9-year-old accidentally shoots self

Police are still exploring the possibility of charging the boy's parents, who had left him home alone when the incident happened.

Authorities were called just before 6 p.m. about an injured child at Grant Park Commons apartments in the 1900 block of Fisher Road, just west of Moreland Avenue.

A neighbor found the boy bleeding and didn't know why, and called 9-1-1, police said.

Atlanta Police Maj. Keith Meadows said the boy found a loaded .380 handgun in his apartment home and was playing with it when it went off, hitting the child in the abdomen.

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/police-9-year-old-522497.html?cxtype=rss_news_81960

I don't see that particular use/misuse of a firearm mentioned in the constitution.

The arm was being kept, but not kept in a responsible manner. That is often the result of lack of training.

Point is, the constitution allows for my self defense. It does not allow me to create physical hazards (out of ignorance or otherwise) to myself or others with my 'untrained' behavior.

The Constitution defines the scope and powers of government. In addition, the Bill of Rights was tacked on in order to specifically enumerates certain rights that people were understood to have (natural or granted by God, or whatever) and were regarded as particularly important. But it's clear from the way the whole thing is written and in particular Amendment IX, that the system thus created recognizes that all rights are assumed to exist save those that have been restricted through due process.

You have a right to be stupid. Specific stupid behaviors are subject to proscription by law. California has a "safe storage" law that allows people to be prosecuted for a crime, when their improper storage of a gun results in a child getting injured or killed.

I think it's a good law, but it's rarely invoked because an adult whose stupidity results in their own child getting injured or killed has already learned a harsh lesson and suffered greatly.

The constitution may not protect us from peoples stupidity, but it does allow us to pass laws that facilitate prosecution of people who commit stupid acts.

Many states have laws that require safe storage and handling of firearms. But training does not equal safe, as you imply. I have a right to be stupid and dense. This is the contradiction in the firearm safety training requirement that is part of the licensing process in many states.

There may be a law that requires me to store my gun properly, but I am stupid and dense, so it's ok that I leave a loaded .38 laying around where people can pick it up and shoot each other.

My point is simply this, stupid act or not, you are liable and open to prosecution. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Negligent behavior that causes harm to others can result civil or criminal penalties depending on the level of stupid or malice involved. Negligent behavior that results in harm only to the idiot is often self-correcting, and, in extreme cases, makes for entertaining reading when the Darwin awards are announced.

Whether you store firearms in a reckless manner, you text while driving, play with matches, or you store battery acid a in a soft drink bottle where kids can get to it; there is no constitutional protection for being "stupid in a no stupid zone." Nor does it make sense to stop drunk driving by taking the keys away from sober people.

:applause:

Your first reaction to reading a story about a child with a gunshot wound makes you giggle out loud a little?

Rabid right wing member of the tea party who froths at the mouth for the opportunity to simply blow someone away should any opportunity present itself.

How'd I do?

A decent gun safety lesson includes teaching the importance of proper storage, and how to do it.

It's pretty typical for a child who finds a gun lying around to pick it up and pull the trigger. The parents probably naively thought that however they stored the gun was OK, or they may have thought their child would never mess with their stuff. (Yes, I am giving them a the benefit of the doubt. They might just be idiots.)

That's why it should be taught in public schools.

Unrec for posting a "current events" story with nothing to clearly tie it to the acceptable topics for this forum.

- and I hope it goes through so as to avoid just this type of accident.

Firearms do not "go off" by themselves, especially handguns. They discharge because something--or someone--causes them to. A few long guns, like pump-action shotguns and old sub-machine guns, can be discharged by being slammed on the butt, but any handgun manufactured in the U.S. in the past twenty-five or thirty years is "drop safe"; it will not fire unless there's a round chambered, any manual safeties are disengaged, and the trigger is pulled. And I have little doubt that's what happened in this instance.

One or both parents are idiots for leaving the gun behind, accessible and with a round in the chamber. Handguns chambered for .380 ACP (aka 9x17mm or 9mm Short; generally, "9mm" indicates 9x19mm, aka 9mm Luger or 9mm Parabellum) are becoming quite popular these days, but I'd wager this was most likely a Kel-Tec or a Ruger LCP, neither of which have manual safeties.

I'm not blaming the kid; you can't expect a nine year-old to not muck about with a gun. That's why we don't let them drive cars or vote either. But neither am I blaming the gun or its manufacturer, any more than I'd blame a bath tub or its manufacturer if the parents left it unattended and filled with water, or a car or its manufacturer if a parent left it in "park" with the engine running and the kids in the back seat.

Christ, I hate style guides that tell you to avoid the passive voice. I didn't spend all those years in secondary education learning about the passive voice in six different languages just to subsequently avoid it. The headline got it right: "nine year-old shoots self." So why does the article itself have to used that all-too-common (but no less incorrect for that) phrase "the gun went off," rather than "the child caused the firearm to go off"?

that children should be supervised? After all, the gun is the problem, not irresponsible parenting...

"The headline got it right: "nine year-old shoots self." So why does the article itself have to used that all-too-common (but no less incorrect for that) phrase "the gun went off," rather than "the child caused the firearm to go off"?"

:sarcasm: ...for the impaired.

on the wall and someone was always home with the kids supervising them. Children were kept busy working in the fields and milking the cows and did not have totally unsupervised time to mess around with guns. We live in a totally different world. Also the constitution says 'armed militia' so for all we know, arms kept in a regional arsenal is what they had in mind.

The Second Amendment says "the right of people to keep and bear arms"; it does not say "the right of the states" or "the right of the militia." In case you haven't been keeping up with current events, all nine Supreme Court justices opined in Heller that the Second Amendment secures the right to the individual members of the people (though they differed on what degree of government regulation it permitted).

And as it happens, unintentional gunshot wounds have decreased by two thirds since 1970, not in the least place because of handguns supplanting long guns, and increased means of securing handguns (quick access lock boxes, trigger locks, etc.). This kind of incident is actually comparatively unusual compared to earlier times; the main thing that's changed is the increased amount of media coverage, and the increased access to it (between cable news and the internet, dissemination of what used to be local news first went nationwide, and now global).

The framers left lots of their writings behind as to what they meant. They meant guns kept at the individual owner's home.

Kind of hard for a frontier family to repel an Indian attack if the regional arsenal with their guns is twenty miles away, or even one mile away.

Kind of hard to use a gun to repel a home invader if the gun is kept at a shooting club on the other side of town, or next door for that matter.

All nine Supremes, agree...you are wrong.

...but that won't stop the anti-civil-rights brigade from using it as a club. Never mind the fact that swimming pools are ten to a hundred times more likely to result in the accidental death of a child, depending on what age bracket you look at...

As more guns are in private hands than any time in history, the accident rate for children with guns is at historic lows.

It's the only way we'll be safe.

especially those foolish enough to leave a firearm that could be easily accessed by a nine year old.

There are many ways to secure a firearm that are not expensive or take a long time to access. Beside me right now as I type I have a loaded firearm in a gun box with a electronic key pad that I can open in one second. Such boxes can be found on the internet for less than $50.

They don't offer a deterrent against a thief but should deter a nine year old. Still, a nine year old in a house with firearms needs to receive training from his parents. I started training my daughter in gun safety at that age by allowing her to shoot a .22 caliber single shot rifle at the gun range.

My wife and I often shot handguns and she was interested. I purchased a .22 S&W Kit gun which had a grip small enough to fit her hands and taught her the basics of loading and unloading a revolver safely and emphasized the absolute importance of never pointing a firearm at anything she was not willing to destroy. Before I allowed her to shoot the weapon, I required her to pass a test naming all the external parts of the revolver. Once she passed, I took her to the range and taught her the basics of target shooting.

She enjoyed shooting but never had the fascination with firearms that many children who find one unsupervised have. Of course the firearm was always secured as were my other firearms unless we were going to the range. Eventually she wanted to try firearms in a larger caliber and I allowed her to shoot revolvers in .38, .357. .45 acp and .44 magnum as she grew and could handle the size and the recoil.

Her favorite handgun proved to be a S&W 45 acp Model 25-2 target revolver, which was the same size as Dirty Harry's .44 magnum. She weighed less than 100 pounds and when she walked up to the line on the range, many shooters would stop and watch her shoot this enormous revolver. While she loved the attention, the weight and the caliber of the revolver made it a pleasant revolver to shoot and she became quite proficient with it.

When she was eighteen or nineteen years old she returned home one night. I was at work. She was going to bed when the burglar alarm went off and she assumed that the wind had rattled the sliding glass door and set it off. She reset the alarm in the living room and returned to her bedroom. Several minutes later the alarm went off again. This time, she fortunately grabbed her favorite revolver and went to investigate. She walked into the kitchen and found a man forcing the sliding glass door to the kitchen open. He said, "I'm going to rape you." She had the revolver in her hand at her side and lifted it and drew down on him. Once he seen the enormous revolver in the hands of a girl who still weighted less than 100 pounds and was only five foot two, he changed his mind and fled. No shots were fired. No one was injured. All's well that ends well.

The bottom line is that if you chose to own a firearm and you have children in the house, you have a TREMENDOUS responsibility. First you have to secure the firearm to prevent unauthorized access. Second you need to train your children, at the minimum, how to responsibly handle a firearm.

This is no bullshit. Owning a firearm is not for everybody. It's serious and the responsibility is NEVER to be taken lightly.

I did treat my responsibility seriously. Thankfully the training I gave my daughter enabled her to prevent serious injury or death.

Aren't you glad some else isn't out there making that decision for you ?

as I held a government security clearance during my working life beginning with my service in the Vietnam era.

If I would have proven irresponsible, seriously insane or prone to violence or criminal activity, I would have no problem with the government denying my privilege to legally buy a firearm.

You're absolutely correct my apologies

Find an incident about a gun being mishandled in a negative light, and be sure to know it will be posted by you.

Don't you ever have anything positive to say?

Quote from jgraz, with one word changed.