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US Toddlers Involved In Shootings On a Weekly Basis (washingtonpost.com)
New submitter fremsley471 writes with this story by Christopher Ingraham about shooting accidents involving children 3 and under in The United States. There were at least 43 cases this year of shootings involving a toddler. The Washington Post reports: "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. But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. Briefly sifting through news reports 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."
Where are the laws that keep toddlers from obtaining guns?
Is there any reason at all for this to be on Slashdot, except to push a general political agenda?
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Guns, after all, aren't a factor in people being shot, guns don't make you shoot anyone.
Thus we need to ban toddlers instead.
It is a perfect solution. Nobody likes them they cry, they behind, and they make stinky poops.
The problem is likely much worse. Few events that should make the news are more quickly swept under the rug than accidental shootings. The ones that do make it through end up either buried in the back-most of the back pages, or written off in creative ways. A particularly egregious example of the latter made the slashdot front page years ago as Accidental Wii Suicide when a toddler got ahold of dad's loaded, unlocked revolver that was sitting within her reach and killed herself.
And of course what happens to the gun owners (if they are lucky enough to not be the ones shot)? Generally nothing. Not even charges investigated, law enforcement just says "shit happens" and walk away.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I am a gun owner. I have a permit and I carry daily. I support our rights to own firearms and refuse to give mine up. I believe that anyone who does this has a great responsibility to society to be trained, secure their weapon, and to be responsible. It should be a felony to leave a weapon unsecured and unsupervised. If a child acquires a weapon from you and uses it to harm himself or commit a crime you should be charged with a felony.
Only if you prove you took adequate steps to secure your weapon (safe, trigger locks, etc) should you be able to walk away free. We need to encourage responsible gun ownership and punish irresponsible gun ownership. These types of situations are preventable simply through education and a little bit of punishment.
I had a soldier bring his personal firearm to the reserve center, and accidently shoot the house next door. You can train and train someone, and they will go off and do something stupid anyway.
We need more good toddlers with guns to stop all those bad toddlers with guns.
So, I find that there are generally two arguments:
--You can't take my guns
--Ban all the guns
My thoughts are that, the "Ban all the guns" group is wishful thinking. That ship has sailed, and if you try to ban guns, then only outlaws will have guns, and I don't think that's any good.
For those folks that want guns, I think that's all fine and well and good, but the owner of the gun must be held criminally responsible if the gun kills anybody. If your toddler picks up the gun and kills grandma, you are on the hook for murder. If a gun is available to a toddler (or anybody, really), you can count on the toddler to kill somebody. Period.
I don't have a gun in my house, but if I want one, I still want to be able to have one. But if my kid shoots somebody with it, I need to be put in jail because of it.
It boggles the mind, however, that somebody would be dumb enough to think a toddler wouldn't pick up a gun and explore their world - like the woman that was killed when her toddler pulled the gun out of her purse while shopping at Wal Mart. That's just stupid, and she paid the price.
First, I agree that this particular story probably shouldn't be on ./ . Secondly, I am biased on the issue of gun control. I think that responsible citizens should be allowed to own and use guns.
The real issue is gun safety. I shot my first gun when I was 3. You better believe that my dad kept his firearms locked up unloaded with the ammo in a different safe. Each of us (my sister included!) were taught how to safely handle guns. We knew to stand behind whoever was shooting, aim the barrel at the ground until we were ready to shoot, how to hand the gun to the next person in line, etc. If you are going to have weapons, store them properly so they aren't mistaken for toys by toddlers, and teach gun safety to everyone near them. Perhaps there should be a gun license (or a certificate for having completed a safety course) which must be shown when purchasing firearms.
43, huh?
http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/N... "Unintentional suffocation - which also includes strangulation and choking on food or other objects - killed 1,176 U.S. children in 2010."
Just search a little and find all the other ways toddlers kill themselves and others. One of my friends with kids described it as largely being comprised of keeping his kid from killing himself all the time until he got old enough to try to kill himself less often. That's what happens when anything dangerous is anywhere near a toddler for whatever small amount of time it takes for them to do the wrong thing with it - and there are LOTS of dangerous things around, with plastic bags being higher on the list than firearms.
Is there any reason at all for this to be on Slashdot, except to push a general political agenda?
It's worse than you might think.
By associating toddlers with gun shootings they're making an emotional argument against gun ownership.
In short, we need to clamp down on gun ownership because we've now inflated the likelihood of a tragic incident in the minds of the reader. We do this by showing the enormous, large number without context, and by making it seem continuous and ever present.
Consider what your teenage daughter might think on reading the headline: One child a week gets shot! OMG!
This is just another non-evidence-based appeal for gun control, brought to light because the democrats are using the issue to help get elected.
And then, of course, they'll do nothing. Again.
Think it through. What contextual information might put the "one toddler a week" meme into perspective, and make it seem less important?
The NRA supports this... So these shootings are a win for them.
Actually the NRA is the premier organization for firearms safety instruction, both for civilians and law enforcement. Preventing such accidents is the NRA's primary mission. Political activism is a secondary thing forced upon them.
The NRA believes that all firearms owners should seek competent safety instruction when buying that first firearm. They certify instructors, develop training materials, etc. They just don't believe in a government run system for such training since state government could deprive a citizen of ownership by failing to provide instructors or materials for mandated classes. Such things have been done in the past.
Hell, such games are still occurring, note the closing of all department of motor vehicle offices in some "black" counties in alabama just as drivers licenses will be required to vote.
The last totalitarian shot with a private weapon in the US was Ronald Reagan.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I love my country, but if you don't think it's insane that small children are shooting people on a regular basis with weapons, legally purchased or not, you are part of the problem.
There are 320 million people in this country. 52 people died this year from falling off ladders.
Yes it is important to have sensible laws surrounding firearms, but it is possible to overreact even when people have died.
Of all the causes of death, being shot is pretty low on the list. You could probably save more lives by make driving a little bit safer.
And I'm not saying we shouldn't try to reduce gun deaths. I am saying that a death by a gun is not more tragic than a different kind of preventable death.
A death caused by a toddler finding a gun is not more tragic than a death from falling off a ladder.
Guns are tools and, like many other tools, can be misused. Would there be the same outrage if a toddler got hold of a cordless power drill and accidentally injured his grandmother with it? Granted the chance of a fatal injury is higher with a firearm, but the responsibility for proper access and use of any tool is with both the user and owner - and I would argue on a sliding scale of which one is most capable of being most responsible.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because you can run from a knife. This stupid strawman is always brought out when people talk about guns.
We don't have a knife problem. What self-respecting thug would use a knife when he can use an easily obtained gun?
We don't have a baseball bad slaying problem. Nor a crossbow problem.
We have a gun problem. Less guns means less gun violence.
Except totalitarians aren't going around shooting up schoolrooms or theaters.
Hint: They don't have to, not when they can march you out to the edge of town, line you and your family up alongside a handy trench, and *then* shoot you in a more orderly manner.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
According to:
http://www.livescience.com/448...
10 people die of drowning every day.
Therefore guns are aprox 70 times safer than pools.
Why there is no anti-pool agenda?
So isn't this essentially arguing for Disneyfying the world to keep kids safe?
Ban all porn (or at least require training in the proper handling and storage before downloading that file).
Alternatively ban or require sex education (even though there is scant proof comprehensive sex education reduces teen pregnancy. Ditto banning it).
And of course all manner of food, drugs, video games, D&D, etc.
It just strikes me as peculiar that some will argue for personal responsibility and freedom of choice when their favored thingy is under fire, and in the same breath argue for regulation and restriction when it is someone else's favorite thingy.
And in the past few decades we have moved increasingly towards Disneyfying the world. I would just like some honesty to which degree the world should cater exclusively to children.
For the most part, it is physically impossible for a toddler to chamber a round in most guns (unless we're talking about a revolver, but they represent a very small percentage of pistols these days). I, personally, never keep a round chambered in my pistol I carry regularly. I can pull the gun, turn the safety off, operate the action, and be ready to fire in about a second. I am not in high risk situations from day to day, like law enforcement, where the chances of me needing to operate my gun with one hand while fending someone off with the other is very likely. I can guarantee that almost every one of these people whose toddlers fired their pistol are not in high risk situations either.
So my question is why do so many people feel the need to have a round chambered at all times?
Further, I think a part of the problem is guns like Glocks have no actual safety. My conceal carry weapon has a safety which locks the action, prevents the trigger from being pulled, and physically prevents the hammer from striking the firing pin. It also serves as a de-cock mechanism. If I were to carry a round chambered, I would have the gun de-cocked, and since it is also double-action, I can just flip the safety and pull the trigger (which takes a tremendous amount of pressure when not cocked), which is still vastly safer in the hands of a child. Not only do Glocks not have safeties, but you can't de-cock them either. They are weapons designed more for military and police type use, where nothing should come in the way of the fun firing when the trigger is pulled.
So the problem is two-fold: 1) Don't keep a round chambered unless you feel the need to discharge the weapon is imminent. 2) If you have children, select a gun that has actual safety mechanisms (you know, a "safety") that enhances safety and prevents accidental discharges or operation by children.
Better known as 318230.
There were about 30,000 people who died from gun shots in 2012. That's rather more of a concern than 52 accidental deaths.
Okay, 20,000 of those were suicides. Suicide is easier and more often successful if guns are available, but even if we ignore those there are still 10,000 gun deaths a year. Most are murders, around 500 are accidental and about 250 are in self defence.
A death caused by a toddler firing a gun is more tragic than falling off a ladder. Falling from a ladder is a rare accident involving a tool that generally does a lot of good. Being shot is an all too common way to die, and it's rarely a case of self defence and on balance the tool involved doesn't seem to have a net positive effect. Giving up ladders would be detrimental, giving up on widespread gun ownership would seem to be hugely beneficial.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In the United States there are approx 310 million guns owned by civilians. Let's not take into account millions of the weapons owned by military, police, Social Security Agency and other similar organizations.
Coincidentally, there is approximately one gun per one person in the US>
If there are 43 cases that involved, per year, that means there is approximately 0.000000143 probability that the toddler will be involved. Let's do some analysis here... There is an estimated number of more than 1,500 per year who win one million or more dollars per year in the United States. Statistically, 30 toddlers will win one million dollars before one of them is involved in accident.
There is one crucial difference. "Involved" does not mean there is a fatality.
Conclusion is very simple: The quoted number is statistically insignificant. Vaccination complications cause higher mortality than there are accidents involving guns. To finalize, there are many issues to be resolved before this topic is escalated. And put that gun to safe away from kids.
In Switzerland it is a crime to carry a loaded firearm in public, except at a shooting range, unless you work in a security job and have been issued a permit. No conceal carry, no loaded carry, etc. Similarly, you can't store a loaded weapon. The safety culture is very strong, and people will turn you in for carrying or storing a loaded weapon.
So is that what you are advocating for the US?
In a wider context, we must enjoy gun violence or we'd have done something about it by now. Way I see it, you've got one of two options: Ban guns, like Australia did, or just give everyone a gun, require them to carry it at all times, and let the games begin! I know which one I'm rooting for!
Or I guess we could keep doing what we're doing and let evolution take its course. Maybe in a few generations we'll be able to dodge bullets like Neo in The Matrix.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yet caps on drain cleaner are more regulated than trigger guards on guns. Why?
Well there are many ways to safely store a gun that do not require trigger locks. You could store it in a safe, for instance.
Be VERY, very careful about storing a gun in a gun safe around kids. (Pick the right one and pay more). There are a lot of badly designed safes out there that kids can crack into. See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
To many of us outside the US, the national obsession with firearms in that country looks like a bizarre mass psychosis. By any measure, the deadly proliferation of guns in that country is killing far more people than in any country on the planet.
Once upon a time I wondered if there could be a way to make people understand that it's a thing you need to let go of, but increasingly these days it's a case of sit back, grab some popcorn and watch the nation of gun nuts all kill each other.