Children Killed by Guns

Will it ever end? That is the 50 million dollar question. It is a very vague question, so maybe it's important now to elaborate on it now in this article.

The question refers to guns, specifically in the hands of children. Recently, the NRA has stated that the best way to stop the tragic deaths would be to make sure that the good people with guns can protect themselves from the bad people who have guns. This may generally sound OK, but what do you say when a sibling kills another sibling. Is that 2 or 3 year old a bad kid because he shoots and kills someone? I don't think you would ever have to ask this question of a parent who lost a child due to another one of their children accidentally firing a  gun. Is it an accident? Yes, it may be called an accident of the child who pulled the trigger, but I can assure you that it is no accident of the parent who allowed a gun to be reachable to the sibling who pulls the trigger. Guns should never be in reach of children, and it should be a crime punishable to the adult that made that gun available to the child, not necessarily the parent. But if a parent purchases a real gun with real bullets and is dumb enough to allow that gun to be in reach of a child, then that parent needs to take full responsibility of his/her actions and should pay the consequences of such an irresponsible act that takes the life of a child.  There should be no pity here. You should not forgive a parent just because he/she is in grief of their dead child. Just because they are the parent of an action of their sibling does not excuse them for being responsible for what they do, just because they are really grieving over the result of the shooting.

If you believe that the words just stated are harsh, then how about some real stories of children getting killed because of loaded guns within reach of children.

Kinsler Allen Davis

As reported in the 'Corsicana Daily Sun', a 2-year old boy named Kinsler Davis was killed in what is being described as an accidental shooting when he found a handgun that was supposed to be hidden from reach in a bedroom. He shot himself in the head. Again, it is said that the gun was accidentally discharged, but the fact is that the child actually pulled the trigger and the gun fired, so it was not a weapon that accidentally fired. Someone pulled the trigger, namely the 2-year old boy who may have been looking into the barrel when he pulled the trigger. How sick is that. I can hardly imagine that when my boys were 2 years old that they would have access to a gun, let alone a loaded gun. Yes, it is a tragic incident (not accident) when such a tragedy happens to a child, but the real tragedy here is the fact that parents continue to allow guns to be within reach of children, loaded guns, and some of them even purchased for their siblings, who really don't even understand the fact that the gun purchased for them by their mom or dad can kill.

Earlier this past week, in Houston Texas, it was a 5 year old by who shot his 7 year old brother with a rifle. It was just a normal day for the two boys, when they happened to be taking a bath together. The mother steps away for a moment, and the 5-year old boy finds an old and rusty bolt-action .22 caliber rifle, aims it at his brother and pulls the trigger. This time, the bullet goes through the back of the child. "If you have weapons -- guns, knives, anything that a child can hurt themselves with or hurt someone else -- the parents secure them, put them in a place where a child can't get to them. If your children are older, perhaps training for them to understand what a gun is," said Gwen Carter with CPS.
Could this be considered pre-meditation?  Luckily the 7 year old boy is still alive, but this dumb action by the parents caused an injury to one of their children. Now, the 5-year old boy was taken from his home and is now staying with his uncle.

This may be considered an accident, but it should also be treated as a crime, because child safety was compromised by a parent who kept loaded guns within reach of a child, and an injury occurred because of it.
But in a recent AP article concerning a shooting that occurred in  Tyler Texas back in February, where a 2-year old boy shot himself in the chest, it was only luck that the boy didn't shoot himself in the head. "Authorities say the boy's mother was the only other person home at the time. She is not facing charges," according an article from the AP(Associated press). 

Just last Tuesday on May 7th, a 3 year old boy kills himself with his uncle's gun, which happened to be in a backpack in the room that both the uncle and 3 year old boy shared. This time, the uncle, Jeffrey D. Walker, 29, was arrested for culpable negligence charges.. Why was this man arrested, and the others mentioned above were not? What makes him special to get arrested. Maybe it's because he is a black man! Was this a racial incident?

You can just about visit any daily newspaper from any normal sized city, and find tragic stories like the ones mentioned in this article. Still, there are no new Federal laws passed since the horror that happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, regardless of what mainstream society wants. The NRA, only concerned about protecting the Second Amendment of the Constitution, will not back down and let some common sense legislation pass so that less people would die because of a gun.  Why? Do the Congressional leaders in our Nation's Capital not give a damn? If you are a Republican, have an 'A' rating with the NRA, then only do what you believe is going to save your job, and that's not to back more gun safety. The rating reflects their voting record on gun rights in Congress, and God forbid, they wouldn't be wanted to be rated with an 'F'. In case they don't know it yet, the present 113th Congress of the United States sports one of the lowest ratings in Congressional history, so who really cares how they are rated with the gun lobby. 

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