5-year-old boy shoots 3-year-old sister: Guns don’t kill people, stupidity kills people. Maybe it’s time to admit we can’t trust most people with guns
Now here’s another depressing little story for you:
Lawton, Okla. — A three-year-old girl has been accidentally shot by a five-year-old boy in Oklahoma. Police in Lawton say the girl was hit in the leg by a bullet fired by a .45-caliber handgun that the boy had found in his home. Investigators say he thought it was a toy and fired it at the girl. A police investigator says there were adults present at the time but, for now, no charges have been filed.
In this life we mostly have to paint the silver linings around clouds ourselves - so I suppose we must be glad that, so far, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘law & order’ prosecutor with a re-election campaign to run who wants to prosecute the five-year-old boy as an adult.
What I don’t really get is why they wouldn’t want to prosecute the parents who left a loaded gun where a five-year-old could reach it. If you can sue McDonald’s for serving its coffee hot, why can’t we put grown-ups on trial who endanger their children in this incredibly stupid fashion? It’s a weird world where we don’t allow smoking (or, God help us, homosexual) couples to adopt children but where there are no strict laws concerning guns in the home. When it comes to people who are unfit to be parents I’d put folks who don’t keep their guns out of reach of their children very high on the list - somewhere between registered paedophiles and crack hookers.
It is, of course, one of those, mostly unsung tragedies: the accidental deaths which go with the right to keep lethal weapons in your home. More law-abiding citizens - children and adults - get killed accidentally or during domestic disputes than ever get killed by home-invading criminals. Statistically, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to have the right to protect yourself in your home if having a gun around only makes you more likely to become a gun shot victim.
The ‘right to bear arms’ debate is, of course, not about statistics but about doctrine. So, we will keep reading about kids being wounded and killed by these ‘home defence devices’. As we will hear again and again how some drunken quarrel led to some stupid killing.
It’s often argued that guns don’t kill people but that’s it’s people who kill people. That is perfectly true, of course. Still, as we’ve seen in the news article above, you don’t want guns in the hands of a five-year-old. Nor do you want them in the homes of morons who don’t know enough to keep them away from these children. So, maybe it’s time to admit that there are many people who simply can’t be trusted to have lethal weapons around the home and have us some laws which takes this brutal fact into account.
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May 13th, 2008 at 04:42
Let me get this straight - one parent and/or both parents failed this precious little dipshit and we should elminated gun ownership entirely?
Fuck the nanny state.
May 13th, 2008 at 04:42
Let me get this straight - one parent and/or both parents failed this precious little dipshit so we should elminate gun ownership entirely?
Fuck the nanny state.
May 13th, 2008 at 04:52
Obviously not (and thanks for the comment, of course.) This is just one example of something that is quite disturbing, namely that more law-abiding people get killed accidentally (or through domestic disputes) than ever get killed by home-invading criminals when there are guns in the house.
I’m not saying you should eliminate gun ownership (and I hate the nanny state) but I am saying that it might be wise to regulate it a bit more. You need to pass a test to drive a car. Gun ownership should come with at least a sense of great responsibility. Guns are serious: they can kill you with greater easy than any bad driver.
And the statistics are clear: when it comes to gun ownership, too many people die because of a combination of carelessness and stupidity
May 13th, 2008 at 13:28
I do not believe that such a conclusion is rational. There are an estimated 200 to 300 million civillian-owned firearms in the United States. In any given year less than 0.05% of them are involved in any death. Less than 0.1% of individuals who legally own at least one firearm commit a crime with their firearms. I do not understand the derivation of the conclusion proposed by the author.
May 13th, 2008 at 16:00
Thanks for the comment,
I’ve just looked into the statistcs myself - and it’s a mess: lots of conflicting information out there.
The central point in my column was that since fewer people get killed by home-invading criminals than by their own guns it doesn’t make all that much sense to have these guns around. That is one conclusion I made and it does not depend on the actual amounts of deaths but simply the ratio between accidental (domestic dispute) death and the amount of people killed in their homes by criminals. It was an observation, by the way, not a call to forbid people from having these guns.
My second point was that while guns are not a problem if handled well, there are a Hell of a lot of idiots around who should not be trusted with hammer & nails, let alone guns. I’m not sure how you translate that into legislation but I think it should be a consideration when it comes to legislation. I.e. have very tough sentences for anyone found to be criminally careless/stupid with guns around the house.
I don’t think there are easy answers here but I think we owe it to innocent bystanders to try and make things safer.
May 13th, 2008 at 19:51
I thought private gun ownership had a LOT more to do with our Goverment going getting tyrannical, then protecting us from “home invasion”. I doubt “home invasion” is very high on the list of criminal activities, so I am going to say that my gun is about letting those who would do away with my freedoms know that I am willing to fight to the death for them.
Also known as: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” (Second Amendment to the Constitution.)
This is the point, not crime.
May 13th, 2008 at 20:15
Not my point and since it’s my column I will make the points I want. Thanks for the comment though.
It is of course debatable whether the Founding Fathers had the current situation in mind when they drafted that Amendment. Most reasonable historians agree that the right to ‘keep and bear arms’ reflects the fact that in most other countries the people were not allowed to have arms by their totalitarian regimes.
So, what the writers of the Constitution were saying was: ‘No way is that going to happen here and we’ll keep our leaders reasonably honest by not allowing them to have the monopoly on violence.’ Hence those militias that were explicitly mentioned.
Learned scholars have discussed endlessly the exact wording of these phrases, where even the placement of a comma becomes of dubious importance. It’s no use rehashing those arguments - most people interested in this debate are familiar enough with them.
I would say I’m on the side of those who see this Amendment as the written guarantee to the people, that they are allowed to and have the obligation to take up arms against their government when it would try to become dictatorial. In my view that doesn’t necessarily mean that any individual has, at all times, the right to have whatever kind of weaponry that he or she likes.
I’m not saying that’s the only way to interpret the Second Amendment but it is an entirely reasonable one. That doesn’t mean individuals shouldn’t have the right to defend themselves and have arms, within reason. This interpretation just would deny each and every person the unalienable right to turn his or her home into a complete arsenal,
J.
June 6th, 2008 at 03:16
Well some people don’t intentionally put their children in this sort of danger. I being the mother of the three year old girl, had only been at work a mere twenty minutes when this happened. To my knowledge the last place I had seen the gun was up on the top back of the refrigerator which was out of reach to even me without a chair. The girl we were staying with slept with the gun and well slept on the couch. I hadn’t even realized that it was off the refrigerator. The girl we stayed with was throwing a baby shower that day and so there was also three adults present at the time. I have heard a couple different stories to what went on, I wasn’t there so I didn’t see, but the police and paramedics told me to believe my daughter. This was a horrible incident and I have never felt so much pain or terror in my life, nor do I ever want to relive that day again. My daughter is fine now, no permanent damage she was actually up and walking the next day. She is a miracle I truly believe that because it could have been so much worse. We moved back to SD shortly after the incident and trying to get our lives back together.