Accidental Wii Suicide

Paul Taylor noted a story that I would have thought to be an April Fool's Day joke a few weeks from now, which makes it only seem more tragic. A 3-year-old shot herself with a gun after mistaking it for a Wii controller.

Comments

Suicide?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is manslaughter. Whoever left a gun near a 3-year-old needs locking up.

Re:Suicide?

[skgrey]

Absolutely. I am a conceal-carry holder and I have a number of handguns. I also have a one year-old and a seven year-old. I have an electronic safe which all my guns go in, as well as trigger locks. It's called being a responsible gun-owner.

It's also called being a responsible parent, not only for the gun part, but for the Wii part. Who lets their three year-old play shooting games on the Wii? I have a Wii and Xbox360 and my seven year-old does not play violent games. Any games which have any possibility of bad content which he plays are played with me there. He's a damn smart kid but I want to reinforce the right ideas and right values in him.

This father should be hung. Who leaves a loaded gun in the house, let alone on the table, let alone with kids in the house? And you know what? Kids like guns, even before video game consoles. Even if this kid wouldn't have played Wii she probably would have grabbed it.

Re:Suicide?

[Pojut]

Chances are very high it was loaded, round in chamber, and with the hammer cocked (and the safety off). The girl was three years old. Are you saying that she had the knowledge (and strength) to make that pistol ready to fire if it wasn't already like that?

Re:Suicide?

[ledow]

"It was proabably the middle of the night, everyone was sleeping. He wasn't thinking, or was thinking that he had put it away far enough, or that he'd wake up before his kid."

And left a loaded, ready-to-shoot firearm in the middle of the room like you would a discarded plate or an old newspaper. There's no excuse. And this is exactly the problem with gun-owning countries - it's the middle of the night, everybody's sleeping, he hears a sound, panics, he's ***not thinking*** straight, and ends up aiming at things with a gun... a banging door, a stray animal, a kid trying to get his ball back when his parents won't know (weird, yeah, that's a weird situation, but it happens), a partygoer who's accidentally stumbled into the wrong back yard, a neighbour who's jumped over the fence to see what the strange sound was in his friend's back garden...

It's a gun. It's used to kill things, and only to kill things. Don't ready it unnecessarily, don't leave it lying about, don't carry it unnecessarily, don't use it when you're not confident of your abilities and judgement, and keep it THE HELL out of the way of children, or even your whole family. For some reason people seem to think less of that than if he'd left an upturned lawnmower, with the safety features dismantled, turned on and plugged in, in the same room. To be honest, I'd have had a LOT more sympathy for the guy in question if the child had done something with a dismantled lawnmower rather than a gun... at least he *could* have a nearly-plausible reason for having the thing sitting in his house in that kind of state.

Even if we take the "home defence" argument - the pillock left the gun downstairs, with ammunition in it after his initial fears were calmed. If there *had* been someone in the house that he didn't see, he's just handed them a free deadly weapon with which to kill him.

Re:Suicide?

[Spazztastic]

Whether he feels bad about it or not there should be a severe punishment for this level of recklessness, negligence and stupidity.

Exactly. Using that judgment, every person who recklessly drives and kills someone should be let off the hook because "they feel horrible about it." The same analogy can be used for any other situation where someone feels remorse for their actions.

Re:Suicide?

[GungaDan]

To be fair, the father left the gun, but the mother was in the room with the child and the gun at the time of the accident, sitting at her computer. There's plenty of negligence to go around here.

Re:Suicide?

[Vectormatic]

i'm just wondering which war-torn 3rd world country you live in to need 24h firearm-level self defense...

Re:Suicide?

[Asclepius99]

But what about his other child? Or the fact that the mother was within three feet of the 3 year old girl as she shot herself? Come on, criminal charges need to be filed and these people need to have their other child taken away from them. I support the right for people to own guns, but they need to take responsibility for what they do with them.

Re:Suicide?

[berashith]

This is an issue of deterrence. The person involved in this case is already suffering enough , but the other people who dont think about gun safety need to know that carelessness leads to accidents leads to severe punishment.

Re:Suicide?

[TheLink]

I have a question: how much strength does it require to fire that gun?

Can a 3 year old do it in the manner the mother described?

Re:Suicide?

[blackest_k]

Do you really think any amount of jail time is worse than the heart tearing pain caused by the loss of a child through your own fault? I'd say he wishes his son killed him instead right now. Jail time is going to do nothing.

The mistake your making is the assumption that a person who leaves a loaded firearm around a 3 year old child gives a crap.

He should receive a heavy custodial sentence not to make him feel bad, but as an attempt to get people to take a little more care over where they stick their firearms. This idiocy needs to be stamped on hard when ever it occurs even when the end result is the death of a small child.

Re:Suicide?

[killmenow]

So let me break it down like this:

1. The parents purposefully sought out a rare game controller that looked like a real gun FOR THEIR THREE YEAR OLD DAUGHTER

2. Then the father LEFT A REAL LOADED GUN that looked eerily similar to the kid's game controller (by fucking design, I might add) ON THE COFFEE TABLE which is probably EXACTLY WHERE THE FUCKING THREE YEAR OLD KID TYPICALLY LEFT HER GAME CONTROLLER.

3. Then they are shocked and surprised she picked it up and fired it.

I generally would not advocate taking children from their parents but somebody might want to think long and hard about the wisdom of leaving the 1yr old in the care of parents so f**ed up it's not even funny.

Re:Suicide?

[schon]

He's an idiot, but I dunno if he really needs jail.

He may not need jail, but he *DOES* need to be disallowed from owning or handling firearm.

I'm sure the loss of his child is punishment enough.

No, it isn't. This guy has proven he does not deserve the right to own a firearm. For the safety of everyone around him, he should be convicted of criminal negligence causing death (or whatever the Tenn. equivalent is) so that he can be banned from owning or posessing a firearm.

Re:Suicide?

[HaZardman27]

and, ideally, a ban on firearms in domestic environments.

I'm not giving up my rights because certain assholes are too irresponsible to educate themselves and their families on proper gun safety.

Re:Suicide?

[biryokumaru]

The kind where you're three years old and you don't have a freakin clue what's going on?

Re:Suicide?

[ElectricTurtle]

I concur. I regularly carry an H&K USP that has no safety. Safety is trigger discipline, sight discipline (don't point it at valuable things and treat it as though it is loaded at all times), and storage discipline.

You just can't stop stupid with a switch. Like that one gun safety instructor who thought his gun was unloaded and thought he'd make a point by pulling the trigger with it to his head. It was loaded, and he's dead. You follow all of the rules, all of the time, or someday something will go wrong, and you'll be sorry.

Re:Suicide?

[FatAlb3rt]

Will you be touting the same line if you accidentally kill someone by [insert any potentially dangerous daily activity here]? There's lots of things we do every day that could result in the death of someone else AND we knowingly do it.

Re:Suicide?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I have a question: how much strength does it require to fire that gun?

What I want to know is why the safety wasn't set on the gun.

I'm also vaguely curious as to what sort of shooting game the kid was playing that involved pointing the gun at himself....

Can a 3 year old do it in the manner the mother described?

Not unless the gun was modified a bit, or the three-year-old was a teeny little Hulk Hogan. Trigger pull on otc firearms is high enough that your average small child won't be firing it.

Re:Suicide?

[Big Smirk]

If the handgun was cocked, it wouldn't take much force at all.

Bottom line, idiots who leaved cocked, and loaded weapons laying around are the issue (it doesn't even matter if there are kids around or not). He fails the gun safety IQ test.

Careless? There are many things in life you should never be careless about - firearms is one of them.

Re:Suicide?

[Lunix Nutcase]

And when you are careless with your car and you accidentally kill someone you are rightfully arrested and convicted for vehicular manslaughter.

Re:Suicide?

[geekoid]

He should be convicted of felony manslaughter.
Wave his jail time, but the felony means he can no longer own a fire arm.

Clearly he isn't responsible enough to own one.

Re:Suicide?

[Lumpy]

ANYONE that knows anything about firearms already knows that you store unloaded, with a trigger lock or in a locked box and with the safety on.

Only he uneducated idiots say they have to keep it loaded and ready for home defense. I can open my lockbox, load the clip and be ready to fire in 12 seconds from the time I am awakened in bed until I hit the floor. I buy the right tools for the use http://www.safetysafeguards.com/site/402168/product/GV1000CDLX

Anyone that owns a handgun and does not keep it locked up is a disgrace to gun owners everywhere.

Re:Suicide?

[debrain]

Because you never know when it's needed. The only time it's "unnecessary" to have some form of self defense handy is when you're already dead.

Sir —

I've been to many dangerous places around the world, and on numerous occasions I have been in situations where my life has been threatened. However not once have I been in a situation that would have been improved by my possession of a loaded handgun. Similarly, I've trained people in the special forces in hand-to-hand combat, but not once have I ever felt a need to resort to such skills in a threatening situation. That being said, I believe it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it – but more often the capacity for force is merely a facade that lulls people into a false sense of security, depriving the well-armed person of a defence that would actually save them: wits. Wits are an unparalleled form of self defence, and they compare decidedly well to force in their ability to protect one in the most dangerous and unpredictable of situations and in the relative absence of collateral damage.

Re:Suicide?

[Totenglocke]

Except that this isn't just "a person was careless and left a gun where a kid could reach it". The mother was THREE FEET AWAY and there's absolutely no reason that she didn't see it. Given the fact that I've shot guns, I agree that it's HIGHLY unlikely a kid that small could pull the trigger. I wouldn't be surprised if the mom did something stupid and accidentally shot the kid and then claimed that the kid did it on their own. That's a hell of a lot more plausible than a 3 year old shooting themselves.

Re:Suicide?

[Stick32]

honestly this doesn't sound like a question of the child mistaking the gun for a Wii controller at all. This sounds like the father left the gun out unsafe and unsecured where they're young child who didn't know any better could reach and play with. It sounds like they are just looking for a reason/excuse to blame someone else for what is CLEARLY and SOLELY THEIR FAULT.

Re:Suicide?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

They also get raped and stabbed pretty regularly. I know a few folks who are prison guards. Despite all the perks you list, I would rather live my (according to you) less glamorous life on the outside where I am not going to get shivved for looking at someone the wrong way.

Make no mistake about it, prison in the USA sucks for the most part. It's not a rehabilitation program. For many folks, its a death sentence, whether that's what the courts ruled their punishment to be or not.

Cheers.

Re:Suicide?

[CompMD]

I'm glad it works well for you. In case you were unaware, the US is more than 10 cities whose names everyone knows. For those of us who live in the great expanse that is the midwest, the nearest police officer is often many, many miles away. Yes, I'll sit around waiting for that police officer to arrive while a burglar who decides he doesn't want a witness bludgeons me to death with the crowbar he used to break in, that sounds like a great idea!

No. My safety in my home is my responsibility, plain and simple. If I can facilitate it with my Tokarev or HK91, so be it.

Your choice of the phrase "wild west" is interesting; much of the midwest and west *is* still quite sparsely populated and effectively "wild."

Re:Suicide?

[srmalloy]

What about an individual's right to defend him/herself? Call the cops. It works very well for us.

Which is a good and noble concept... except that the police are under no obligation to provide protection to any given individual. See Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981). Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate's screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers." The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.'s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen."

Or Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005). Jessica Gonzales had a restraining order against her estranged husband Simon limiting his access to their three children. He abducted them, and Gonzales repeatedly phoned the police for assistance. Officers visited the home. Believing Simon to be non-violent and, arguably, in compliance with the limited access granted by the restraining order, the police did nothing. She sued the Castle Rock police department and won a judgement of $30,000,000. By a vote of 7-to-2, the Supreme Court ruled that Gonzales has no right to sue her local police department for failing to protect her and her children from her estranged husband; the local officials had presented a history of court decisions that found the police to have no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from private individuals. In 1856, the U.S. Supreme Court (South v. Maryland) found that law enforcement officers had no affirmative duty to provide such protection. In 1982 (Bowers v. DeVito), the Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit held, "...there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen."

It works very well for you? Try suing the police for failing to protect you if you get robbed, assaulted, or burgled, and see just how much responsibility the courts say the police actually have to protect you.

Re:Suicide?

[Starteck81]

Please detail all the circumstances when you have needed to defend yourself from your government.

We're waiting.

You are aware of how the USA came into existence, right?

What a Tragedy and No Charges?

[eldavojohn]

I am so sorry for the Cronberger's loss of their three year old daughter. What a horrible tragedy.

But the fact that there are no charges being pressed enrages me. The article says:

Law Enforcement: If You're a Gun Owner, You Have to Be Responsible

Or what? Someone will shake their finger at you?

Cheyenne Alexis McKeehan was a victim of either neglect, ignorance or willful intent of her stepfather. Which one, no one can ever be sure of. Regardless of the circumstances he improperly stored a loaded handgun in his home in reach of a three year old.

Saying "terrible lapse of judgment" and "be responsible next time" isn't enough for me. This man should be charged with child endangerment so that people take their Second Amendment Rights seriously and responsibly should they choose to exercise them.

Were I a prosecutor, I would push for the jury to see that going through the trouble to find a toy (not regularly distributed commercially here) for your child identical to the loaded handgun that you "happened" to leave on the table one evening is more than suspicious.

If you have children, invest in a home security system before a handgun, folks.

Re:What a Tragedy and No Charges?

[mcgrew]

But the fact that there are no charges being pressed enrages me.

Are you a parent? There's absolutely NOTHING they could do to the guy that would be worse than losing a child. I wouldn't be surprised if he winds up comitting suicide intentionally, with the same gun. I can't imagine how much this guy's hurting right now.

I'd also betting his marriage is over. Yes, charges of child endangerment could be filed, but no punishment is going to change anything; no punishment that state can inflict will come close to what he's done to himself.

Re:What a Tragedy and No Charges?

[thue]

This is not what law is for.

The parents have been punished enough by the natural consequences of their own actions. What purpose could it possibly have to add an artificial punishment on top of that?

Re:What a Tragedy and No Charges?

[Spazztastic]

I'm just glad it was their child. The real tragedy is when someone leaves out a gun, and their child shoots someone else's child.

That's pretty fucked up, it's still an innocent child with the whole world ahead of her. Don't devalue a life because of poor decision on the parent's part.

Re:What a Tragedy and No Charges?

[qoncept]

Law Enforcement: If You're a Gun Owner, You Have to Be Responsible

Or what? Someone will shake their finger at you?

Or your daughter might accidentally shoot herself. If punishment is intended to deter or rehabilitate you, what more do you think they really need? Any punishment now would just be for the sake of making these people pay.

Why is the wii controller even mentioned?

[Pojut]

Why is the Wii controller even mentioned in this freakin' story? The kid shot themselves with a loaded gun left laying around by the parent. This has nothing to do with the Wii, and everything to do with some dumbfuck leaving a loaded gun laying around with a three year old in the house. I don't care what you child does for fun, leaving a loaded gun all willy-nilly where the child can reach it is the height of responsibility.

We don't need gun control, we need idiot control.

Suicide, my ass!

[Rurik]

WTF is wrong with you submitter? This is negligent homicide by the family. They left a loaded, cocked, pistol on a table where a three year old can get it. A three year old does not have a concept of life and death, and does not commit suicide. By throwing around the S-word you're taking the blame off the people it truly belongs to: the parents. People who cannot treat firearms with the respect they deserve should not have them.

Already the news is making an issue out of the fact that it's a Wii-related death. It's not. It's a loaded gun left out in the open. It doesn't matter if the Wii gun "looked" real, it wasn't. You can have a real, pink, Hello Kitty revolver there. It doesn't matter. A loaded and cocked gun was left where a curious child can get it.

Re:Suicide, my ass!

[ari_j]

All of them incriminate the parents equally. There are a few common sense rules of gun safety which get violated far too often. Obeying them religiously is a good idea. For anyone unfamiliar, here are the utter basics:

1. Treat every gun as if it is loaded - especially if you are certain that it isn't ("unloaded" guns accidentally kill more people than the loaded kind)
2. When handed a gun, double-check that there is not a round in the chamber by visual inspection of the chamber - even if the person who handed it to you had just done that in your presence
3. Never leave a loaded gun sitting out unattended, even for 30 seconds and even if you live alone (it's far better to be in the right habit than the wrong one and forget yourself when you have company or children around)
4. Never point a gun's muzzle at anything you do not intend to shoot - for living beings, at least 45 degrees away, and this rule applies even after you've verified the gun is unloaded

I don't know how a 3-year-old girl was able to shoot herself. But there are many, many types of pistols on the market, some of which are not much heavier than a Wii controller even when they're loaded, particularly those chambered for .22 Long Rifle cartridges. The real point is that it doesn't matter what kind of gun it was or how a 3-year-old was able to mistake it for a Wii controller (which itself is mostly speculation since, had there been any witnesses to the kid's supposed mistaken thought process, you'd think they would have stopped her from playing with a loaded gun at some point before she shot herself). What does matter is that a child is dead because someone didn't follow the most basic rules of gun safety.

Typical /.

[hargrand]

It's good to see that the /. editorial bias is still very much well and truly alive. What's the point of this story (especially posted under games?) if it isn't to exploit one family's tragedy to promote the political ideology of the /. gatekeepers? I guess common decency and good taste are not among their core competencies.

Poor choice of everything.

[Patrick Manderson]

First of all, this wasn't an "accidental suicide", it was an accidental death.

Second of all, putting "wii" in the title is highly misleading and is typical of today's media which is more interested in tabloid journalism, trying to grab everyones attention by assuming all your readers are more responsitive to these kind of headlines.

My respect for Slashdot just went down a few.

Re:I wonder...

[furby076]

You are so going to hell for that comment...And I hate you for making me laugh....now I'm going with you.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, piss off, you goddamn yuppie. A macabre sense of humor is a healthy adaptation to the mad, mad world we live in. It's naive idiots like you and your angry mobs and your knee-jerk emotional reactions that enable politicians to pass laws that fuck everybody over just because one idiot fucked up.

I hope you don't have any kids. I'll bet they turn out to be little crybaby porkers, allergic to everything because they were kept inside like prize housepets, the kind of rotten shits who throw piercing tantrums in public and have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the car just because you didn't buy'em their fifth candy bar of the day.

As a responsible gun owner...

[swb]

Let's get this out of our systems: The parents were horribly irresponsible and deserve to be charged with some kind of crime. In most states (including mine) it is a felony to leave a weapon where a minor can gain access to it.

That being said, as a responsible gun owner, I don't like my son to have guns as toys. Toy guns are safe. Toy guns never hurt anybody. Toy guns teach every bad habit that gun safety teaches you not to do. Kids literally think guns are toys and can be handled cavalierly.

From the time he could talk I have drilled my son that when he sees a gun, what does he do? "Run away and tell a grown up." What if your friend wants to pick it up? "Run away and tell a grown up." What if your friend has it first and wants to show you? "Run away and tell a grown up."

Your guns are worthless...

[denzacar]

You're gonna die from a hearth attack or a stroke. Possibly cancer.

Stress does that to ya.

Re:Gun was owned by STEPfather, not father.

[Culture20]

Divorced guys know ALL about this scenario. The ex's new boyfriend doesn't have the fact that they are his kids programmed into him 24/7

In my experience, ex's new boyfriend has the fact that they are *Not* his kids programmed into him 24/7, by either the kids (tween-teen), or by the mother (if they're single-digit age).