This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: A little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead.While liberals use these incidents as an excuse to grab our guns, clearly the real culprit is a failure to detect and treat toddlers. Instead of demonizing guns in these incidents, we need a greater focus on toddlers.
But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I've found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself....
The stories go on and on like this: Roughly once a week this year, on average, a small child has found a gun, pointed it at himself or someone else, and pulled the trigger....
These numbers are probably an undercount. There are likely instances of toddlers shooting people that result in minor injuries and no media coverage. And there are probably many more cases where a little kid inadvertently shoots a gun and doesn't hit anyone, resulting in little more than a scared kid and (hopefully) chastened parents.
Sadly, after this promising start, the WaPo ignores the logical conclusion and reverts to its liberal gun-grabbing ways:
But as Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws, argues, many incidents like this are preventable. In a study of accidental shootings by children of all ages (not just toddlers), they estimate that "more than two-thirds of these tragedies could be avoided if gun owners stored their guns responsibly and prevented children from accessing them."Typical.
There are policy and technical responses to preventable childhood gun deaths as well. States and localities could require guns to be locked up at home, a policy supported by 67 percent of Americans. Various types of smart gun technology, which prevent anyone other than their owners from firing a given gun, exist as well. But gun lock requirements and smart guns have been vehemently opposed by the National Rifle Association and its allies.
Liberals like the WaPo deliberately ignore the obvious solution to this problem. Instead of exposing our toddlers to the hellish peril of gun-free zones, we need to make sure every kid in daycare is packing heat. Because after all, the only thing that can stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.
9 comments:
How is it possible to write "many" of these incidents could be prevented? Surely all of these incidents could be prevented? There are zero, count them zero, occasions where a toddler should be able to access a loaded gun. It is trivially easy to prevent toddlers from being able to access loaded guns by simply keeping guns and toddlers totally separate. At all times. All of the incidents of toddlers being shot or shooting guns could be prevented. Not some, not many, but all.
What we clearly have is a lack of responsible gun ownership problem. Weapons loaded or unloaded should never be out unsupervised by the owner of said weapon. Want things to change then hold the owner of the weapon criminally responsible for not having a weapon safely stored or in their possession.
My pistol in stored in a locked box with another lock on the weapon itself to prevent any loading of it. My ammunition is stored in a separate location. There is no way anyone is going to (play) with either for the keys are on my person.
The alternative is to treat 'em all like Mooslim terrists and Mexkin drug dealers: wipe 'em all out. All of 'em. We don't need him; we got more than enough already, just look at all the surplus people we got riding around in the welfare cadillacs and buying their patty de fois grass on food stamps. There's no "zero point one percent" problem in this country, all those folks are doing fine. The REAL problem is with those 99.9 percent deadbeats. Give 'em all weapons and enough ammo to maybe at least by accident hit & hopefully kill them someone, themselves at least if no one else, and pretty soon a whole bunch of problems with this country would melt away. Plus: if a guy was to hedge big on the funeral futures market, he could make a huge killing.
we need to make sure every kid in daycare is packing heat
I say deport them all. They're only here for the free stuff anyway. How often do you see a toddler holding down an honest job?
@Ray - if you have a gun for sport (hunting or target shooting) it's very easy to treat it as it should be treated. You do all the things we were taught in the hunter's safety and gun safety classes I was required to take as a kid (growing up in a rural area): you keep the gun locked up in a case. You never keep it loaded if you're not currently firing it. You keep the ammo locked up separately. etc.
But if you own a handgun for "self defense" all of that goes out the window. You can't keep the ammo and the gun separate because at any moment a horde of ninjas might crash into your house and if the gun isn't sitting right there on the coffee table loaded and with the safety off they'll slit your throat before you can take even one of them out. If you've convinced yourself that the world around you is so dangerous that you need a loaded gun on hand at all times for "self defense" you are never going to be able to make that gun safe enough to have a toddler in the house.
@nonynony -- that is an astute observation, and I've quoted it at a couple of other site (with full attribution, of course).
Agreeing with nonynony, the question becomes: Why are pregnant mothers in prison for life habits -drugs/drink/etc. - while sloppy, inattentive gun owning parents are free? palliddh
The problem with a toddler firing a gun is that the gun was almost certainly an adult gun. What we need are tiny little toddler sized guns so those little hands can aim them properly.
Thanks for the post. Guns are not the problem, the people who are not subjected to their moral obligations are the major reason of this problem. They are the major reason of all the killings. They simply join the Firearms safety training classes and get the gun and don't think about the moral duties they need to learn and follow while carrying that killer. They must know that guns are supposed to be the saver and not the killers.
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