What happened to Jake Kovco?

Jake Kovco is a story that never seems to go away.

Did he shoot himself deliberately? I don't think so.

Did someone else kill him? I doubt it.

Did his gun "just sort of go off"? I really doubt that one.

There is no conspiracy. There was no cover up. My thinking is he just fucked up after a long day at the office. It's sad, it's terrible for his family, but it can happen to any one of us. I walk through town every day, and I see people wandering along in a daze and then they step out in front of a bus. I am yet to see anyone hit by a bus like that, but I have seen someone cleaned up by a taxi.

We are not computers. Our brains do wierd things at times, even when we are not fatigued. I had to do an emergency brake last week in the car to avoid hitting another car that turned out in front of me. How many times have I pressed on that brake pedal? Tens of thousands? And you know what happened? My foot hit both the brake and the accelarator at the same time.

I fucked up. But I still stopped in time to not hit the other car.

When I was in the Reserves, we did weapons safety training all the time. It was drilled into us morning, noon and night. Yet I witnessed several people being charged over the years for unauthorised discharges (all with blanks thankfully). No matter how many times we drilled, people still tried to commence the cleaning of the SLR with the magazine still attached. The first thing you do is take the magazine off. Then you cock the weapon to eject any round that might be up the spout. Then you dry fire the action and start stripping it for a clean.

If bozo has left the magazine on, cocking the weapon ejects one round but feeds in another. When they "dry" fire the weapon, it goes off and they shit themselves.

Weapons are dangerous things. They are designed to kill people. They are agnostic - they don't care who they kill. They just kill anyone that they happen to be pointing at when the trigger is pulled. Kovco might have just had a mind blanking episode, done the wrong thing and killed himself.

I'm sure soldiers have been accidentally killing themselves with their own weapons since bits of sharpened flint were attached to sticks. Roman soldiers might have tripped over their togas and stabbed themselves with their swords. I am sure the odd person walked in front of a ballista as it was fired, and copped a large bolt through the head. Others probably got their feet tangled in the ropes of catapults and were hurled into beseiged cities, along with lumps of stone.

Musketeers were notorious for double or treble loading a musket in times of stress, and then blowing themselves up when they tried to fire it.

Crossbowmen must have shot themselves in the foot every now and then when trying to load their weapon. People blunder around weapons just like they commit blunders with their cars, their cement mixers, tractors, chainsaws and showers.

Where I used to work, fatigue was a problem that was taken very seriously, as it was found to be the cause behind a lot of workplace accidents and deaths - and some of those accidents were pretty hugs and cost millions of dollars to fix. People would zone out and then BAM - big crash of one sort or another.

I think Kovco simply zoned out and fucked up in the worst possible way. It really could happen to anyone, including me, except that I don't have a Browning 9mm lying around the house.