Bizarre, Criminal law, Military

Seal Accidentally Kills Himself In Showing Date His Guns

We have yet another tragic case of an individual killed by fooling around with a loaded gun. In this case it was one of the most highly trained military service members, Navy Seal Petty Officer 3rd Class Gene “Geno” Clayont, Jr. Police report that Clayont returned from a bar with a woman and was showing her his guns when he placed a gun to his head that he thought was empty and pulled the trigger.

We have seen a horrible line of such cases. Yet, even the best trained individuals, continue to do this reckless type of conduct with weapons. The military treats any individual who points an unloaded gun at someone else as a serious offense for this reason.

Recently, I learned that this senseless accident claimed the life of former Ohio Representative Clement Laird Vallandigham. Vallandigham is well known to civil libertarians as the leader of the Copperhead faction of anti-war Democrats who opposed the American Civil War and was unconstitutionally arrested on the orders of Abraham Lincoln. He has accused “King Lincoln” of “crushing out liberty and erecting a despotism.” In 1864, the Supreme Court ruled that it had no power to issue a writ of habeas corpus to a military commission (Ex parte Vallandigham, 1 Wallace, 243).

What I did not know until recently is that Vallandigham, 50, died in 1871 in Lebanon, Ohio, when he was trying to demonstrate a defense for his claim in a murder case. Vallandigham was showing his defense team how he intended to show that the victim in the case could have shot himself by simply drawing a pistol from a pocket while in a kneeling position. He proved the point when he proceeded to put a bullet in his own head from what he thought was an unloaded gun. However, his demonstration worked. His client, Thomas McGehan, was acquitted.

Source: Washington Post

37 thoughts on “Seal Accidentally Kills Himself In Showing Date His Guns”

  1. Not a gun owner and not from a gun owning family, but even I know you treat all guns as if loaded.

    Interestingly, there’s an article in the New York Times today about a bb guns being made nowadays that look like Glocks.

    A kid in Brownsville, TX was killed when he pointed his BB gun at a policeman. His weapon was a .177-caliber, carbon dioxide-powered gun which looks exactly like a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. Not surprisingly, this is a big problem in Texas.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/us/teenagers-death-a-reminder-of-gun-replicas-dangers.html?hpw

  2. “I loathe when the term “accidental” is used for incidents like this. “Inevitable” would be a better term.” (The Moar You Know)

    Truth

  3. Russian Roulette only works with a revolver. When the chump uses a gun with a clip in it we call it Polish Roulette and when the act is witnessed by the girlfriend only, we call it suspicious. Of course that is just the Fifth Graders talking.

  4. Frankly, when I was in college a friend of mine was showing off his new deer rifle to another friend. It was unloaded of course, because he ‘said’ it was not loaded. The friend snapped the trigger and the round in the chamber blew a hole in the wall and the clapboard on the outside departed the side of the house.

    Fortunately, there were no injuries, except for that clapboard.

  6. I’m a gun owner. I loathe when the term “accidental” is used for incidents like this. “Inevitable” would be a better term. You don’t point a gun at anyone you’re not planning on killing, yourself included.

  7. OS – I have personal experience that rule #1 is not fully correct, it should read:
    All guns are _always_ loaded.

    I completely unloaded a cheap .22 semi-auto after some can plinking, worked the action a couple of times, stuck my finger into the breech & did not feel a shell, worked the action again & pulled the trigger – BANG!

    Because I was following rule 2 the bullet went into the ground at my feet. I have read too many stories of people who knew they had an unloaded gun when they shot something/one they did not intend to.

  8. I’d bet that’s the last time that woman lets herself get picked up at a bar.

  9. This is another rule I know is familiar to Capt. Erb::

    “Eight hours from bottle to throttle.”

    Let’s add trigger finger to that rule as well. Clearly not observed in this case.

  10. “Police report that Clayont returned from a bar with a woman and was showing her his guns when he placed a gun to his head that he thought was empty and pulled the trigger.”

    This is a tragic story. I’d assume that the gun wasn’t the only thing that was loaded.

  14. The significant element here seems to be the phrase “returned from a bar”. All the gun safety rules in the world are worthless if someone is drunk. New rule: Don’t drink and draw (your gun).

  15. Well, another sure winner for the 2012 Darwin awards. Think that a few drinks may have played a part?

  16. For those contemplating owning or using a firearm, there are a few basic rules that must be observed, and obeyed.

    1) All guns are loaded unless proven otherwise.
    2) When firing a gun, know where the round will end up if it misses its target.
    3) All targets must be positively identified.
    4) If it is alive, be prepared to kill it if you pull the trigger.
    5) See rules One through Four.

    If those simple rules were observed, we would not be having these conversations.

  17. What Frankly said.

    Training is one thing. Using it is another. Robert Heinlein’s character, Lazarus Long, had an observation appropriate for the occasion:

    Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

    Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

  18. As I understand it, he had just finished BUD/S (the initial training phase for SEALs) — he would have been in great physical condition, but not necessarily “highly trained” in the sense of being ready for combat. It appears that he removed the magazine, but forgot that there was a round in the chamber. Sorry to hear about it, but there were multiple levels of stupidity involved.

  19. That’s four accidental shootings reported on this blog in the last 30 days or so. At least two and maybe three have resulted in deaths. Certainly the claim that this SEAL had inadequate gun handling training won’t hold. I guess as with the recent incident of the Amish girl’s death, it’s just another accident. Since these weren’t murders or campus attacks or random violence or road rage or domestic violence cases but merely accidents, do Petty Officer Clayont and the Amish girl get do-overs?

  20. WHat surprises me is that someone who would do this would be killed by a bullet to the brain, it seems it is an organ they were not using to begin with.

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