[MRM]

This is not an issue of gun etiquette. Gun etiquette is when you come into someone’s house while you are carrying a concealed weapon and you politely advise the homeowner so that they know there’s a gun in their home. Further gun etiquette would require the gun owner to respect the homeowner’s wishes as to whether the gun can come into the house and how it should be handled if it does come into the house.

This is an issue of gun safety. It is suicidaly dangerous for a cop to deliberately disarm himself and leave his weapon unsecure. If cops want to carry at all times on the theory that they’re always on duty and have to be able to respond to any situation, fine. Then they need the gun on them at all times. Casually disarming himself makes a mockery of the claim that he needs to be armed at all. Second, you NEVER leave a weapon unsecured in any environment, let alone a private residence with men women and children coming and going. On top of this is the idiocy of leaving the gun in the open where it would be reasonable to assume that it must be a prop, both because it’s a play rehearsal and because no one could be so stupid that they would leave an entire holster and loaded gun on someone else’s kitchen table. This ignores the whole issue of the kitchen table. I mean, could there be a more unsafe place to stash a gun? No one should ever cross the muzzle of the gun, whether it’s holstered or not, loaded or unloaded. Anyone walking through the room would have had the gun barrel pointing at them as they crossed the room.

In almost any police department voluntarily disarming yourself and losing possession of your weapon would be grounds for termination if found out. In practice cops cover or each other so they almost never get found out, but this cop is criminally stupid and should never be trusted with a gun in any situation.