On Sunday evening, US Army private first class Isaac Lawrence Young, 22, was drinking and watching football with his buddies when he got the hiccups. His pal Pfc. Patrick Edward Myers, 27, pulled out a gun to scare him and cure the hiccups, but he accidentally shot Young in the face and killed him. Myers has been charged with manslaughter. (CNN)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Germán-Gutierrez/1308436234 Germán Gutierrez

    But it worked, didn’t it ?

    • http://twitter.com/TeddyLecaillon Psychedelic

      :D 

  • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

    Well in fairness he did stop Young’s hiccups.

  • notcoolzeus

    All in all though, guns cure a lot more hiccups than they kill people. The problem is that the media just picks up on the bad stories and all the “Luger Successfully Stops Hiccups” stories go unwritten.

    • rattypilgrim

       And forget about the media reporting on all the dirty bombs that cured hiccups.

    • EH

      Big Hiccup has deep pockets.

  • Richard Wolff

    am i the only one who doesn’t even bat an eye at stories like this anymore?

  • http://twitter.com/ParoniAnttila Lauri Anttila

    U S A, U S A!

  • http://twitter.com/colinrosenthal Colin Rosenthal

    Beer and guns rarely mix well. Add hiccups and football to the mix and it’s a tragedy waiting to happen.

    • benher

      Wasn’t there a Wesley Snipes movie about that?

  • LogrusZed

    I thought you were supposed to stick your finger, or anyone’s finger, up your ass to cure hiccups.

    I stick things up there as a preventive measure.

    • Wreckrob8

      Could be that’s where he wanted to stick his gun anyway and the hiccup cure thing was just a ruse.
      Just a case of premature ejaculation, really.

    • hhlbbcnofn pi

      This, along with the gun method, has been documented –
      http://www.musanim.com/mam/hiccup.htm
      And the gun method has caused a death before!

  • http://twitter.com/librtee Sasha@librtee

    Yeah, that happened to me a couple times, really bad luck there.

  • http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

     I have a hiccup cure that never fails.

  • msbpodcast

    But, to be fair, the guy no longer has the hiccups.

  • bcsizemo

    It’s like real life Pulp Fiction…

    • benher

      … Are you trying to tell me that something has befallen Steve Buscemi? 

      • Mister44

         I don’t think Steve Buscemi was in Pulp Fiction.

        • Felton / Moderator

          He was in it for maybe one minute as a waiter.

          • Ramone

            Yep, he was Buddy Holly at Jackrabbit Slims. And I didn’t even IMDB that one. We just watched it on Blu Ray last week.

          • Mister44

             I didn’t catch that was him. And Ive seen that movie dozens of times. Huh – thanks for the heads up.

  • benher

    Gun jokes/diatribes aside… 

    Can you imagine the sobering moment of horror as you watch your friend’s face explode into red in front of you and the shock setting in of what you’d just done and can never ever undo… All blame aside, what a horrific tragedy. 

    • Florian Bösch

      I’ve got a really hard time emphasizing with a guy who shot his friend in the face while drunk trying to cure his hickup. If you’ve got friends like that, you’re set for your short and sorry life.

      • invictus

        I hear they have empathy classes for people like you. You should look into those. (or, as you would call them, emphasis lessons)

      • Donald Petersen

        About a hundred years ago, a 12-year-old military academy student was demonstrating some drill technique at a party at his parents’ home.  A rifle had inadvertently been left loaded, and during the demonstration, the 12-year-old accidentally shot a 16-year-old female friend in the face, killing her instantly.  The boy was distraught and haunted for the rest of his life by what he’d done.  He was Adlai Stevenson II, grandson of Grover Cleveland’s vice president, future Governor of Illinois, the guy who ran against Eisenhower on the Democratic ticket in 1952 and 1956, and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1961 to 1965.  He was the guy who, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, pointedly asked the Soviet delegate if the USSR was installing missiles in Cuba, and told him he was “prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over.”

        Shit happens, and factors like youth, inexperience, and chemical impairment greatly increase the chances of shit happening.  But compassion is always called for.  If we can’t learn from our mistakes we’ll never survive as a species.  And when one life is destroyed by someone’s gross miscalculation or horrific blunder, we might consider it worthwhile to try and prevent that blunder from utterly destroying even more lives than it has already.

    • invictus

      Yes, sadly. I’m not sure if classifying an accident as manslaughter is going to improve things here.

      Also, making a guess since the story is light on details, I believe this was the man’s personal firearm, not a military-issued weapon. I’m getting the impression this didn’t happen on base, since it was the city PD that responded, not the MPs.

      • James Penrose

         One form of manslaughter is the negligent killing of another person without intent to do so.  I’d say this is a textbook case.  There *no* accidents when the gun is in your hand:  *You* are always and forever responsible for what the gun does.  It does not do things on its own.

        • invictus

          You make a valid point. The question I would ask as a follow-up is whether imprisoning this man for manslaughter is going to decrease the likelihood of this happening again. In the specific circumstances presented here, I doubt it: I’ll bet he wasn’t thinking of possible consequences when he pulled the gun. Even if the possible punishment was truly horrific, I doubt it would have stopped him.

          In a more broad sense of “people doing stupid shit with guns,” though… Maybe. So perhaps there is a point to his prosecution after all.

  • Mister44

    FYI – #1 rule of gun handling is never point it at anyone. Be safe!

  • Lobster

    Guns don’t cure hiccups, people cure hiccups.

  • Ramone

    If the guy with hiccups had also had a firearm this never would have happened.

  • robdobbs

    A proud graduate of the Dick Cheney School of Gun Safety.

  • Marc45

    Darwin strikes again!

    • http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

      I think we could only call Darwin on this one if he shot himself trying to cure the hiccups. Which, admittedly, would have made for a much more entertaining story.

      • http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

        nah, associations count, he was in a room drunk with his gun flashing buddeh. Cultural Toxoplasmosis.

  • http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

    I had the hiccups once, until I took a bullet to the face

  • James Penrose

    Anypne care to bet there was just a wee spot of drinking or smoking funny stuff going on before this lesson in applied ballistics occurred?

    • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

      “Isaac Lawrence Young, 22, was drinking and watching football with his buddies”

      You’re a sharp one aren’t you?