The dumbeth here must be off the charts:
The FBI is investigating after a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service was killed at a gun range at a correctional facility in Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the shooting happened at the firing range at the Federal Correctional Institutional in Phoenix, located near Pioneer Road and Interstate 17 in north Phoenix. Aimee Arthur-Wastell, spokesperson with the FBOP, said the range was being used by multiple federal agencies at the time.
The FBI specified that the agent was there for “routine” training when they were killed, but didn’t offer specifics as to how the agent was killed or if anyone was in custody.
According to Phoenix police, officers who responded to the area found a person shot, later determined to be the IRS agent. The agent was taken to a hospital with serious injuries. It wasn’t immediately clear if the agent died en route or at the hospital.
According to Arthur-Wastell, no FBOP or firing range employees were injured.
“To preserve the integrity and capabilities of the investigation, details of the ongoing process will not be released,” the FBI said in a statement.
Yeah, I bet.
You wonder just how many of Jeff Cooper’s rules were ignored here. Then again, it only takes one.
You’d like to think that federal firearms facilities take at least as much care on observing range safety procedures as the average mom-and-pop shooting range in Texas does, but given how the rest of the federal government is run these days, that’s no sure thing.
It also brings up the question of just why the IRS needs its own armed agents in the first place. Are there not enough armed agents in other branches of the federal government to provide muscle for the IRS on the (theoretically rare) occasions it’s required?
Feel free to share your own “the agent was investigating Hunter Biden and/or Hillary Clinton” jokes in the comments below.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“The FBI specified that the agent was there for “routine” training when they were killed,”
Now I’m confused. I thought only one revenues was killed.
“It also brings up the question of just why the IRS needs its own armed agents in the first place.”
Indeed it does. And not just the IRS. The whole federal government is rotten with armed “agents”.
Seems like a good time to revisit this oldie but goodie from 15+ years back involving a DEA agent in a High School classroom:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vfONckOPyaI&pp=ygUeQ29wIHNob290cyBoaW1zZWxmIGZsb3JpZGEgZGVh
I’ve seen a bunch of non-military government agencies run ranges during my military career. I’ve observed the FBI on several occasions, and they were spotty as hell… One range was run in a very professional manner, completely unobjectionable. Exemplary, even. The others? Ranged from “slightly less professional” to “Holy f*ck, call range control and get someone out here before they kill someone…” I suspect it has a lot to do with the people running the range.
Weirdly, the most professionally-run range I’ve ever seen on a military base, run by outsiders? Swiss consulate, running the annual range that expat Swiss of military age used to have to do. That one was interesting, to say the least; drove by the range one weekend, and the Swiss flag is flying on it while a bunch of people were shooting what sure looked like StG57s and K-31s from a distance… I never got a good explanation on that one, and wasn’t able to find out much past “The consulate does this every couple of years for expats…”
Only 86,999 more to go.
“You’d like to think that federal firearms facilities take at least as much care on observing range safety procedures as the average mom-and-pop shooting range in Texas does . . .”
I think they take at least as much care as they do on any federal operation. In other words, expect more like this in the future from the feds.
“You’d like to think that federal firearms facilities take at least as much care on observing range safety procedures as the average mom-and-pop shooting range in Texas does . . .”
NOPE! The mom and pop operations have personal liability. Feds have, well, federal liability, i.e. none.
Nobody’s even going to loose their job. Watch.
See site
At least no *innocent* people were harmed.
Re the first comment up top: Pronouns, RC. Pronouns.
And does anyone have the betting line odds yet on whether a shoot house was involved?
Seems to me to be a lot more likely for one of those to get out of hand than a linear “ready on the left…” qual range.
Actually, you have to violate two of the rules for someone to get hurt. That is the point.
@FM,
You’d be really surprised at how easily even the simplest range can result in a fatality. You don’t need a “shoot house”, you just need epic dumbf*ckery by people who have no familiarity with weapons.
The one range fatality that I was relatively close to happened due to something so damn stupid that it breaks your heart to contemplate it. Guy I knew, who’d done dozens of things far more dangerous than that zero range for the M16…? He died because someone else dropped the ball and failed to clear a weapon coming off the range from someone who’d had some kind of medical incident while shooting. The weapon was carried up to the range tower, idiots assumed it had been cleared, someone pulled a trigger, boom… Shot my friend in the face. There’s no telling what happened to that IRS agent, really.
“If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons…”
“[A] special agent with the Internal Revenue Service was killed at a gun range.”
Was he killed with an F-15 or a nuclear weapon?
“‘To preserve the integrity and capabilities of the investigation, details of the ongoing process will not be released,” the FBI said in a statement.‘“
IOW, he was shot by an AA-hire black female and for political reasons, details of the investigation have to be suppressed.
“Seems like a good time to revisit this oldie but goodie from 15+ years back involving a DEA agent in a High School classroom:”
In the short span of 15+ years, they have progressed from shooting themselves to shooting each other. This brings me great hope that 15+ years hence a DEI airperson piloting an F-15 with a nuclear weapon will receive orders to bomb NRA’s headquarters and immolate Washington D.C. instead.
I was a federal firearms instructor between 1990 and 2011 and saw many incidents that could have resulted in injury or death but usually only resulted in rounds going into the ground or a wall or a bumper of a car. People under stress (worrying if they were going to qualify or not) do stupid things like pointing a gun at someone or themselves in a moment of frustration. I witnessed our deputy chief fire rounds over the berm because her bad grip and lack of hand strength couldn’t handle the recoil of .40 caliber rounds in her Glock 23. We took her gun away and she never carried again. That same woman, 20 years earlier, tried to shoot plus p ammo out of a Lady Smith (her personally purchased weapon of choice). When the gun stopped functioning, but still had live ammo in it, she peered down the barrel of the gun to try to determine why it had stopped functioning. Her gun had literally shaken apart and the cylinder ended up laying in the mud at her feet.