NICEVILLE - If you left your loaded .22 caliber handgun on the bumper of a car at Walmart, the Niceville Police Department would like a word with you. On April 22 they were summoned to the Walmart on John Sims Parkway by a man who said he and his wife were leaving the store when his wife went to the passenger side of the car and knocked something off the back bumper. When she reached under the car to find what she thought she had dropped, the found a handgun. She gave it to her husband. The man emptied the weapon and called police. He gave them six .22-caliber rounds of ammunition and the gun itself, a chrome Ruger revolver. The man told police he had no idea where the gun came from or whom it may belong to. Police say the gun had not been reported stolen.
This could only happen in a Walmart parking lot. No, not the fact that someone left a gun on the bumper, that could happen at any place of work with disgruntled employees, or any inner city bodega parking lot. I'm talking about the fact that the guy who found it happened to know enough about gun safety to empty the weapon before calling authorities.
