This is exactly why firearm education is so very important. A woman in England gets sent a police firearm by mistake and...
Mrs Roots, who is her 50s and runs a small-holding at Winfrith, said: 'I was absolutely and totally shocked, and petrified. 'I get a lot of packages and I signed for it thinking it was a harness for one of my horses.'I just plonked it down and didn't think about it, but when I later opened it up I was terrified.
'You don't expect something like that to to arrive. I was petrified and I didn't touch it - I didn't know if it would go off.
'I couldn't believe my eyes. Later I found underneath it a letter addressed to the Dorset Police firearms unit with the correct address.
....
'I think something as a big and as serious as a sub machine gun shouldn't be sent by a domestic courier that just travels around the roads and delivers to ordinary private addresses.'
Mrs Roots was later told the weapon was in fact a frighteningly realistic training gun that fires infra-red beams. It teaches firearm officers to make split-second decisions on whether to shoot or not without using live rounds.
Okay, obviously I don't expect people to know everything about every gun ever made, BUT this lady was "terrified" - she was "petrified" thinking if she touched/moved the gun it might fire. Think about that. That's ridiculous. Guns don't just go off, especially if they aren't loaded and you don't put your finger on the trigger! Not to mention that it was a training firearm.
If the British government and the British people hadn't given life to inanimate objects, if they hadn't given these inanimate objects the power to create fear, this kind of thing would not happen.
Mrs. Roots would have said, "Oh, that's not the AR-15 I ordered, and hey, looks like it was supposed to go to the police department, I'll give them a call." She then would have put the gun in a safe place and that would have been the end. No scary feelings, no biased news article (I mean really, "frighteningly realistic training gun" and "Red-faced officers" Give me a break!) This is why you teach teach teach. Teach kids, (yes, kids!) teach teens, teach adults.
There is nothing to be afraid of if you know.
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