More tragic gun stories to help bring you down from that holiday high.

My inbox is so full of these that I'm almost surprised it doesn't just roll up into the fetal position.

This first one is from Missouri:

A Missouri teen who was accidentally shot by her father has died after being taken off of life support Christmas Eve. 

 Kaitlyn Pullam, 17, was shot the night of December 21 at her Poplar Bluff, Missouri home, KFVS reported. 

Butler County Sheriff Mark Dobbs told the television station that Pullam's father thought the gun was not loaded and it inadvertently went off. 

She was found unresponsive in her bedroom with what appeared to be a single gunshot wound to her face, authorities said. 

And another from Oregon:

A 2-year-old girl in Oregon was rushed to the hospital after being shot in the face on Christmas morning by her uncle. 

The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office said officers received a 911 call just after 11:00 a.m. on Friday informing them that a child had been shot in the face with a handgun. The shooting occurred at a home near Molalla. 

The uncle who shot her, 24-year-old Luke Andrew Bowman, reportedly was cleaning a .45 caliber handgun when it went off, striking the girl in the cheek. 

A sheriff’s deputy told KGW the uncle had been given a gun cleaning kit for Christmas.

The next one comes to us from Las Vegas:

An off-duty Metro officer and her husband accidentally shot their relative just before Christmas Day came to an end. 

North Las Vegas police responded to a call about 11:30 p.m. Friday in the 3600 block of Kelcie Marie Avenue, according to Officer Aaron Patty. 

The off-duty officer and her husband were asleep in the home, when their relative, who lives in the house, came home unexpectedly, according to police. 

The officer and her husband both shot at their relative with seperate weapons, Patty said. 

The shot woman was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, police said.

As it turns out these three were far from the only shootings on Christmas in America. Not  even close.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

In a grim reminder that violence in America never takes a holiday, 27 people were killed and 63 injured in shooting incidents on Christmas Day this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This tally does not include people who shot themselves in suicide. 

The number of Americans killed in gun homicides on Christmas Day is comparable to the number of people killed in gun homicides in an entire year in places like Australia or Britain. The 27 people killed by guns in America on Christmas this year is equal to the total number of people killed in gun homicides in an entire year in Austria, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Estonia, Bermuda, Hong Kong and Iceland, combined.

And if you think that's bad, and you would have to be an idiot not to think that's bad, don't forget that even a fake gun can prove fatal.

Especially if the police are involved, and you are a person of color: 

An Ohio grand jury has decided not to return an indictment in the 2014 police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, prosecutor Tim McGinty said Monday. 

A recent FBI video analysis shows Tamir "was drawing his gun from his waist as the police slid toward him and Officer Loehmann exited the car," McGinty said. After the shooting, officers discovered it was in fact a toy gun.

Now I think many of us legitimately blamed the police officer for this unnecessary death, and he certainly deserves his share of the blame and I think should have been indicted. But playing devil's advocate for a moment remember that he is trying to uphold the law in a country where he is not only surrounded by people with guns, but often with enough guns to murder him and every single officer in his precinct.

That has to keep every police officer on edge, and expecting that at ANY moment there might be a bullet with their name on it would tend to make them trigger happy.

After all this post is chock full of people who lost their lives to just such a bullet.

So did the police officer use poor judgment? In my opinion yes. 

However does the fact that America is bulging at the seams with firearms make such an outcome more likely than in probably every other civilized part of the world? Again I say yes.