Beyond the tragedy here - the implication of this is that USAF security forces were carrying a widely understood to be mechanically unsafe handguns in the presence of nuclear weapons. I am not saying a stray round can cause a criticality but shooting a nuclear weapon or its associated delivery and logistics systems is suboptimal.

It's just as bad to be carrying mechanically unsafe handguns in the presence of people.

Not only that it looks callous if you say otherwise, but also the dollar cost the military put on a human life probably is higher than the typical cost of fixing a bullet hole in a nuclear weapon.