A concealed carry instructor in Ohio was charged yesterday for felony reckless homicide and his daughter charged with misdemeanor negligent homicide because a student in a June class they were teaching fired a live round that went through a wall, striking the gun shop owner in the neck and killing him.

Mark Montgomery was indicted Tuesday on one count of felony reckless homicide, while his daughter, Katie Dunham, was indicted on one count of misdemeanor negligent homicide, the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office said. The sheriff’s office said that on June 18, Montgomery was running the class at the KayJay Gun Shop and his daughter was assisting when a student’s gun fired. “We were doing malfunction misfires and we have plastic bullets and we just, I just, we just double checked the bullets and there was a live round in one of the guns and it went through the wall and shot the owner in the neck,” a 911 caller said.

The student who loaded, chambered, and negligently fired the fatal shot has not been named.

It’s very difficult to make any sort of informed comment about the charges when so little information has been publicly shared about the details of the incident.

I’ve personally never done malfunction clearances in a classroom setting. My malfunction clearance drills have all been conducted on a hot range, where a malfunction is staged, the shooter clears the malfunction, and then engages a target with one or two shots.

The instructors and student clearly failed to identify and remove live rounds in an exercise that was supposed to use plastic bullets, but I don’t understand why the instructors alone are facing homicide charges, and the student who fired the fatal shot is not facing any charges at all.