Eight of 47 guns discovered by TSA agents at airports across the country, during the week of Dec. 4-10, 2015

We’ll check in one more time on hunting accidents, to note the decline now that the peak of the season has passed. We were down to just six in the second week of December. But just as we noted during the last installment, there’s no off season for accidentally shooting yourself, family members, or nearby children. Twenty-two people accidentally shot themselves, 12 kids were accidentally shot, and 10 of our original 45 listings ended in fatalities. Three people accidentally fired into the homes of their neighbors, and three accidentally fired guns they were cleaning at the time. Just two accidents involved law enforcement officers and/or members of the military.

All told, it was a pretty unremarkable week, so long as you’re not particularly shocked by double-digit figures for kids being hit, or people being shot to death entirely by accident inside of a 7-day period. Few of our stories were particularly noteworthy, for once. An Arizona man accidentally shot his dog in the mouth while preparing to go to the range. Apparently, preparing to go to the range includes loading and then attempting to unload your weapons, plus a little “dry firing” before you go. But not so much keeping track of whether you’ve loaded or unloaded them, which is something I really recommend making a part of your routine, even if you’re not going to the range. A man in Franklin, Indiana, accidentally fired his gun while walking through a local CVS store. Why? Because his leg itched. That’s it. His leg itched, and he went to scratch it, and then a bullet flew. He offered all sorts of mechanical explanations for how and why he went from itchy leg to deadly projectile flying around inside of a busy store, of course. But the fact remains that there just aren’t that many consumer items that people frequently carry around in their pockets that can accidentally kill someone if your leg itches. Please be considerate of your neighbors, and help keep itchy legs nothing more than a bothersome personal issue, rather than potentially deadly. Thank you.

Finally, our title story comes from Elk Grove, California, where UPS inadvertently delivered (apparently without the supposedly required identity checks, etc.) a .45 caliber revolver to a 15-year-old boy expecting a tablet. Seems you actually can ship firearms via UPS, but delivery is supposed to require proof that the recipient or signatory is at least 21 years old. So much for that one. But hey, at least the kid did the right thing. A lot of kids would probably think getting a .45 is a lot cooler than even a tablet. And not a few adults, too. And who knows? In ten or fifteen years (or possibly ten or fifteen minutes, for that matter), people may well have convinced themselves that the Second Amendment actually includes the phrase “finders, keepers.”