A few days ago, a man shot himself in his car outside of a shooting range. This happened at Red's in Pflugerville, Texas.

A guy in the parking lot saw the man slumped over in his car and went to see what's up. He found the guy was dead. The cops came out and found his gun and cleaning kit in the car. The kit was on the passenger seat. No word on where exactly the gun was. The dead guy was in the driver's seat.

The coroner has not yet ruled if this is an accidental death or a suicide.

I call suicide. You can't properly clean a loaded gun. You have to clean the breech and you can't do that with a bullet in it. Maybe it was a revolver. Well, you can't clean the cylinder with a bullet in it. Even if you tried, it'd be a piss poor job and you'd gunk up your ammo. People really don't clean loaded guns. I have a theory but, in a minute.

Maybe he was about to clean it and didn't know it was loaded. He was at the range shooting his gun. This isn't some random gun he came upon by chance. He knew he had bullets in it just a few minutes before going to his car. He should have known if he shot all those bullets. The ranges I've been to have rules against walking up to and away from the firing line with a loaded gun. You load, shoot and unload at the line. Checking to see if it's loaded is also step one to cleaning a gun.

And who cleans their gun in their car at the range? Either do it in the range (if they allow it) or do it at home. And I don't wanna hear it was his self defense gun and he wanted it clean if he had to use it between the range and home. A gun can be some damn dirty and still work fine.

My theory is that most of the so called accidental shootings that happen when someone is supposedly cleaning their gun are bogus. It's a lie made to cover until the cops and courts can sort out what really happened. The life insurance may not pay on a suicide so no one wants to say right off that it is. And lets not embarrass the family by announcing first thing that Daddy just killed himself, on purpose. Maybe the couple was fighting and things got heated. One shot the other and then got out the cleaning kit to cover their crime. "I don't know what happened, officer. I was just cleaning it and it went off." Bull crap. I know what happened. You got pissed and shot the old bird. Or maybe you were horse playing and really did accidentally shoot your kid. It didn't happen as a cleaning accident though. It happened because you were being a dumb ass horsing around like you're not supposed to.

My guns don't go off while I'm cleaning them because they're not loaded. Mine don't "just go off" any time. Not even the loaded ones. The chances of a firing pin moving forward to strike a primer with out the trigger being pulled are so slim; I'm telling you, most of these accidental shootings are not a firearm malfunction. They're a user malfunction.

I hate the term accidental shooting. Use negligent discharge from here on out.

I could grow to love the term accidental shooting if it saved me a few years in prison and negligence just sounds too much like a civil suit is still possible.

If the guy drove to the range with the cleaning kit beside him from the moment he left the driveway is it relevant to whether or not he was negligent or extemely purposeful?