Blood On Their Hands...

Tributes have been paid to a Scottish militaria collector who was killed by a hand grenade, leaving his five sons orphaned.

This is the second tragedy to strike the family in less than a decade after Adam Watts, 55, from Dundee lost his wife to cancer in 2013.

He was pronounced dead at the scene after one of his sons is believed to have seen the explosion.

A spokeswoman for Police Scotland told MailOnline: 'Officers received report of a man having been killed in an explosion in Kirkton of Auchterhouse around 1.10pm on Wednesday, December 22.

'Emergency services attended, however, the 55-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene.

'The death is not being treated as suspicious and a report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.'

Now, imagine that. 

Wouldn't there be questions to answer from the police and Procurator when it transpired they had handed him the munition for safekeeping? Wouldn't there be utter outrage at a man's life being placed in danger by the authorities? 

But it wasn't an unexploded grenade, of course. Those, like seized knives and guns, are destroyed. It was yet another 'bulldog'. I wonder how the officers who seized that beast and delivered it into the hands of the man it killed enjoyed their Christmas dinner - did they spare a thought for the five children orphaned by their actions?

The comment section on Facebook and news reports are full of mawkish comments about how he died 'doing what he loved' and how he was 'a friend to abused animals'. Very few commenters point out the folly of his actions in accepting the animal, much less the authorities' carelessness in letting the thing live (though they've seen sense and it's now been destroyed - too late, of course).

But you have to wonder at the usually so risk-averse state agents who treat these beasts as 'just another dog', don't you?