Front Sight, Press

I read way too many of these stories:

Boy, 7, shot by cousin, 9, who mistook gun for a toy

Associated Press

LEXINGTON, Ky. - A 7-year-old central Kentucky boy was accidentally shot by a cousin Wednesday, authorities said.

Caleb Arnold, 7, and Andrew Seat, 9, were playing at their grandparents’ house in Jeffersonville, about 35 miles east of Lexington, when they found a gun under the bed, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Deputy Robbie Miles told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

“They were playing cops and robbers,” Miles said.

Andrew pointed a handgun at Caleb and pulled the trigger, Miles said. The bullet tore through the right side of Caleb’s neck and out the middle of his back.

Their grandmother, who was in another area of the home and heard the shot, came running into the bedroom and rushed Arnold to a Mount Sterling hospital just after noon. He was flown to the University of Kentucky Hospital, where he was in critical condition Wednesday night, a hospital spokeswoman said.

No charges were expected to be filed, Miles said. He did not release the names of the boys’ grandparents.

Miles said the grandparents typically keep the gun in a secure place, but had taken it out the night before because of the suspicious behavior of a stranger who knocked on their door.

When he went to work Wednesday, he forgot to put the gun back, Miles said.

“It was a mistake that happened,” Miles said.

Source: Kentucky.com

Some thoughts:

We can never, ever, not once, anytime “forget” the location of a loaded weapon. Storing a gun under a bed is almost always a bad idea if you have kids around. They will find it. They always do.

I find it troubling that this shooting was done by a nine-year-old. When I was nine years old, I knew absolutely the difference between a toy and real gun. There was never any doubt in my mind. I will admit that these days we have more handguns that might sorta’ look like toys, but I remain skeptical about these kinds of explanations. Simple logic should kick in, even for a nine-year-old. When was the last time you saw Granddad under the bed playing with a toy gun? I think these kids are curious and haven’t developed the moral reasoning capability to think through the consequences of their actions.

My maternal grandfather slept with a Webley revolver under his pillow. One day I found it. I was 9 or 10 at that time. I looked at it a while because it was way major cool, but I didn’t pick it up. I knew what it was and what it would do. I put the pillow back in place and didn’t think about it anymore. In retrospect, I would have to say that my grandfather should have put the gun up when he knew the grand kids were coming for a visit, but knowing how he thought, I’m sure that he just expected that any grandchild of his would have the intelligence to know what a gun was and to leave it the hell alone, and we always did.

By the time I was 9 years old, I was hunting and target shooting  under the watchful supervision of adults, but I was shooting the real stuff then. There was nothing more important to me than to honor the trust placed in me by my elders in allowing me shoot real guns. We lived with guns. Getting your guns was a right of passage for a boy. To date myself a bit, I was nine in 1961. I grew to manhood in a score of little towns in Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky, and in all of that time, I can’t recall a single instance of a child shooting another child, either accidentally or otherwise in the places where I lived.

What has changed? One is that I think there are a lot more handguns around than there used to be. They’ve always been around, but the numbers of people keeping handguns for self defense has increased a lot. Many of these folks do not have training, experience or firearms traditions to draw upon. They got a gun because they were scared, and it sits around somewhere, untrained, unattended, and unmanaged serving as a magical talisman to ward off the boogey man. I’ll let you in on a little secret: guns are lousy magical talismans. Guns are survival tools, and like any tool, you have to learn to operate and care for them. There is a craft to firearms which must be acquired; we aren’t born with it.

Our children are being treated to a tsunami of distorted media violence. I can’t help but think that the kind of violence that they see in TV, movies and games must have a negative effect on some, and for some, the line between fantasy and reality becomes fatally blurred. I don’t want to make too much of this because I believe that children equipped with sanity, morality, and good sense will make moral and correct decisions, regardless of what they see on TV. Still, I feel that media violence does factor into this phenomenon.

When I think in terms of what was most different between my childhood and what seems to be happening today, it is the fact that our dads and granddads took us hunting and shooting. They trained us in safety and firearms handling. They showed us the power of firearms so that there was no curiosity left. They set forth an expectation that we would be safe and responsible people. They trusted us. I don’t think that parents of this generation are doing this, or at least, not near enough. They’re too confused by the media, too busy, too lazy, too urban, too something to get out with their kids on Saturday afternoon and shoot some pop cans with the .22. This is the critical issue: kids are curious as they will always be, but they aren’t being trained and familiarized with the guns that inhabit their worlds.

When you bring a gun into a home, it must come with a commitment to train and make safe the members of the household, all of them, as soon as possible — girls, boys, significant others — everyone. I did that with my family and it worked. For my trouble, I got kids I could trust and a household able to “repel sudden invasions” if need be. And you know something else? It’s fun.