One would think it wouldn’t be necessary to point out what a problematic combination guns and alcohol make. And for the most part, it isn’t. But in any free society, the vast majority will exercise their rights responsibly while a small minority won’t. Those whose self-appointed mission is to curtail those rights like nothing more than to spotlight the examples those few provide. Their argument is, because there are a few idiots who just can’t handle their rights, no one should have them. So we can all thank seventeen-year-old Israel Torres for providing our gun-grabbing friends with one more arrow for their metaphorical quivers. Unfortunately, we’ll have to express our gratitude to his next of kin . . .
According to themonitor.com, the kid’s father initially claimed it was one of those mysterious shots from nowhere.
Deputies spoke to the teen’s “highly intoxicated” father, who told them he and his two sons were in the backyard when they heard a gunshot and saw Torres drop. But that version of events did not make sense to officers, and after a brief period of questioning, the father told a different story.
Instead Israel, along with his father and brother, were imbibing in the back yard of a home in McAllen, Texas late Monday night. According to the county sheriff,
“All three are pretty drunk when someone pulls a .380-caliber, semi-automatic (handgun) and shoots it into the backyard,” Treviño said. “The 17-year-old gets it and tells his girlfriend, ‘Here, look, pull the trigger.’”
The teen’s girlfriend refused to handle the loaded weapon, so he pulled out the gun’s clip and turned to a butane tank, Treviño said.
The shot he fired at the tank ricocheted right back, striking him in the head and killing him.
“It was just an accident under the influence of alcohol,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said Tuesday.
It’d be easy to make a crack about how stupid it was to take a shot at a butane tank in the first place (and I put the over/under on the number of comments it takes before the Darwin Awards are mentioned at four). But given that he was drunk to begin with and dear old dad wasn’t providing much parental guidance, there’s really not much left to do but shake our virtual heads at the waste of it all. Guns and hooch go together like Hutus and Tutsis. As in they don’t. So just don’t, m’kay?