Another Poster Child For The National Rifle Association?

As gun owners defend their arsenals following Friday’s mass shooting in Colorado, here’s another guy who is probably not going to be the NRA’s next poster child for responsible gun ownership.

Todd Canady, a 23-year-old with a concealed handgun permit, accidentally dropped his pistol Monday night while reaching for his wallet to pay for some Walmart groceries in Dallas.

In an accident worthy of Monty Python, the gun fired once,  grazing Canady’s leg and ricocheting off the floor and injuring three other people, apparently by causing “debris” to fall from the ceiling and hit two children and a woman. They were not seriously injured.

Canady, who had a concealed handgun permit (did I already say that?), then fled the store when police tried to question him. He was arrested, charged with injury to a child, a felony, and misdemeanor charges of assault and evading arrest, according to police.

I guess when the Texas Department of Public Safety approved his permit they forgot to ask if he knew how to keep the safety on. Or maybe he felt threatened by a patronizing cashier and deemed it necessary to employ his 2nd-amendment rights in protest.

This shooting is funny. What happened to more than 70 people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater last week is not.

Both of these events, however, should inform the gun control debate (though it will probably go nowhere because Democrats have no spine and Republicans need NRA support).

For the five days since 24-year-old James Holmes killed a dozen people with his arsenal of weapons, which included an assault rifle with a 100-round magazine and gas canisters, gun advocates have been daydreaming about how much better it would have been if the dark, gas-clouded movie theater had been filled with audience members who also had guns, as made clear Tuesday morning by John Velleco, director of federal affairs at Gun Owners of America.

In practice, Colorado’s concealed carry laws don’t require much more than Texas does.  So let’s imagine Todd Canady in that audience trying to stop the massacre. Now imagine an audience full of Todd Canadys, since Velleco also said it’s every individual’s right — and if they have a family, their responsibility — to arm and protect themselves with their own assault rifles that have 100-round magazines.

If only everyone in that movie theater had a gun when the gas and bullets started raining down, this tragedy could have been avoided. If only they’d all had assault rifles. If only Todd Canady had been there.

If only.