Today's overkill

The headline says it all: Man Uses Shotgun to Remove Wart From Finger.

I wonder if his thinking was based on an incident like the one I experienced when I was about 16. It was a pimply time of life, and at one point I'd had a pimple on the inside of my ear, right in the crest of the helix (see link for explanation), for several weeks. It was really hard to get at, and wouldn't go away. One day I was at a meeting of the church youth group. Another 16-year-old said something insulting and I picked up the nearest object -- a box of kleenex -- and winged it at him. It hit him in the face, which pleased me and made him mad. Seemed like the best outcome to me -- I hit him in the face with something harmless. But in his desire for vengeance he came over and cuffed me on the side of the head. The blow coincidentally ruptured the pimple in my ear. I declined to exchange blows and he went back and sat down, perhaps alarmed by the blood and pus coming out of my ear and wondering if he had actually wounded me gravely. I got up, retrieved the kleenex and wiped myself off, and from then on the pimple healed completely and never bothered me again.

Which makes me think that the fellow with the shotgun might have chosen a more appropriate weapon. Maybe he could have taunted a dog and got the dog to bite it off. (Cf. the classic story of the the dog that saved its master's life by eating his gangrenous toe.) But I guess if all you have is a shotgun, everything looks like ... Hmm, what? Not a finger with a wart.