That toddler who found the gun in his mother’s handbag at Walmart and killed her with it – how often do accidents of that kind happen?
No one knows, David Graham at the Atlantic tells us.
There aren’t reliable statistics on gun incidents involving kids.
Because…it doesn’t matter? We forgot? There’s no money in the budget for that? We’re going to do it next year?
…it’s unclear how often children accidentally shoot people. The Washington Post looked into the question earlier in 2014, after a 9-year-old at a shooting range in Arizona lost control of an Uzi and killed her instructor. Mark Berman found that no agency could give him a clear answer on the matter. While there are often media reports about such deaths, there’s no comprehensive database. One can track the number of victims of accidental shootings younger than 18 with some confidence, but it’s tougher to track them by who’s pulling the trigger.
Maybe that’s because what’s the point of collecting the data if you can’t do anything about the problem?
Research for more than a decade has found that accidental shooting deaths are consistently undercounted.
The upshot of all this is that it’s hard to learn any policy lessons from Rutledge’s death—in addition to the impossibility of making sense of it on any emotional level.
But what’s the point of learning policy lessons if you’re not allowed to put what you learn into practice?
Police shootings? What police shootings?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/12/police_shootings_president_obama_must_demand_an_accurate_count_of_the_number.html
Fatal Encounters, a site devoted to tracking and counting the number of unlawful murders committed by police in the US (and often without consequences for the shooter).
Gawker.com: What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings by Brian Burghart, author of Fatal Encounters.
The Ohh Shoot blog, which reports shootings and deaths caused by the careless use of guns. They are not “accidental shootings”, they’re unintentional shootings.
On a purely technical level, the two year-old shooting puzzled me. The one time I fired a pistol, it took a huge amount of my grip strength. I’m fairly weedy, by no means the village blacksmith, but I can lift 50-60 lbs rather easily, change tires, and all that good stuff. So I couldn’t see how a toddler could even pull the trigger. I asked my family gun expert, and apparently it varies a lot among guns.
Then the question arises, why didn’t the now-departed nuclear scientist at least have the safety on? ??
Clearly, the solution is to arm more toddlers.
The weapon was likely a Glock, which by design have no external safety catch. Because of this, there are specific holsters for them which prevent access to the trigger. If the thing has been cocked, that’s all the “safety” there is. Note: this is appropriate if the weapon is used in the correct context, e.g. drivers of military vehicles. It’s a terrible choice of weapon for personal civilian protection, because you either cock it before you leave the house and risk shooting yourself or others accidentally, or you leave it safe and have to cock it first before you can fire. Rubbish either way.
What’s terrifying is that this “reponsible gun owner” was carrying around such a weapon in a loaded, cocked, ready-to-fire state, and not properly secured in the appropriate holster but rather somewhat loose in a bag. How many other soccer moms in the supermarket are a two-pound-pull away from putting a bullet through YOU?
I’m having trouble parsing this… I can just about understand (but am terrified by) the idea of nine year olds handling pistols at a firing range because, hey, recoil is a thing, but you’re most likely only getting one shot out at a time… but… seriously? The idea of giving an automatic weapon to a child is just horrifying. Hell, I’m a fully grown and fairly fit adult, and I have trouble with electric drills sometimes, but a child is supposed to handle automatic weaponry? Scary.
Properly supervised it should not be a problem. I filmed my partner’s 11 year old son firing a H&K MP5 on full-auto at an indoor range in Vegas on holiday a few years back. The range superviser was extremely careful and attentive, the boy was responsible and obedient, and he was rewarded with an experience he can’t have here in the UK.
But if not supervised with proper care and attention, then yes – scary. But no scarier than an unskilled adult not supervised properly – probably less so. /shrug/
Have you even been to a WhaleMart lately? You could be gong down the health food aisle looking for your six pound economy bag of BacoSplosions when a Jihadi whips out his AK from under his burnoose. There’s no time for safety – America’s security is at stake. If the Jihadi gets off the first shot then a two year old might grow up without his mother.
BacoSplosions…now I want some!
What makes the whole Idaho story even stupider is that the town is 95% white (not kidding about that) and has a very-low crime rate.
Idaho…it looks so pretty in pictures, but between the 9-year-old forced Mormon child-brides, the rampant meth, the Aryan Nation and other hate groups, and the moonbat paranoia, I don’t want to step foot in that pestilent hellhole.
Honestly sorry if I’m just being dense, but…
How does this affect how stupid the story is?
Do we have any FACTS about what sort of firearm and what ‘carry condition’ was involved? The question of trigger-weight is valid, but quite tangential. Whatever was in the victim’s purse was, by demonstration, insanely out of place.
A firearm ‘ready’ for self-defense use is too damn’ dangerous to be lying around.
sonofrojblake (@10):
The lack of even the transcendently stupid (but depressing common) OMG! Scary Dark People! excuse for packing heat. I saw a quote (sorry, no citation available) from someone in the dead woman’s family (her father?) to the effect that she wasn’t particularly concerned about crime and didn’t carry the gun for self defense. She just carried it because she loved guns.
johnthedrunkard (@11):
FTFY. No, wait…
Now it’s fixed.