Father arrested and charged with five counts of second-degree child endangerment after his 4 year old kills his six year old neighbor with a unsecured gun.

Courtesy of Slate:  

In April, a 4-year-old New Jersey boy accidentally shot and killed his 6-year-old neighbor with his father’s .22-caliber rifle. On Monday, the boy’s father, Anthony Senatore, was arrested and charged with five counts of second-degree child endangerment (for storing five unsecured firearms in places where they were accessible to his children), and one count of third-degree child endangerment (for storing one of those firearms in a place where it endangered the welfare of the 6-year-old who was killed). Each second-degree count could potentially bring 5 to 10 years in prison, which means that if Senatore is convicted, he could theoretically face up to 50 years in prison. (He won’t, of course, get 50 years in prison, but, if he is convicted, he will likely face some jail time—if you are convicted of a second-degree offense in New Jersey, it is presumed that you will face a prison term.)

This is the kind of gun laws that we need to enforce all over the country.

And in my opinion NOT just for parents who allow their guns to fall into the hands of children, but also gun owners who do not sufficiently lock their guns away in their homes to keep them out of the reach of burglars who may steal them and use them in crimes or sell them on the streets to other criminals.

In my opinion the purchasing of each and every gun by an American citizen should bring with it a whole slew of responsibilities, and potential problems, that would make the purchaser think long and hard about whether they needed that gun at all, and just how many guns they were willing to take responsibility for.

I can guarantee that if the laws surrounding gun ownership were tightened up we would RARELY see people with arsenals of weapons in their homes anymore.