You’d think that would be fairly obvious. After all, safe storage practices dictate that a handgun should be on your hip or in your safe. Notice there’s no mention there of major appliances. Besides, there are plenty of good, affordable storage options out there if you want to keep a pistol in close proximity.
But one Ohio gun owner had other ideas.
Robin L. Garlock, 44, put his revolver in the broiler of the oven for safe-keeping because children were coming to the house, Warren Police Detective Wayne Mackey said Monday.
But his girlfriend decided to do some baking Sunday night, apparently unaware of the firepower below the oven.
That went about as well as you’d expect.
While she was cooking, she heard a “bang” and yelled for Garlock, thinking the sound was a gunshot coming from outside. …
Garlock then went to the oven, opened the broiler and tried to secure his revolver. He suffered a minor burn.
“It’s too hot. The gun literally spun around because it’s going off,” (Warren Police Detective Wayne) Mackey said.
The heat of the oven eventaully caused bullets in the gun to explode, Mackey said. Either two bullets or bullet fragments struck Garlock in the front of each of his shoulders, Mackey said.
Yes, bullets explode when exposed to high heat. And reporters’ stories explode when exposed to details about firearms.
The story sounded hard to believe when Garlock first told Mackey, but the evidence confirmed Garlock’s story, Mackey said: There were bullet holes in the stove and the gun “obviously had been in a fire,” Mackey said of his and another detective’s conclusions.
There were empty shell casings in two of the six chambers in the gun’s cylinder, but the cylinder was seized because of the heat, Mackey said. Though Mackey says he’s confident he knows how this incident happened and no crime was committed, police will analyze the gun further, he added.
In any case, we’re glad to hear that Mr. Garlock will apparently recover from his shrapnel wounds. The prognosis on the Maytag oven isn’t yet known. But for his ill-considered firearms storage practices, Robin Garlock is our irresponsible gun owner of the day.