Russ Carnahan's Photo-op Blows Up

 

 "Carnahan shoots while St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom, far right, watches"

How many violations of gun safety can you find in the above photo? 24th State found four: no protection for ears and eyes, firing a gun inside an office building, both eyes closed, and there's a photographer downrange. It's not exactly the most convincing photo-op. The Russ Carnahan campaign decided, for some reason that completely evades us, to release the above image to Jake Wagman from the Post-Dispatch, who uncritically posted it on the web, along with the "results":

 

The response from the blogging community was, to put it lightly, entertaining. Between his sister Robin Carnahan’s crusade against guns, his apparent ignorance of gun safety, and a painfully contrived photo-op, it was good fodder for people who like to use Photoshop.

 

After the debacle took a hold on the web, Carnahan's campaign realized that releasing pictures of their candidate shooting a gun inside an office building maybe had questionable political merit. So they did what they should have all along - they came clean about how the photo was staged. But since it's Rubberstamp Russ, it has to be even weirder than you thought.

Not only was the gun fake, Russ was playing a police "simulator" akin to laser tag. Apparently this detail wasn't important enough to mention when Russ decided to brag about his sharpshooting to reporters. And when his campaign sent out pictures of the 'target' as proof of his exploits, it looks like they cropped out details that might have revealed its digital origins.

  

How on earth does that happen?