LOL u huntin? Me 2 where u @? Hard 2 txt w 50 cal LOL! OMFG just #2a myself! 911! GunFAIL CLXVII

As predicted, the hunting GunFAIL numbers continue to mount. Not that it’s a very difficult thing to predict, of course. All at once, thousands of people with thousands of guns converge on pretty much the same areas, trying to shoot the same things, from different hiding spots. There’s going to be GunFAIL. Two weeks ago, when we first took note of the approaching hunting season, there were five accidents to report. Then seven. This week, it’s up to eight, and the count is still rising, which you’ll see reflected in our next GunFAIL post.

Still, by far the biggest numbers come in from people accidentally shooting themselves, as is the case every week. This time around, self-inflicted gunshot wounds accounted for 23 of the 42 accidents originally listed, with family members and significant others responsible for another four accidents. Twelve kids were accidentally shot, and seven people accidentally fired guns they were cleaning, repairing, or loading/unloading.

There were two startling stories of bystanders accidentally shot during the week, one by a police officer in Washington, DC who was responding to a knife-wielding suspect in a stabbing, which is perhaps understandable, and one by a bail bondsman who decided to try to effect a capture at a McDonald’s drive-through, which is … less understandable. Yeah, you might have forgotten about those “good guys with guns” roaming around: The bail bondsmen!

Also of some note: A Louisiana man insisted on arming himself while doing some household vacuuming. Do I really need to tell you the rest of the story?

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, it looks like all the rules of safe gun handling were broken at an estate sale at which a 62-year-old woman was accidentally shot in the face by one of the employees of the auctioneer running the sale. I’m sure the preference is for guns being offered for sale at auction to be unloaded, but for whatever reason, this one wasn’t. And even though it was correctly identified as such, it ended up getting passed between two people in such a way that the muzzle was pointed at the face of a patron when the employee handling it said it "just went off in my hands." Not good.

Lastly, there’s the incident inspiring this week’s post title. As fond as gun enthusiasts are of comparing guns to cars when it comes to accidents, and as much as I resist the comparison, I don’t think I’d be conceding any ground if I agreed that neither driving nor shooting are things you should intermingle with texting. But maybe that’s just me being a Nanny State-er, again. I would have thought such a rule would and could go without saying. And that may yet be the case, so long as I present this one example to you, and invite you to draw your own conclusions.

So we’ll let things lie there, and move on to presenting today’s full list.