Dumb luck, laziness, and stupidity

In my local paper on Sunday, a suburban resident offered this tale in a letter to the editor:

Today I swung my front door wide open and placed my 30.06 right in the doorway. I gave it five shells to go in the clip, and noticing that it had no legs, even placed it in a wheelchair to help it get around. I then left it alone and went about my business.

Wow. Leaving a gun and ammunition sitting right by your open front door...seems kinda crazy, at least in my city neighborhood, maybe not so much for this guy.

So why did he leave the gun alone? Well, to see what it would do, of course.

While I was gone, the mailman delivered my mail, the neighbor boy across the street shoveled the snow, a girl walked her dog down the street, the trash man picked up the trash, and quite a few cars went by.

After about an hour, I checked on the gun. It was still sitting there in the wheelchair, right where I left it. It hadn't rolled itself outside. It certainly hadn't killed anyone, even with the numerous opportunities it had been presented to do so. In fact, it hadn't even loaded itself.

Silly gun. It had a golden opportunity, and failed to take advantage of it.

You can imagine my surprise, with all the media hype about how dangerous guns are and how they kill people. Either the media is wrong, and it's the misuse of guns by people that kill people, or I'm in possession of the laziest gun in the world.

Now, he and I disagree on whether killing someone with a gun is 'misuse'. I maintain that using a gun to take another person's life is actually using the weapon as intended, but I understand some folks disagree with me on that.  Many of us would agree though, that people kill people, frequently using guns. After all, the number of times a gun unilaterally kills someone, acting completely without any human interaction or stupidity, is pretty slim (particularly when compared with the number of times people kill other people using guns).

But back to our story. Two things came to mind when I read this, one about this poor unattended gun, and one about a boneheaded move of my own.  

First, about the gun: pretend for the sake of argument that the guy really did what he says he did -- leave a gun and shells sitting unattended just inside his front door -- he should probably be thanking his lucky stars that no one opened the door, loaded the gun, and 'misused' it against him, his family, or his possessions.  Or worse, that no one grabbed the gun and ammo and then 'misused' it against someone else. Can we agree on that?

Now, my boneheaded move:  typically on winter mornings, one of us will warm up the car using the remote starter.  My key ring has the clicker on it, and I always leave it in one of two places in the foyer, so either of us can start the car.  One morning when I went to look for the keys, they weren't in the most logical place, so I looked in the next most logical place, and they weren't there either.

I started back into the dining room to ask My Sweet Baboo if he had the keys, and then I remembered where they must be. With a sinking feeling, I turned around, headed for the front door, pulled it open, and yep, there they were.

Somehow, what with juggling my purse, tote bag, laptop bag, the mail, and a package, and MSB bringing in his work bag and the recycling bin, and both of us trying to make sure none of the cats got out, I foolishly left both the house keys and the car keys in the door. Not just for one hour, but for over twelve hours. The car was still in the driveway, fortunately.

So -- do I have the laziest keys in the world, or am I one lucky SOB, my stupidity going undetected and protecting me, our car, and our possessions? And would I be so lucky if  I did that over and over and over again? I'm thinking eventually the wrong person would step up on the porch, find my keys, and well, you can figure it out from there.  I also suspect the police would be a little less than excited about helping me out.

Same with my suburban letter writer.  Be stupid enough times (intentionally or otherwise) and it will bite you.  And if the worst-case scenario did happen for the man with the laziest gun in the world, I hope he'd be charged as an accessory to whatever crimes were committed using his 30.06.