Off-duty cop shoots self in foot — no, really

Considering how much some Texans love their guns, it's surprising that we don't hear about accidental self-shootings more often than we do. But really, you can go for months without a single incident, and then bam — or, we suppose, bang — you get a really good one. The incident in question happened yesterday afternoon at Gay Pontiac on the Gulf Freeway in Dickinson. The victim: an off-duty Harris County Sheriff's Office reserve major and car salesman who took a self-inflicted bullet to the foot. Ouch.

It seems Ronnie Shapiro was talking with fellow salesmen at Gay Pontiac around 2:30 p.m. yesterday with his hands in his pockets, where he was apparently keeping a .380-caliber Kel-Tec. He accidentally pulled the trigger somehow, shooting himself in the foot; Shapiro was LifeFlighted to Memorial Hermann, where he is "very embarrassed, but will be fine," sheriff's spokesman Lt. John Martin told the Chronicle.

The .380 Kel-Tec isn't a gun an officer would carry on duty, Martin said; according to Kel-Tec, it's meant to be a secondary weapon for plainclothes officers. Martin said reserve officers may carry weapons when they're not on duty.