Reminder: Pointing A Gun At Your Junk May Not End Well

There are four main rules of gun safety: treat every gun as if it’s loaded, don’t point the gun at anything you’re not willing to shoot, keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target, and identify the target as well as what’s behind it before firing. It may be time to add a fifth rule: don’t point a gun at your balls.

Advertisement

Earlier this summer my colleague Tom Knighton pointed out a bizarre trend among some gun owners; posting pictures of themselves pointing their loaded guns at their crotch. Sooner or later someone was going to have an accidental discharge that was going to end badly, and according to Vice‘s Matthew Gault, that day has now arrived.

A member of a Facebook group dedicated to taking pictures of loaded weapons pointed at dicks finally shot himself in the balls, according to bloody pictures and video he posted on social media and the Imperial County Sheriff’s Office, which confirmed the incident to Motherboard. Rather than step back and start questioning whether the practice is wise, the group made him an administrator and are now celebrating him as their king.

Of course they are. What’s a little surgery and blood loss compared to the adulation of your fellow gun owners who like to point their pistols at their nutsack, after all? As Gault points out, the members of the Facebook group seem to take pride in breaking the four rules of gun safety simply to annoy responsible gun owners.

Now, Loaded Guns Pointed at [B]enis has made the shooter an admin, and the group is making memes of him as their king. In one meme, Barack Obama is giving him a Presidential Medal of Freedom. The group changed its cover photo to a screenshot of the shooter pointing his loaded 1911 at his dick.

“[We] are sick and tired of being demonized as gun owners, and looped together with the alt-right just for owning guns,” an admin of Loaded Guns Pointed at [B]enis told Motherboard in a Facebook message. “We are sick of republicans (think NRA) telling us what to do with our property, and we are sick of being told that just because we like guns It means we have to be anti woman, pro life and pro trump.”

Advertisement

I’m not convinced that jamming the barrel of a pistol against your crotch and posting a picture is a great symbolic act of political protest. Then again, I’d say the odds are greater than 50% that the admin’s comments to Vice were just another act of sh*tposting as opposed to a serious statement of principles.

Regardless of the rationale behind the statement, the four rules of gun safety aren’t a Republican plot or part of a Bloomberg’s anti-gun agenda. They are rules for a reason: they work. Follow those rules and you won’t blow a hole in your scrotum. Of course, you might have to find a new group of Facebook friends to hang out with, but really.. friends don’t let friends shoot themselves in the balls for Internet points.

 

Join the conversation as a VIP Member