You can't get much dumber than this "professional"

Eric Janik, a resident of Maryland (the state where we grew up), has been charged with assault and reckless endangerment after pulling out his pistol at a haunted house attraction and pointing it at the chest of one of the workers, a person dressed up as the movie character Leatherface, from a distance of about ten feet.

(We always thought that the whole point of going to a haunted house in the first place was to be startled and frightened by the workers there, but we digress.)

Anyway, since you're reading about the incident on this site, you've probably already guessed that Janik is a cop (a sergeant with the Baltimore Police Department, to be specific), which means that he's one of the "special people" allowed to carry firearms in public in that state, a practice that is routinely denied to just about all ordinary peasants who live there unless they know someone in power, are a celebrity or who can somehow manage to provide specific written threats made against them.

"The employee, Mike Morrison, followed Janik and several other people up a staircase Sunday night at the end of the haunted house tour in a bid to get "one last scream" out of them, police said.

When the group exited into a parking lot, Janik pulled his gun and pointed it at Morrison from less than 10 feet away, according to police and Morrison, who said he dropped the chain saw, put his hands up and backed away. The saw had no chain."

What monumental stupidity on the part of this law enforcement "professional".

To make matters worse, Janik appears to have been carrying his firearm while intoxicated, which helps explain (but certainly not excuse) his idiotic actions on Sunday night:

"According to charging documents, Janik smelled of alcohol and told police two different stories about what he did with the gun."

Janik has been suspended with pay, although that status could change after a hearing today, according to the story. Good. The Maryland taxpayers shouldn't have to pay the salary of this doofus for another minute.

It sure is nice that the Maryland State Police, the agency in charge of that state's handgun carry permit issuance process, and which enjoys complete discretion (which the department regularly abuses) about determining who is "lucky" enough to receive one, is so stingy about handing them out, isn't it?

Otherwise, if your basic ordinary Maryland peasant did somehow manage to obtain a carry permit, he or she would probably only end up doing something supremely idiotic like, say, getting liquored up and ruining a perfectly fun evening out for quite a lot of people, while at the same time criminally putting an innocent man's life in danger (to say nothing of really scaring the poor guy half to death).