Thankfully, no one was hurt when beta politicians decided to cosplay with guns, which is quite a miracle when you really understand what a day at the range looks like with people like Adam Kinzinger and Senate candidate Lucas Kunce running the show. (Kunce is the Missouri Democrat challenging Josh Hawley in this year’s election.)

Take a look at the images below, shared to X by Kunce:

If you notice, the last image shows Kunce bandaging up the bloodied arm of local reporter Ryan Gamboa after Gamboa was hit by bullet fragments. Here’s what happened, per an obsequious report at The Kansas City Star:

A bullet fragment struck a TV reporter at a shooting range during a campaign event on Tuesday for U.S. Senate candidate Lucas Kunce, who provided first aid to the journalist.

Kunce, a Democrat, was at a private residence near Holt north of Kansas City with former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, when a fragment appeared to have ricocheted off a target. Kunce was shooting an AR-15 at the time, and was the only person shooting when the injury occurred.

Since Gamboa wasn’t shot but merely hit by a ricocheting projectile (bullet or fragment of the bullet), he had to have been really close to the target area while people were shooting. Is Gamboa just a total moron who ignored (or didn’t know) basic gun safety precautions and wandered downrange, and all the other people somehow didn’t think to stop shooting? Maybe, but if you scroll back to the first image, you’ll see how close these goobers were to the targets.

I mean what is that, a whopping 15 feet? Why are the targets so close? If you look at Kinzinger, he’s got his finger on the trigger actually shooting from that distance—ignorant and irresponsible behavior like this is exactly why Gamboa was hit with a bullet fragment!

What’s even more ludicrous is that Kinzinger is actually looking through a magnified optic, or a “scope” to find his target—I laughed out loud upon seeing that.

For the reader who’s not exactly well-versed in guns, this is like using binoculars to spot an object you can clearly see with your naked-eye—as in, it’s completely unnecessary. I don’t mean using the need to use magnification to read a small-font book title on a shelf from far away, or look at the detail of a family photo from across the room, but using a tool to zoom in on something that is very clearly visible. If we the image viewers can see the targets from where we sit on the other end of the computer or smartphone screen, there’s no way Kinzinger needed a scope to spot them. Seriously, what a doofus.

Then, a gun on a bipod on a table to hit targets that close? This is either a production set, or what people who don’t ever shoot guns think a “range” day looks like. Bipods are used for long-range shooting to steady the firearm, and no normal person would ever use one to hit a couple of 2-liter Coke bottles five yards away.

Now, one last point, but it’s important, because it all comes down to the crux of the matter, which is idiots like this have no business involving themselves in or dictating to others what gun ownership and the right to keep and bear arms looks like—the targets are placed in an area where bullets go past the targets and into woods (there are no berms), at least when they’re not flying back fifteen feet and hitting spectators, and this violates one of the most basic rules of gun safety: Know your target and what is beyond. One might argue that this is Kunce’s private property, and no one should be in his woods and I’d totally agree, but it just shows how ignorant people like this are when it comes time to responsible firearm practice. What if a neighbor child wandered out of the house and accidentally trespassed? What if a local hiker got a little lost? I could think of a ton of scenarios in which someone could be struck by a stray bullet in a setup like this.

What’s really sad is both Kinzinger and Kunce are military veterans, yet they still have no clue what they’re doing.

Image: YouTube video screen grab.