NRA gun safety instructor Michael Phillips, 32, experienced something of a teachable moment in class when he accidentally shot one of his students this week in Orlando.
Robert Frauman Jr., 50, was shot in the foot during an NRA class for certification for a concealed weapon. The course was being taught at the Summit Church and the bullet first passed through a table. The Church has indicated that it will not be holding firearms classes in the future.
Notably, the NRA has a rule against bringing ammunition into such classes. Orlando has a history of all-too-real gun safety courses. In 2004, a DEA agent was showing kids how to confirm that a gun was unloaded when he shot himself in the thigh.
Source: Orlando Sentinel
tomdarch
I agree in general with your theory (since who can be sure of what goes on the head of a religious fanatic).
If he wants the royal family out, though, poking the wasp nest of the USA seems to be counter productive. I would think his efforts would be concentrated on the royals who are the real barrier to his goal of a pure and inviolate Mecca.
It seems a few operatives slipping in with the multitudes that arrive for the annual pilgramige could do the job, if eliminating the royals were his only goal.
It seems to me that he is more interested in demonizing and eliminating the crusaders than in perfecting the holy land. Much as the religous fanatics here are more interested in demonizing and eliminating (politically, not literally – usually) any who do not share their vision of a perfect America.
If guns were dangerous, than only dangerous people would have guns.
The NRA is always saying that guns don’t kill people, but killers do… and that everyone should get gun safety classes to know how to handle a firearm… like these experts, I assume.
… in the end on that clear September morning we, the citizens of this country were hanging out there and no one, not the Administration, not the clandestine services, not the military, no one, had our backs …. why? (rhetorical)
I have to run out to dinner but the ideas everyone has contributed are appreciated.
I believe, that at its core, if we ever do find out the truth, Buckeye’s statement will be closer to the reality of it all than anyone now imagines:
“I can’t find it anywhere, but Ross Perot once made a comment about trying to deal with Arabs being the most convoluted negotiations a Westerner can undertake.”
TomDArch:
I think his ambitions are a bit more expansive than just removing the house of Saud.
You forgot the link to the ha ha video of the DEA agent
I was going to comment on how this unfortunate event points out that the NRA needs to quit being a tinfoil-hat, right-wing political organization and go back to it’s core of teaching safety classes… (“concealed-carry” and “in a church” are other issues)
But…
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Buckeye 1, August 13, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Blouise
Start writing! I don’t know if bin Laden is a useful tool. He seems to want to rid S.A. of all non-muslims and I’m not sure that’s what the rulers want, or can afford.
I can’t find it, but I read somewhere that the Saudis were furious with bin Laden about the WTC fiasco, just as the Germans were furious with Japan for their precipitate action at Pearl Harbor.
b.L. seems more like a loose cannon than an effective tool. An al Qaeda operative tried to blow up one of the royal family just last September. I don’t know if the jet fighters S.A. just bought from us is for use against Iran or al Queda – maybe both.
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Are people really not familiar with Osama bin Laden’s core goal? Really? The overly simplified summary of ObL’s main goal is to overthrow the current Saudi government and make it MORE conservatively religious. He, essentially, wants to turn Saudi Arabia into what Afghanistan was under the rule of the Taliban. Everything else is a means to that end.
From the viewpoint of many conservative Sunnis, the raison d’etre for the nation-state of Saudi Arabia is to protect the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. You might think of Saudi Arabia as roughly equivalent to Vatican City. When the government of Saudi Arabia allowed foreign/infidel troops into the country in 1990 during the first Iraq invasion, that was the turning point for him. Prior to that, he was a sort-of philanthropist, and became generally militant while driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. In 1990, when the Saudi government rebuffed the offers of mujahadeen like bin Laden to protect the kingdom, and instead, turned to the US/Western militaries to deal with Iraq, that turned bin Laden against the Saudi government. In order to try to drive the “infidels” off of Saudi territory, he began attacks on western targets, like the 1993 WTC bombing, but these were simply means to the ends of “reforming” Saudi Arabia.
Within Saudi Arabia, he became a political enemy of the ruling family, believing them to have fundamentally failed in their responsibility to protect the holy cities. This caused him to be exiled to Sudan in 1992. He continued his conflict with the Saudi royal family from Sudan. In 1996, under pressure from S.A., the government of Egypt and the US, he had to leave Sudan, and went to Afghanistan, where he focused his efforts on attacking the west.
But in the end, wherever in Pakistan he’s hiding, his dream is to have a triumphant return to a purified, ever-more puritanical Saudi Arabia, free from foreign infidels.
I guess it’s hard for us Americans to realize that we aren’t the most important people in his world…