Well, at least it didn't 'just go off'.

Some lessons are more painful that others.  This weekend in Wenatchee, a gun store patron learned a painful one. 

One can only imagine how the conversation went, but that doesn't really matter...what does matter is that somehow(surely in the interest of making a sale) the gun store proprietor ended up handing the patron the gun off his own hip.  While in the process of examining said pistol, the customer then proceeded to blow one of his own fingers off.  

Ouch. 

There isn't much to the story...guy says he didn't know it was loaded, and then doesn't follow The Rules.  Losing a finger is painful, but when bullets start 'accidentally' flying around the inside of a store, losing a finger is about the cheapest lesson you can learn.  The gun store employee perhaps showed questionable judgement in handing over his own loaded gun for showing off, but speaking only for myself, if someone hands me a gun off their hip, I'm going to assume it's loaded, since there isn't much purpose in carrying an empty gun. 

Hopefully, it's a lesson he doesn't need to learn twice.