Fairbanks police are investigating a report that a 5-year-old boy accidentally shot his 3-year-old sister in the chest with a .357 revolver Friday afternoon in an apartment near Party Palace on Peger Road.
The girl was in stable condition as of Friday evening and had been flown to Anchorage, officer Alana Malloy said.
The girl’s parents drove her to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, where police were called at 2:42 p.m. The gun belonged to the children’s parents and it was not immediately clear why the boy had access to it, she said.
You can already imagine what the father's argument was for purchasing this weapon.
"We need to for protection. The world is a dangerous place. Think of the kids."
Yes think of the kids.
A day ago this 5 year old boy was just a regular kid who had NOT just blown a hole in his little sister's chest with a .357 handgun. And the suddenly in the blink of an eye, and the twitch of a finger, he was.
The good news is that it sounds like the little girl will pull through.
The bad news is that she will undoubtedly be returned to a family that clearly cannot protect her from their stupidity.
Cheeez. Utter stupidity of the parents, for sure.
ReplyDelete(BTW, you mean "hole" not "whole", right?)
And her brother is going to be scarred by the guilt. I hope both kids get proper counseling.
ReplyDeleteA similar incident happened 4 doors down from us. We live in a very quiet neighborhood, but there was a fugitive on the loose from the next county, and he had been spotted a few miles from our town. There were constant crawls, robocalls, etc. warning residents to lock their doors, windows & cars.
ReplyDeleteThe victim was a 14 year old girl, at home alone with her 10 year old brother, as the parents were at work. The story is that the kids got scared, the boy found the key to the gun cabinet, and took out a pistol. The rest, sadly, is history.
The town attorney has decided to charge the boy with the least possible misdemeanor charge of mishandling a firearm. The idea is that the court can them pay for counseling as the family can't.
I didn't know the family as they had moved in recently. I had seen both kids biking & walking in the neighborhood and they seemed like good kids. A tragedy all around.
This makes me sick to my stomach. . . .
ReplyDeleteWhat a terrible story! The parents should have all of their guns confiscated and never be able to get a gun license again. At the least, they should be charged with child endangerment. But of course, that will never happen because the parents are the rill Amurikans and being rabidly pro-life only applies to protecting zygotes and fetuses.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago a freshman state rep here in PA asked a teenaged neighbor to check on his house daily while the rep was away on vacation. The rep had left his gun lying on a table. The teen took the gun and later in the day used it to commit suicide. Another terrible story. The real ending? Months after this incident, the same state rep was named "Freshman Lawmaker of the Year" by the rill Amurikans in the state legislature who refuse to allow the un-rill Amurikans in cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia write their own gun laws to protect themselves.
Stories like these really make me ashamed of this country.
As the mother of 7, I do not have one weapon in this house. I just don't trust that a gun would not be used by one of them who might think it was "cute/fun" to point it and shoot.
ReplyDeleteEVEN if you think they don't know where the gun is and/or where the bullets are, they somehow always find this stuff and shoot someone accidentally.
I hope Child Protective Services gets involved and the girl and her brother are not allowed to return home for a while. When parents leave a loaded weapon around where a five-year-old can get hold of it, that's endangering the welfare of a child, and the parents should be charged accordingly. Stupid, stupid people. Makes me sick.
ReplyDeleteAnd isn't the evidence that a gun in the home increases your likelihood of being shot many times over compared to living in a weapons free home? Unfortunately she isn't the exception.
ReplyDeleteI know it's early, or late in Alaska, but you might want to check your spelling.
ReplyDelete~~~~~
When this happens around here, the Right will come back, "If this law will only save one life, won't it be worth it! There they go again, trying to control our lives!"
We never know when the British are coming to take away our liberties! We need to be armed to protect our children! Paul Revere warned us!
These people are idiots for not having trigger locks, or keeping the weapons locked in a safe.
ReplyDeleteHaving weapons at home for self defense or hunting is long established by tradition in the USA.
Allowing them within reach of children should be at least a class A misdemeanor, if not a felony, for obvious reasons.
When my children were small, and even through their teenage years, the firearms were always in a locked drawer, unloaded,with safety on. Now that it's just the girl friend and myself, I have loosened up a bit, but that's due to adults only in this house
Wrong again, Gryphen. You keep forgetting that this is AMERICA where the accidental deaths of innocent family members is just unavoidable collateral damage in our national celebration of masturbatory handgun fantasies:
ReplyDelete"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"
Routine handgun-related deaths sends the cheerful message to the NRA that they're successfully protecting our semi-constitutional right to have handguns scattered about the home like tacky theme park tschochkes for children and angry adults to point at each other in play or heated arguments.
Don't you bleeding heart liberals understand that without the irresponsible distribution, storage and use of handguns America would be... Canada?
This is certainly a tragedy that should never have happened. This is the gun owner equivalent of "my dog will never bite." "My kids would never touch my guns."
ReplyDeleteYes, yes, they will. They shouldn't know where they are and they certainly shouldn't have access to them.
Guns for home protection are pretty ineffective in locked safes or with gun locks, but there are other effective means of keeping them out of young hands. It's not rocket science.
I still don't think our kids know the location of our handgun and it's in plain sight and easily accessible. The rest are locked up.
Guns don't kill people but they make it a whole lot easier for people to kill people.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately handguns that are in the home for "protection," protect no one. For every protection story, there are 10 or more tragedies.
ReplyDeleteOne of my biggest fears in having children, was the thought that they would fall victim to something like this.
My kids were educated on gun safety from the time they were old enough to understand. A gun is a tool, a very dangerous tool.
I would have preferred a gun cabinet in plain view of everyone, because that is how I was raised, but we live in a community where that is not a norm. So the guns were kept in locked cases, and taken out for hunting and target practice.
I grieve for the two children. Even if this is handled correctly by their parents, both kids are now carrying a terrible burden. At these ages, little children regress. I pray their family is strong enough to absorb the impact of this. Peace
Seventh grade, one of my classmates shot and killed his younger sister. He was watching a western on TV, playing with daddy's handgun, spinning the gun around his finger when it went off, shooting his little sister through the hip as she practiced her gymnastics. She died after several hours of surgery.
ReplyDeleteAnother somewhat bizarre incident, a guy bought a handgun at a pawnshop, a semi-auto pistol. He was sitting on the couch watching tv with two friends, playing with his new toy, loading and unloading it, taking he clip out, putting the clip in, pulling the trigger. At some point he forgot (or didn't know) about the one in the chamber. He put the 'unloaded' gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Blew his brains out, the kid's sitting next to him, and lodged in the head of the girl sitting at the far end of the couch. She lived.
We make people take classes and tests to drive, but god forbid anyone should have to know how their handgun works.
I'm always shock by the amount of people who don't think their children will pick up a gun----because they were trained not to.
ReplyDeleteI believe I saw a documentary once a few years ago on children and guns. A succession of children around nine and ten from homes with guns were put into a room two at a time with a gun lying on a table. The adult tells them not to touch the gun as it was loaded and unsafe, then leaves the room. The parents watched through a two way mirror. The kids ALWAYS picked up the gun and started pointing it--even if they had been taught all their lives not to do so.
And the parents were always shocked.
"Don't you bleeding heart liberals understand that without the irresponsible distribution, storage and use of handguns America would be... Canada?"
ReplyDeleteNot quite. Not until you fight for and get a health plan that isn't watered-down and doesn't have a built-in rake-off for "insurance" companies.
Not meaning to start a new topic, just correcting a misapprehension.
More than 50 years ago, right here in Anchorage, the toddler son of an FBI agent and a well-known editor for the Anchorage Times was killed when he found Daddy's gun.
ReplyDeleteEven those who should absolutely know better are negligent when it comes to guns in America.
Stupidity happens.
ReplyDeleteWe were having a family reunion at my sister's house. Little kids were there. Lots of little kids. I asked my sister to have her hubby lock up all the guns - lots of handguns. "Oh, he will, and we'll keep an eye on the kids. You worry too much."
It was raining that day, and everyone was in the house. I asked where child X was, and went looking for him. As I walked into my sister's bedroom, he turned towards me, my brother-in-law's Glock pointing right at my chest.
My family still claims their ears are ringing from my screaming.
How did the boy know to go directly to the bedroom? Because that is where Grandpa keeps his guns - under the bed.
Please, please, please, know it can happen to you, it can happen in a "good" family.
I was screaming, too, thinking about this six year old child coming out into the kitchen with a loaded handgun.
They had forgotten to put away this one gun, and thought that closed doors would keep out a curious child. The gun was not loaded, but I did not know that.
On KTUU last night it was reported that the father was going on a hunting trip in the morning and packing his gear and the gun was left unattended.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is true or not or why on earth he intended to pack a loaded gun with his gear (dumb move in and of itself) but that was the story.
Having grown up in a home where every gun was loaded (my father was in law enforcement) I can't remember a time that I didn't know that I wasn't to touch a gun without an adult present. It was also impressed upon me that all guns were to be treated as though they were loaded even if you were sure that they weren't and never point a gun at something unless you intend to shoot it.
I am by no means a gun nut, but I am a proponent of gun ownership. I see no need for owning a M16 or high capacity handgun, but at the same time I think I should have the right to own one. I don't know where the line should be drawn but I do agree with the statement that guns don't kill people, people do.
You don't need a gun to kill people either. When I was in high school, two incidents drove drove the point home for me.
The first was the Billy Ferry incident. Billy doused patrons with gasoline in the checkout line in a supermarket. He then set them on fire. Five died. Here's a link to the story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gr7xBa6G28 .
Another was a guy that I grew up with. He got beat down in a bar brawl. He went out to his truck and saw what he thought were the four guys that beat him down coming out to the parking lot. He thought he was going to get another beat down and got into his truck, started it and ran over three of the four men. Two died and one was paralyzed. As it turned out, it was a different four guys and they weren't coming out to beat him down. Two were just as dead and one disabled just the same. He could hardly have done a better job with an M16.
I'm sure both would have used a gun if one was handy. But since they didn't have one, they found another means to do the job. We can legislate gun control all we want, but this kind of thing will happen whether guns are available or not.
I put the Fairbanks incident in category of bad parenting. Not teaching your kid not play with guns is like not teaching your kid not to run out in front of traffic. And no matter how you drive the point home, they may do it anyway.
My mother's elderly neighbor got himself a gun for protection. Took it with him to confront a burgler in his kitchen. The end result: the burgler made away with household goods plus the gun. Fortunately for the neighbor, the gun wasn't used on him.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that these "accidents" always seem to be perpetrated by males who are older than the victim.
ReplyDeleteAs a receiver of may such acts of "accidental" act, I look at each of these incidents ad wonder just how "accidental" they were.
Get gun, point gun at some one who is weaker than you are pull, trigger.
Accident? Really?
And the perpetrator always walks away protected by parents and society to spend a long life being "accidentally" brutal over and over and over.
Guns really don't shoot people. They don't pull their own triggers. But the presence of guns allows a fantasy to be played out with real life consequences, not to the shooter, but to the victim, who will know how much they are hated by the shooter and have that and their scars and disability to remind them the rest of their lives.
The last line is absolutely chilling!
ReplyDeleteGreat Post, sadly incidents like this happen every day all over the world. And people get so emotional, yet do nothing to prosecute the grieveing irresponsible idiots who leave weapons unlocked and within access of children.
My uncle is a hunter, and has many hunting rifles in his home. He frequently babysat me when I was a child, and I he kept his hunting rifles, unloaded, in a gun rack above the fire place. He always taught me to NEVER touch his guns, that they were not toys, and I can hurt myself or someone else if I played with them. When I got older, he taught me how to shoot, and he always drilled the fact in that his guns were NOT to be used on people. If I were to point a gun at something, be it a target or a deer (which I have never done) I had better intend on pulling the trigger.
ReplyDeleteI am alright with responsible gun ownership. What we need are mandatory gun safety education classes. Knowledge is power.
If everyone who had a gun would have to take out a special insurance to pay for the damage cased by guns, maybe there wouldn't be so many. No one takes responsibility.( Is it still that gunshots are free when you go to the hospital?) Another thing so many ppl are on mental disability here in the south, if it were a law that they couldn't have one. There would either be a lot less ppl on mental disability, or a lot less guns.
ReplyDelete