things in our youth, but this is on a whole other level.

 

[Old Guy]

The part that surprises me is the last line:



The test must have been "successful" otherwise they would not have moved on to attempting to film it, so now I'm going to spend the rest of the morning wondering how they tested it "successfully" and yet didn't get similar results in practice.

The only chance of (Test being successful) a slim one, is if the book was shot suspended, free floating?

 

[Michael Tinker Pearce]

The only chance of (Test being successful) a slim one, is if the book was shot suspended, free floating?

I've got a Grainger Industrial catalog that would do it, but I wouldn't be stupid enough to trust my life to it.

 

[MedWheeler]

The loss for those involved is tragic, nothing from this can be of use to any of us since we all know better, and the "humor" used in this thread on it is beneath the mission of this board.

All that being said, we all need to make sure we're in tune with the thoughts and ideas that may trickle into the minds of those we know who are more intelligence-challenged, lest any of them may come to consider their own attempts at "fame."

 

[Jim Watson]

The part that surprises me is the last line:

The couple had apparently tested the stunt before attempting it on video.

The test must have been "successful" otherwise they would not have moved on to attempting to film it, so now I'm going to spend the rest of the morning wondering how they tested it "successfully" and yet didn't get similar results in practice.

One source says their "test" was with a .22. Hey, if it stopped a .22 it will surely stop a .50 AE, right?

 

[hdwhit]

Carl N. Brown wrote:
I think it's a sad commentary on the obsession with internet fame: let's do a crazy stunt that'll go viral and win followers. Stupidity + Ego boost.

One of the guys from Dude Perfect lives down the street. Their "obsession with internet fame" is paying well enough for him to buy a house.

 

[ny32182]

19 year old "mother"; already has a 3 year old on the ground and another in the oven; the level of stupidity here is truly hard to fathom. I'm assuming the whole thing is on video, because if it wasn't, I'd consider that story to be extremely flimsy and would suspect it was a fabrication to cover a murder.

Someone that dumb should seriously not be in charge of raising kids.

 

[Wisco]

I hope they weren't judging the book's stopping power by its cover!

 

[hdwhit]

Jim Watson wrote:
One source says their "test" was with a .22.

Do you have a link to that source?

And how do we know the other gun was a 50 AE? The Fox story linked by the OP only says it was a 50 caliber handgun; could as easily have been a black powder pistol.

Old Guy wrote:
The only chance of (Test being successful) a slim one, is if the book was shot suspended, free floating?

Could be a change in guns as Jim Watson's undisclosed source suggests, or a difference in the number of pages in the book. Too few facts right now, so I'm not going to make any suppositions about the differences between what they may have done with the test that was different from the live run.