Sad story out of New Jersey where is appears a 4 year old got his hands on a .22 rifle from inside his house, and used it shoot a 6-year old friend in the head while the playing 'pretend shooting'. The story initially broke last night, and has been updated overnight with the sad news that the 6-year old died from the injury.
The story is still lacking details as to how the 4 year old was able to get his hands on the rifle, and make it all the way outside to play with it, while his parents were home(again, that is just according to the initial stories).
Folks...it doesn't matter how...what matters is it happened.
23 is a bigger number than 1...but stories like this make me much more depressed than school shooting by psychopaths do. Mass school shootings are an act of evil/crazy people, and it is my opinion you can never prevent that...only respond quickly enough to minimize. Cases like this though...this is preventable, and shouldn't have happened.
I'm not preaching laws that say you need to lock up your guns, or keep your ammo store separately. I'm preaching personal responsibility. In this case, some one(Not knowing the home life I would start by saying not just one, but BOTH parents) lacked the personal responsibility to own this gun(even if it was 'just this once'). They either didn't store it correctly, OR didn't train their 4 year old correctly(at 4, both my girls knew not to touch a gun, and to come and get mom/dad/any adult before touching a gun) or some combination of those two.
The article ends by saying the authorities are still trying to decide if they are going to press charges.
The answer to that NEEDS to be yes...and us in the gun owning community should be pushing that. I KNOW these parents are going to feel guilty that the 6-year old is dead. That's not enough. Their negligence and lack of responsibility lead to this death...and we need to use this as a case to show how we can punish the person responsible, not all gun owners.
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