5 year old shoots 6 year old brother

[TexasCajun]

If we must point fingers, let's point the fingers at the liberal left who've made it their mission to demonize guns and gun ownership. As already noted, guns were a normal fact of life for many families for generations. There wasn't anything mystical about them. We knew what they did and could do and we knew the iron-clad rules surrounding them. There was no way that I'd ever even think about going into the gun cabinet or taking the shotgun or rifle out of the closet without a grown-up being there or telling me to. And when I did handle any of the guns, it was ALWAYS with the 4 rules firmly in place.

Fast forward to today where the left has replaced firearm respect with firearm fear. And that turn of events has forced gun owner-parents to start hiding the guns. Now guns are a forbidden fruit, which to a child is only barely resistable at best. As the guns have been shoved into the shadows, firearm education has been forgotten. Then you add the video games that portray violence in such a realistic fashion, but without the consequences, you have a recipe for disaster that seems to now be playing out pretty frequently in a media that is now a complicit partner in the "transformation" of the nation.

When any legislation concerning guns is brought forward, we get to hear about how more guns = more ND/AD. We get to hear how so many children are now at risk because of the mere presence of a gun in the home. And of course, the left won't hesitate to suggest that if we remove the guns the children will be saved! The real truth of the matter is that by trying to make gun ownership socially unacceptable, they've actually caused more of these incidents than they've prevented.

[VMI77]

Fast forward to today where the left has replaced firearm respect with firearm fear. And that turn of events has forced gun owner-parents to start hiding the guns.

I agree with you in the main but that's not the only reason for hiding guns. When I was in HS I kept my guns in a gun case with glass doors that showed them off. These days I keep them in a safe to make it harder to steal them. I wouldn't even consider keeping them on display like I used to.

[Right2Carry]

You think that 5 year old will grow up normal after killing his sibling due to the neglectful actions of the parents?

"As of noon, the child was said to be in critical condition but was expected to survive."

http://www.kens5.com/story/news/2015/03 ... /24269223/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That is good news but the fact remains that both kids will have problems due to neglectful parents.

[rbwhatever1]

I hope they get through this with the family held together. Breaking it up will surely damage those kids permanently.
I hope the little guy has a full recovery. He will have major bragging rights as he matures and shows all the girls his gunshot wound received from fighting terrorists, tyranny or monsters.
He'll definitely be popular at show & tell. Do they still do that in school? I had a pet preying mantis that loved Little Debbie oatmeal cookies and he was a hit in show & tell. He would eat the icing and get it all over his face. I was quite the celebrity at lunch too with my superman lunch box, shattered thermos and my pet preying mantis. I carried him a few weeks in my lunch box. Don't remember what happened to him. May have passed on with clogged arteries...

In a tragedy like this you have to dig really deep for a bright spot. I hope they find one when it all shakes out.

[K.Mooneyham]

Horrible to hear this sort of thing happen. Things, unfortunately, are different from "the old days". My dad always kept a loaded shotgun by the bedside. My mom watched us kids pretty closely when we were really little and we were also taught a healthy respect (fear?) of keeping our hands off of dad's stuff, but especially the shotgun. Sometimes I'd look at it, but I didn't touch it; I didn't want to get in trouble. (I'm not saying we never got into anything. We once dumped out some of dad's cologne because the bottle looked like a train. But I was a pretty big kid before I touched that shotgun, and that was under supervision.) When we were a little older, my dad took us kids out one time, and he shot some melons with the shotgun. It was a very visual learning aid as to why we shouldn't play with real guns.

Another thing strikes me different between now and then. There was no 24-hour, nation-wide, agenda-driven news cycle. Some kids in the old days probably were shot accidentally (negligently?) while playing with guns. But the only folks who heard about it lived in the area local to the incident. Now they do everything they can turn it into a political ploy.

Seriously, I hope that family learned something that will help them later, that things turn out better for them, and the little kid makes a full recovery. That's got to be a real tough lesson to learn.

[K5GU]

My heart bleeds for these people. I wish we could learn more about the type of firearm they were "handling" when "it went off". If we knew, it might help get more handgun owners educated on the safety measure that could prevent the accidents.
I feel like a 'broken record', but if it's a SA handgun, I'm not convinced a child can do much more than pull the trigger, which means the gun owner is showing ignorance by leaving the gun not attended, with a round in the chamber!

[K5GU]

Horrible to hear this sort of thing happen. Things, unfortunately, are different from "the old days". My dad always kept a loaded shotgun by the bedside. My mom watched us kids pretty closely when we were really little and we were also taught a healthy respect (fear?) of keeping our hands off of dad's stuff, but especially the shotgun. Sometimes I'd look at it, but I didn't touch it; I didn't want to get in trouble. (I'm not saying we never got into anything. We once dumped out some of dad's cologne because the bottle looked like a train. But I was a pretty big kid before I touched that shotgun, and that was under supervision.) When we were a little older, my dad took us kids out one time, and he shot some melons with the shotgun. It was a very visual learning aid as to why we shouldn't play with real guns.

Another thing strikes me different between now and then. There was no 24-hour, nation-wide, agenda-driven news cycle. Some kids in the old days probably were shot accidentally (negligently?) while playing with guns. But the only folks who heard about it lived in the area local to the incident. Now they do everything they can turn it into a political ploy.

Seriously, I hope that family learned something that will help them later, that things turn out better for them, and the little kid makes a full recovery. That's got to be a real tough lesson to learn.

You're right. And isn't it interesting that the media focuses on the topics that are current events or recent new reports? One example is when there's an air crash..for days or weeks they report on lots of air incidents..Or when there's a gun accident or gun legislation in the news...etc. etc.