Man taking selfies with gun fatally shoots himself, police say
Technically Incorrect: A man and his girlfriend in Washington state are taking selfies with a gun. For one, the man thought the gun was unloaded. It wasn't.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
Selfies with guns are never a good idea.
Perhaps it began as fun.
In Concrete, Washington, a 43-year-old man and his girlfriend were taking selfies while holding a gun.
Chief Chad Clark of the Skagit County Sheriff's Office confirmed to me that the couple had been taking the photos periodically throughout Sunday.
He confirmed that the girlfriend said they had been taking bullets out of the gun and putting them back in.
The last selfie proved to be fatal. A bullet hadn't been removed. The man accidentally shot himself dead.
The sheriff's office hasn't released the identity of the man, but the death is being investigated as accidental.
This isn't the first ever reported fatality with selfies, nor with selfies and guns.
When it comes to selfies, eight deaths have been reported of people while taking them this year alone.
As for selfies with guns, in September a Houston teen who was about to start college died while holding a gun and taking a selfie. Previously, a woman in Russia was also said to have been taking a selfie while holding a gun and shot herself in the head.
There's an extremely painful irony in the notion that people are dying due to the need to take selfies to prove how bountifully they are living life. One study suggested young women spend five hours a week taking selfies.
It's as if we have to prove how interesting we are to others in order to believe we are ourselves.
As for taking selfies with guns, what does it show? That we're cool? That we're brave? That we're daring?
It has come to the point where the Russian government had to issue a guide to discourage people from taking dangerous selfies. Included in that guide: don't take selfies with guns.
Somebody, somewhere, though will always think it's a good idea.