You know when you are at a talk and it turns out that no one has brought a laser pointer or the one that is available is not working? If New York state’s director of homeland security is the speaker, this might be a good time to get the hell out of the room.
Jerome M. Hauer, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s director of homeland security, took out his handgun and used the laser sighting device attached to the barrel as a pointer in a presentation to a foreign delegation, according to public officials.
…These officials, one of whom claimed to be an eyewitness, said that three Swedish emergency managers in the delegation were rattled when the gun’s laser tracked across one of their heads before Hauer found the map of New York, at which he wanted to point.
…According to one person who witnessed the scene in the conference room, which has mid-wall-to-ceiling windows so that people can see into the meeting space, two people opposite Hauer at the table moved quickly out of the line of the laser when he brought out the gun.
But being the head of the state’s homeland security office, he must have a steady hand, no? No.
Hauer, commissioner of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, was disabled by a stroke a few years ago and can be unsteady. He isn’t a law enforcement official. He carries the loaded 9-millimeter Glock in a holster into state buildings, an apparent violation of state law barring state employees from bringing weapons to the workplace, several witnesses say. [My italics-MS]
You can’t make this stuff up.
/Channeling NRA logic
Basic firearm security FAIL: never point a gun at someone you don’t want to shoot.
Also: carrying a gun into a government building? Terrorist! Call Homeland Security! Wait …
I give him points for thinking outside the box…. and then minus a bazillion points for ZOMG EPIC FAIL.
Speaking as someone who’s never so much as handled a real pistol -- aren’t the laser sights detachable? Why not just unclip it from the gun?
Doing a quick search for “detachable handgun laser sights” got many hits, but that doesn’t prove ALL laser sights are detachable. But you’re not thinking like an NRA member -- what if he detached it and then twenty Al Qaeda terrorists burst into the room? How would he shoot them all? See? Liberals have NO IDEA what kinds of scenarios all Real Americans have to be prepared for!
😉
Laser sights (on handguns anyway) are usually built into the handgrip or frame of a firearm (and not the barrel, as stated in the article) because you normally have to squeeze a small button on the handgrip to activate them (they’re not on all the time since the battery would never last).
If you were absolutely determined to use one as a laser pointer, what you could do is field strip the firearm and remove the slide & barrel rendering it inoperable.
You’d still look pretty stupid though.
Well, or at least visibly and verifiedly unload the fucking thing. Cock, lock, and look, buddy. Cock, lock, and look. Mag out, chamber empty, slide back and locked, NOW it’s a laser pointer, if you’re, y’know, in THAT MUCH NEED of a laser pointer.
Your country is a nightmare, USans. A long-running, truly spectacularly psychedelic nightmare.
Laser pointers don’t kill people, people kill people. /sarcasm
Far too cute to be spontaneous.
Probably down at the shooting range one day when somebody said, “Look at this, I could use my laser sights as a pointer during a lecture.”
Hauer probably thought to himself, “I might try that one day, just for the fun of it.”
Now he has tried it.
… and then there’s this genius:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/08/lawmaker-fires-handgun-in-kentucky-capitol-i-am-a-gun-owner-it-happens/