Basically, four year old boy finds gun at home. Shoots and kills 5 year old sibling. Wounds 7 year old sibling.
The kids were home alone at the time.
You can't be serious. Who leaves (other than these parents) children under 10 at home alone?
Okay, so I was left home alone at 8 and 9, but I never had to watch my younger sister when I was by myself.
The four year old is in police custody. But they really can't charge this kid. He's four years old. He knows the concept of right and wrong, but he wouldn't have any concept of mortality and what actions can cause death. Wonder if he thought the gun was a toy?
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I just shudder to think what this kid's going to do a few years down the road when it finally sinks in what he did. And that will be heaped on top of the other problems he's probably going to have just based on the fact that he has parents that would allow a situation like this to develop in the first place. Posts: 609 | Registered: Apr 2003
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That's why you shouldn't keep a gun in the house. And if you do, why are you going to leave in loaded AND accessible to a four yr old? Stories like this are just sad. Why aren't the parents in police custody (or are they? I didn't actually read it.)
Posts: 981 | Registered: Aug 2003
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And that's why you shouldn't keep guns in places accessible to children and leave young children in the house alone.
Responsible parents and gun owners would not have allowed the opportunity.
I'd keep a gun in my house (to use for target shooting at the range) if my doctors wouldn't shoot me first. Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Growing up in the South with a border-line Redneck as a father, I knew that there were guns in the house. And I was also threatened with such a spanking if I was caught playing with them. When I was four, I:
a.) knew about the two shotguns that were in the back of the closet (we just don't have room for a gun rack), and
b.) knew that I was never allowed to touch them; only Daddy and Momma were allowed.
When I was older, I realized that the guns were never loaded, and the safety was on; they hadn't been loaded in over ten years. The safety was always on, just in case there was a bullet lodged in the barrels that Daddy didn't know about.
The sad thing is, most people don't realize how well little kids can pry into things and get themselves in trouble. Older kids, too. When I was in second grade, a classmate of mine was shot in the head when her brother was playing with a b.b. gun he had just unloaded--the b.b. was stuck in the barrel. It struck her in the head, and she almost died. To this day she is crippled on her left side.
Any idiot can be a parent (not that I'm implying that all parents are idiots!). Unfortunately, those same idiots can own guns.
Posts: 873 | Registered: Apr 2003
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::raises hand:: mac- when I was eight, I started being left home alone with my four younger brothers for eight hours a day during the summer and holidays.
Sometimes mom would be working (babysitting someone elses kids), just as often, she was over at a friend's house chatting.
Eight year olds were never meant to be parents. Some of my worst guilt centers around the lengths I would go to to keep my brothers in the house and safe from harm.
My father, an ex-marine, loved his guns. It took four years and six near accidents before I had the guts to take the guns apart and discard the parts in the nearby field (I don't know why I threw parts out into the field).
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
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