Seeing as I don’t live in America and thus wasn’t immediately given an AR-15 the moment I could spell ‘semi-automatic’, I am not an expert on gun safety. I’m not going to tell anyone in law enforcement what they should be doing with theirs (except maybe to stop shooting unarmed minorities, but hey).
If I was forced to give any advice on the issue, I would say that – at the very minimum – you should probably not do the following: have a gun on you when you’re drunk. If you do, I would suggest that you maybe avoid having a round in the chamber of that gun. If you simply must do both of those, I would recommend that you at least don’t have the safety off on that gun. If you absolutely insist on doing all of those things, I would thoroughly recommend that you don’t a) have the gun tucked into the waistband of your pants and b) do a backflip in a crowded bar.
This might seem like common sense to some people, but I think it might have come in handy if I had told it to the FBI agent who accidentally shot a patron at a bar in Denver, Colorado on Saturday night.
The man, identified by CBS News as FBI agent Chase Bishop, was caught on video dancing his little pants off, doing a backflip, scrambling to pick up the gun that flew out of his pants before doing ‘my bad’ hands and walking off because he accidentally fired the weapon into a person. Not a great look, to be honest.
This @FBI agent was dancing at a Denver bar on Saturday night. Did a back flip, gun falls. He picks it up and a round is fired, hitting a man (he’ll be ok.) @DenverPolice investigating. #9News pic.twitter.com/MwV1WpNzAQ
— Ryan Haarer (@RyanHaarer) June 3, 2018
Video taken from another angle has audio that captures the astonishingly mild surprise of the patrons after the gun goes off.
The video that shows an FBI agent’s gun discharging in a Denver nightclub last night: pic.twitter.com/63zl2spVCt
— Deborah Takahara (@debtakahara) June 3, 2018
Witness Cara Chancellor recounted to Oklahoma newspaper Stillwater News Press the immediate aftermath of the incident, which is hilarious and which we are thankfully allowed to laugh at because the guy was fine:
“Everyone was like, ‘Holy s***, is that a gun?’” she said. “He pulled the trigger when he grabbed it and we see this flash…It sounded like a firecracker.”
Chancellor said the DJ stopped the music for a moment to ask if everyone was okay then started it up again. It took a few moments for anyone to realize someone had been hit by the bullet.
Chancellor says that the appearance of Bishop just walking off and not checking on the victim was pretty true of the situation:
Chancellor says she was focused on the man who was shot and her eyes didn’t follow the man with the gun. But she didn’t see him check on the man he shot.
“He just peaced out,” she said. “The guy he shot was directly in front of him, about 10-15 feet away. He had to have seen him.”
The dude who got shot took it pretty well, she said:
“He was drunk,” she said. “He was like ‘I’m all good,’ as they were loading him in the ambulance.”
Mile High Spirits, the distillery and tasting room at which the shooting happened, released an absolutely surreal statement that neatly transitions from talking about the quality of their product to being like ‘oh hey, an FBI agent brought a fucking gun onto the d-floor’:
At Mile High Spirits, we pride ourselves on being a craft distillery with high-quality products and an engaging customer experience, in a fun and safe atmosphere. It is shocking that the only shooting to ever occur at our establishment came about as a result of an FBI agent entering our distillery tasting room carrying a loaded firearm without our knowledge, in violation of our rules. As a result of his misconduct, one of our innocent patrons was shot.
They finished the statement by saying that they hope the dude gets better soon and that he will be comped for drinks for life, which seems more like something the FBI should be paying for:
The whole team at Mile High Spirits is praying for the victim’s quick recovery, and he’s welcome at Mile High Spirits to enjoy complimentary drinks forever.
In conclusion:
