quote:The boy, apparently angered that Beavers stepped on his foot, retrieved a shell from a drawer in a back bedroom, grabbed a 20-gauge single-shot shotgun from a closet and loaded the weapon, Ephlin said.
He returned to the living room, and in front of another 17-year-old boy and other children, shot Beavers. "It's lucky it was birdshot," Ephlin said of the shell the boy inserted into the shotgun.
The boy's father said he was shocked that his son knew how to load and fire the shotgun. The boy has watched others shoot but never was taught how to handle a gun, he said.
Riiiight. Dad was SHOCKED! A four year old just saw someone else load a shotgun and did it with no prior experience just that once. Methinks someone is lying to cover his own butt.
The kid's four years old- how would he even know how to hold the gun if no one taught him?
Anybody leaving unlocked guns around children needs their guns taken away permanantly.
quote: Investigators will examine why the ammunition and gun were not locked up, Blanton said. Ohio does not have a law requiring that guns be secured away from children.
Guy wont even get a fine. :roll: Maybe the teenager's aprents will sue for "reckless endangerment".
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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"Investigators will examine why the ammunition and gun were not locked up, Blanton said. Ohio does not have a law requiring that guns be secured away from children."
So, what is there to investigate, then? They weren't locked up because the parents and the legislature of Ohio are morons.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
If the kid *was* taught how to handle a firearm, stuff like this wouldn't have happened. Kids need to be taught how incredibly dangerous they are, and then when they see a gun they won't think "oo toy." I mean really, were things like this a big problem in the Old West? I don't remember hearing about a lot of frontier kids accidentally shooting each other, because they were taught to use the guns to defend themselves or hunt.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
You dont hear about frontier kids accidentally shooting each other because the bodies would have just been buried on their land- plenty of developers have unearthed skeletons from the ol' west....and people did not live close enough to each other where such social disasters would be likely. Or maybe the Hatfield/McCoy fued started out just this way. Also, no one- regardless of time period- with an ounce of sense thinks it's good to "educate" a four year old on how to handle a firearm.
Their education should be "BAD! Never touch!" and the gun should be kept well away from them.
Registered: Aug 2002
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
*sigh* I didn't mean "here son take your gun here and kill something" at the age of four, I meant something like "This is very dangerous because it shoots a bullet so fast you can't see it, which will kill whatever it's aimed at, so don't touch it." This is opposed to the more common "Bad, never touch!" which certainly didn't stop *me* as a kid. I always took "Not for kids" as a selfish "adults-only," "you're-not-allowed" phrase, not a "this is dangerous for you to use" phrase. I don't know, maybe I was an odd kid, but when I was told something wasn't for me and not told why, I promptly did it out of spite. (Hence how the first time I drank, I was 3, and also hence why I know what sticking a knife in the outlet feels like.)
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Ah. I thought maybe you were with the NRA's notion of children being more safe by having operational knowledge of firearms and how to shoot things/animals/immigrants/boogeymen.
The responsibility always falls on the gun owner to store a firearm safely- locked and unloaded- regardless of the lack of a specific law.
If that kid had got a locked, unloaded shotgun it would have just been disturbing and not potentially lifethreatening.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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