Holes in Reid's Bullet Story?

"Yes, I believe Delegate Jack Reid lied to the General Assembly and the public," writes J.C. Wilmore at the Richmond Democrat -- a blog devoted to politics as seen by a self-proclaimed Democrat. And this donkey has political opinions aplenty.

This time the Richmond Democrat's opinion is that the red-faced Reid's story about the accidental discharge of a round of live ammo in his office last week is baloney. Several posts on his site have been on this same subject. Furthermore, he's gotten an opinion from the handgun's manufacturer, to check out the veracity of Reid‘s claim. Guess what it says.

Wilmore may just have something with this. Reid's story reminds me of another one, from about 20 years ago. Roy West, a career-educator and then-Richmond's mayor, had a handgun go off on him at his home, which was never explained in a way that satisfied me.

As I recall it, West said he was trying to shoot a rat and somehow blew off the tip of a finger. Then he tweaked the story a bit; it seems that he would have been breaking the law to hunt rats in the city with a handgun. SLANT ran at least a couple of cartoons on the topic. West frequently lent himself to lampooning in a way hard to ignore. (I'll look around in the archives and see if I can find one of them.)

Delegate (R-Henrico) Reid’s inability to control his personal handgun properly in a public building has the feel of a story that's growing legs. His first explanation, which may be starting to crumble, must be inspiring some folks to use their imagination to deduce what may have really happened. Let’s see. There was this big rat...