The Shocking Truth About Gun Violence (By Dogs)
The debate about guns and gun control has heated up recently due to a previously unimaginable series of terrible and tragic shootings. Regardless of what side of the debate they're on, there's always someone out there with a pocket full of statistics ready to be tossed out during an argument. If you have a bunch of numbers that say people are less safe living in an area with a lot of guns, someone else will have a completely contradictory set of numbers that say all those same guns in that same area have prevented no less than five alien invasions, and shut up because you can't prove that didn't happen.
Through the messy cluster of all the cold, soulless numbers that represent lives forever altered by a gun, there's one startling and important statistic that's always left out of every gun control debate: Almost every year, one person is shot by a dog. That's one too many, mostly because of the part about how it's a dog doing the shooting. That should happen roughly zero times, forever. And yet, it happens a lot.
"Sure, keep all the bacon to yourselves. See what happens."
In late February of this year, a dog in Florida kicked a gun laying on the floor of its owner's truck, setting it off and shooting the guy in the leg.
In September 2012, a hunter from France had his hand blown off after his dog pulled the trigger.
If dogs aren't firing at you directly, they're taking a blind chance and firing bullets into your home, like a dog in Massachusetts did recently.
It was a dog mafia trot-by. The house had three cats.
Three instances would be more than enough evidence to back up our claim, but Google didn't stop giving us examples.
2011. 2010. 2009. 2008. 2007. All of them had a story about a dog that may have been both paper trained and combat trained.
1996. 1982. 1981. 1978. 1977. 1961. 1959. 1945. 1937.
And our research indicates that this trend may go back even further.
The oldest case we've found dates back to 1928 -- the same year Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. We're not saying there's a connection, but isn't it suspicious how the moment we found a way to live longer dogs started shooting at us?
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre famously said, "The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." What LaPierre failed to mention is that the good guy with a gun probably has a dog, and that dog is going to shoot the good guy before he can do good. He won't even see it coming. Who would suspect man's best friend? For his sake -- and, ultimately, ours -- that good guy better not brandish his gun around his dog while the air is crisp and cool, because for some reason every single story we've linked to in this article happened during winter or fall. So if you're showing your dog your gun in mid-February, you're just asking to get shot.
Actually, you won't even have to ask; your dog's going to shoot you anyway. History says so. If it doesn't shoot you, your dog will turn your gun on its own kind, like in 1947, when a dog shot another dog. It's the perfect crime -- no fingerprints, just adorable paws stained with a blood so thick it'll never wash off no matter how many times those trigger-happy pooches lick themselves. This debate will rage for a long time to come, but we're hoping that the proliferation of this statistic will put an end to dogs shooting people before the idea spreads to another animal.
Shit.
