It doesn’t get much more embarrassing than this: a school kid reaches out and fires a police officer’s handgun while it’s still in the cop’s holster.

That’s what happened to an SRO (school resource officer) at a middle school in South Carolina last February, according to reports from the Greenville (SC) News.

About 15 middle schoolers were boarding a school bus when one of the kids walked up and asked the SRO if she could see her gun. Before the officer could react, the child "pushed down on the gun," still in its holster, and the weapon fired. The bullet hit the sidewalk and fragments of cement struck and injured a student standing nearby. The injury was minor but the incident got everybody’s attention.

The chief of the 32-member department said he’d never heard of a gun firing in a holster like that. Later, a police captain met with the chief to perform an experiment.

The captain demonstrated to the chief exactly how it "could" happen. How a pistol "could fire" while still in its holster. Problem was, the experiment was too realistic. For the second time in as many days a pistol went off while still holstered.

In the second incident nobody got hurt. The only casualty was a 1998 edition of the FBI’s 418 page edition of "Crime in the United States." Good thing the thick book was lying there on the floor. The bullet came to rest somewhere between crime statistics on larceny and motor vehicle theft.

The experiment made its point with the chief. He placed an emergency order for 32 new holsters, one for each member of the department. During the next two days officers rotated on the weapons range practice shooting using their new and improved holsters.

The chief reported the incident to the city manager and to the State Law Enforcement Division. Nobody got fired and no charges were filed; but everybody learned something that day about firearms safety.