2) UPS does not determine shipping instructions, make up the shipping label. The seller/shipper accomplishes that.
You've never worked at UPS I can tell.
I worked there for way too long and I know that this level of screw up is 100% possible. I have seen all sorts of screw ups and miss shipments, packages will label swaps etc. I have seen labels come off and stick to walls, belts, other packages, and more. So trying to blame Amazon or the other shipper is barking up the wrong tree. As soon as I noticed it had gone through UPS I knew that the mix up happened in UPS somewhere somehow.
If the TV shippers didn't put the label on correctly, yes people are that stupid, when it got loaded near the rifle the label could have transferred from the TV to the rifle. There are more possibilities for a screw up than that but I am presenting the most innocent possibility that I have observed.
The other thing is that we don't have his address, the address of the gun store it was supposed to go to, the addresses of where the items where shipped FROM etc.
Nor do I know what happened to the TV. It is possible that someone created a new label for the TV and wanted to reduce the chances of getting caught either swapped labels on the gun box and sent the TV to his/her house instead OR there was damage to the packaging and when being repaired the wrong label got put on the gun box. I have seen these things happen. The up side is that if they label swapper created a new label for the TV there will be a record of it but to prove who did it normally takes a pattern.
Meanwhile the two shippers are going to take the heat while UPS is the company that should be flamed for this.