Mother Jones has made a habit of removing my comments, especially when I’m winning the debate (which is always).  I rarely link them since they’re such a rag, but this case is special.  It’s breathless over-drama you could find anywhere about any profession, but this bit caught my eye.

But there were certain people who were difficult. At some point during the day, you would have a gun pointed at you. I had a guy with Parkinson’s, and he had severe muscle tremors. He can’t hold the gun properly, and it jams. He walks off the range, he’s pointing the gun at me, and he’s saying, “Hey, hey, my gun is jammed!” I sidestep the muzzle and say, “Let’s have a look, shall we?” All the while that I am handling it I am saying, “You really shouldn’t be doing that.” And the guy, without missing a beat, says, “It’s all right, the safety’s on the gun.” I pull the slide back and there’s a live round that ejects from the chamber. And I’m thinking, okay, I was a three-pound trigger pull away from getting shot.

[ … ]

There are some good bosses that run these ranges, but for the most part they willingly overlook the fact that this stuff is dangerous. And I’m not just talking about the guns. They’re supposed to properly train people for handling lead, which gets released in large quantities by spent bullets. There’s not really a safe level for lead in your body once you get above five micrograms per deciliter of blood. At the end of the day, you’ve got various things that you have to clean up: the brass shells, paper from the targets, un-burnt powder from the ammunition, little bits of atomized lead. Anything with high enough concentrations of lead is supposed to be put into a canister and treated as hazardous material, but that didn’t always happen.

We’d get tested for lead in our bodies maybe once or twice a year. They would kind of look sideways at you if you asked for the test results. I knew better than that. I just said, “The hell with it.” But the last test that I had, it came back high. I was contacted by the California Department of Public Health, and the guy said, “Uh, why is your lead level so high?”

Some RSO, huh?  He just admitted to contributing to an unsafe range where people muzzle flag others, not following procedure concerning hazardous material protocols, and a host of other problems.

Mother Jones thinks they’ve found some sort of ticking bomb on gun ranges.  Bad, bad places they are.  In reality, they may have done everyone a favor by outing a dishonest, incompetent worker for what he is.  He is a liar and mental pygmy.  Additionally, his managers were guilty of malfeasance.  I don’t go to any ranges like that (and I go to a lot of them).  Every one I go to is safe, clean, well-designed and well-maintained.  The authorities ought to consider putting this guy in prison.

Oh, and Mother Jones still sucks.