A Texas man accidentally shot a child while officiating a wedding in Lancaster County on Saturday, the sheriff’s office says.
Chief Deputy Ben Houchin said deputies were sent to a wedding at Hillside Events near Denton on a report of a gunshot wound.
Deputies learned that 62-year-old Michael Gardner, the wedding’s officiant, fired a gun to get everyone’s attention.
“He was going to fire in the air, and as he did that, it slipped and went off,” Houchin said.
The gun was loaded with a blank that Gardner made with gunpowder and glue.
Ask Brandon Lee.
Technically Brandon Lee was killed by a bullet. They removed the powder but left the bullet (for appearance sake since it was a revolver and would be noticeable). Since there was no powder the bullet didn’t fire out of the gun when the trigger was pulled but the primer (which wasn’t removed) igniting created enough force to put the bullet in the barrel where it got jammed.
No one noticed the jammed bullet, and when they next fired it with blanks this time (powder charge, no bullets) the powder was now forceful enough to fire the bullet out of the gun.
Essentially they accidentally made a revolver into a breach loaded firearm.
What gets me about that is, yeah, they didn’t check the barrel, but when they pulled the dummy rounds out to put in the blanks why didn’t anyone notice that one of the casings was missing its bullet? Shouldn’t that be an easy thing to spot?
When you unload a revolver you’re looking at it from behind, and if you just dump the casings into your hand you might not notice. Maybe that happened.
Or maybe they only replaced one bullet with a blank.
Or maybe they were just lazy and negligent.
Would you like to know more?