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In September of last year, police in Lakewood, Colorado were called to a home after firemen had been summoned there earlier and discovered a bullet hole in a basement water pipe.

The 69-year-old homeowner told the cops he'd been firing his pistol in the basement when a round accidentally punctured the pipe. Oops! Well, don't a lot of people practice shooting in the basement?

The guy was arrested and given a summons for illegal discharge of a firearm.

These kinds of stories crop up every day. A woman in Florida shot herself in the thigh while waiting for an order of McNuggets in the drive-through line. She said she reached into her purse and grabbed hold of the .45-calibre semi-automatic to "check it" when it discharged. "I didn't even get my food," she said later. "I was starving."

Cops impounded the weapon because it belongs to her boyfriend, not to her. The story didn't say why she was packing heat at McDonald's. Maybe she didn't know the only chicken they serve is already dead.

Also in Florida, cops were called to a medical center in Fort Walton Beach to interview a guy who showed up with a gunshot wound to his hand. He told them he'd attempted to pull his Berretta out of his back pocket when the hammer got caught in a hole in the fabric, and the subsequent discharge sent a slug through his right hand just below the pinky.

But just think -- it could have turned out a lot worse if he'd forgotten the weapon was in his back pocket and sat on it.

A guy in Denton, Texas was visiting a friend and they decided to go out drinking. The visitor left his pistol at the friend's house while they went to the bar, which does show a bit of restraint and caution.

However, when they returned, presumably under the influence, all caution was thrown to the wind. "Let me show you how I sleep with this thing," the visitor said to his host, as he sat in a chair unloading the weapon. The demonstration was accompanied by a loud report and resulted in an entry wound to his groin and an exit wound out the back of his leg.

John Lennon wrote that "Happiness is a warm gun," but I hope for his sake that this guy finds another human to sleep with instead of a roscoe, and that he stows the hardware in a drawer somewhere at night from now on.

And finally, a gun owner in Oklahoma shot himself in the leg after his dog jumped into his lap, causing him to inadvertently fire his .22 pistol which he just happened to be holding at the time.

That just goes to show, guns don't shoot people in the leg, Fido does.

Bad dog!

I found all these news items on the blog at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence website, and there are plenty more where they came from.