A man killed by a dog | The paw on the trigger

There are the shots fired intentionally, like those that have sounded in the quarantine of mass killings since the start of 2023 in the United States. And there are accidental gunshots, responsible for around 500 deaths every year. Like that of this man killed last week by a shot fired… by a dog.

A man killed by a shot fired… by a dog? Is this a joke?

Alas no. Last Saturday morning Joe Smith, a 30-something from Wichita, Kansas, got into the van pickup of his friend. The tandem was driving on a rural road south of the city. In the back seat was his friend’s dog, along with hunting gear, including a rifle.

The circumstances of the tragedy are not fully known, but according to the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office (south of Wichita), it seems that at one point, “the dog stepped on the weapon, causing the detonation”. Joe Smith was shot in the back and died almost instantly.

So this is a tragic hunting accident?

This is confirmed by the police, who have already closed the file. Friends and colleagues of Joe Smith, who worked for a plumbing company, held a fundraiser this week to help his family pay for the funeral. Over $20,000 has been raised so far.

Still, a shot fired by a dog… What bad luck!

Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened. the washington post reviewed it in an article published on Wednesday. In 2004, a puppy put its paw on the trigger of its owner’s gun in Florida, injuring his hand. In 2015, an Indiana woman suffered a foot injury when her labrador retriever stepped on her unlocked gun and left it on the ground. In 2018, an accident similar to the one in Kansas happened in New Mexico when a dog was traveling in the backseat of a pickup truck pickup got caught in the trigger of his master’s gun. The shot injured the man in the lungs.

What do these three accidents have in common? Neglect. “Like so many accidents, this one could have been prevented if basic safety measures had been respected,” writes Philip J. Cook, professor at Duke University, author of numerous studies on the consequences of a greater circulation of weapons in the United States. “At a minimum, the weapon should have been unloaded and locked. If the people involved are hunters [comme les informations publiées le suggèrent], then they should have been well versed in the safety rules. »

And what are these safety rules?

In Canada and Quebec, they are clear: during transport or storage, a firearm must be unloaded at all times. When transporting, weapons must be unloaded, locked and stored in a locked case. Ammunition must be transported separately from the weapon. It goes without saying that the owner of the weapon must hold a license to possess a firearm.

In Kansas…it’s different. The law allows a loaded firearm to be transported in a vehicle without a license, regardless of whether the loaded firearm is stored in a case or displayed in plain sight.

So if the two hunters didn’t break Kansas law, they could have followed “common sense,” as Philip J. Cook points out.

Can we conclude that the more firearms there are in circulation, the more there are accidental deaths?

Yes of course. “But it is above all the legal framework that makes the difference,” notes Francis Langlois, professor at the Cégep de Trois-Rivières and associate researcher at the Observatory on the United States of the Raoul-Dandurand chair. “There are countries where there are a lot of weapons, like Switzerland, but where the supervision makes the difference on the death rate”, he illustrates. There are also exceptions, Langlois says, such as Vermont and Maine, where gun control aligns with federal minimum standards, while having a lower rate of gun deaths than in other states. other states.

But the common point of many accidental and fatal shots, whether they were fired by a dog or by a movie actor, “is negligence”, recalls Mr. Langlois. “When weapons are handled carelessly by inexperienced people, it causes more accidents. It is not for nothing that there are laws to regulate firearms. »