A Darwin Award is a tongue-in-cheek honor named after evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin. “Awards” have been given for people who “do a service to Humanity by removing themselves from the Gene pool”. As described in the Darwin Award books: The Awards honor people who ensure the long-term survival of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion.

(Mid-1980s, Seattle, Washington) I worked with a man who taught hunting skills and gun safety after-hours. He came to work one day visibly shaken, and told this story.

As his teenage students gathered around him, he warned them not to trust the safety switch of the gun, telling them that it may fail. One of the students did not show up for class for the next few weeks and came in (the night before I heard this story) to tell the instructor how his father had died. The student had gone home after his last class, and told his father about not trusting the safety. The father became irate that the instructor would teach such nonsense. He proceeded to load a rifle, flip the safety on, and hit the butt of the stock on the floor to prove the instructor wrong. Unfortunately, the instructor turned out to be right, while the father was fatally mistaken. The gun went off and killed the man.

DarwainAwards.com is your source for daily Darwin award submissions.

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