Eight of 34 guns discovered by TSA agents at airports around the country last week.

Eight of 34 guns discovered by TSA agents at airports around the country last week.

Just your basic, routine, 40+ GunFAIL events week. Though once again, the hunting season is responsible for about a quarter of those listed. I count 11 clear hunting accidents this past week, two more that came in as late reports from prior weeks, plus one more that isn't as clearly labeled a hunting accident, but was being investigated by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, ordinarily a pretty clear indication that it's hunting-related. That brings the total for this installment of GunFAIL to 14.

If we make a similar assumption, we find a total of four accidents occurring while someone was cleaning a still-loaded gun. There are three clear examples, plus one more that happened while the owner was "breaking down" his gun, usually a prelude to cleaning. Though again, it must be admitted that unloading a gun is usually a prelude to breaking it down, so clearly not everything is working as it should be, and maybe I assume too much.

Five "home invasion" shootings are among the entries this week, plus one that fell from the owner's pocket and shot his wife, one that shot its brand new owner immediately following its purchase, and one used to shoot yet another suspected "intruder" who turned out to be the gun owner's caretaker who'd come to check on him.

Continuing the Christmas shopping season's hottest trend, another gun carrier has accidentally discharged his weapon while out at the stores, this time shooting himself in the parking lot outside a Lowe's home improvement store in Pocatello, ID.

The child victims of GunFAIL were mercifully few last week. Just five were found, ages 5, 15, 15, 16 and 17. Many of you have, no doubt, by now become aware of the story of the 3-year-old killed in Indianapolis on Saturday. That particular tragedy does not go unrecognized, but it won't be included until our next installment.

In our continuing count of guns found in schools, I found stories last week from: Toledo, OH; Durham, NC; Camden, SC; Winter Garden, FL (where at least one Daily Kos reader I know of has a child in attendance); Omaha, NE, and; San Francisco, CA.

On a slightly more positive note, I thought you might find it interesting to know that our military, which has some considerable experience with firearms and which generally frowns on members carrying arms in the routine course of business on base, has taken on one more precaution for its members: private gun ownership mentoring. Why? "The idea for this was to put together some form of mentorship in terms of privately owned weapons due to the numbers in trends that the Army is seeing with soldiers injuring themselves with weapons they purchased," said a spokesman. Glad to see the Army keeping an eye on reality, and being willing to address a real world problem, rather than relying on some kind of Invisible Hand of Freedom to do it for them.

Without further ado, this week's installment, below the fold.