5-year-old Kentucky boy fatally shoots 2-year-old sister

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7armyrugrats said:
Many other traditions all over the world need to change too. But we can’t dictate that and good luck convincing families their traditions are no good. They will easily find something they don’t like about things you do that can be dangerous as well. As common as this is, the fact that rarely do people hear about it, makes me think it isn’t as dangerous as you are making it out to be. What if mom went inside for a minute and 2yr old got injured or killed playing in the yard? That happens all the time. It’s a tragedy either way.
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This is very true. When at the grocery store with my little children, they were either in the cart or holding on to the cart. I see many mothers intent on their shopping while toddlers are lagging way behind. This was an unexceptable risk for me. My urban relatives allow their children to play in the neighborhood streets while they are in the house. They feel comfortable with all their neighbors and don’t worry. When we visit I tell my children to stay in the backyard. They on the otherhand think I’m crazy for letting them run all over the Ozark Hills with the snakes, bears, and mountain lions. (You see I find the two legged predators much scarier than the four legged. The ones that slither worry me too though and my kids don’t get to roam as much in the summer as they do the rest of the year.)

I agree a child should not be unsupervised with a loaded weapon, but culture has a lot to do with what risks we find acceptable.
 
SamH said:
How so?

It is so rare that when something does happen it’s national news.

A 5 year old in a child seat is also an inherently dangerous situation - statistically much more dangerous.

www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/809762.pdf
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It is so rare because very few people give guns to children this small. Even some of the most pro-gun people I have ever met would not consider giving a gun to a child this young. Furthermore, it is made even more rare by the fact that even among those that would let a child this young have a gun, there are still far fewer that would allow them to be unsupervised with it.
 
A tiny child is dead and a mother must now grieve for her entire life.

5 year old brother accidently killed his sister and must live with this the rest of his life.

Horrible mistakes in judgement allowed this to happen, but for those who want to see older brother removed and parents jailed are wrong (my opinion). Forget about the parents for a minute and focus on the boy. He killed (quite by accident) his baby sister and now she is gone, and now some want to remove him from the rest of his family and make him live with strangers (well meaning as they may be, they are still strangers)? How will this help the boy emotionally start to heal?

What this family needs is prayers and intense therapy, not to be futher ripped apart.

I also own many weapons and keep them in a gun safe which only my husband and I have the key for…and they ARE loaded and ready to be used if needed. We live in the country and have had to use them many times. I have a 15 year old son, and we made him take a weapons safety course before allowing him to fire our weapons, and even then, we HAVE to be with him before he is allowed to even carry–much less fire it.
 
CatholicGeek1 said:
It is so rare because very few people give guns to children this small. Even some of the most pro-gun people I have ever met would not consider giving a gun to a child this young. Furthermore, it is made even more rare by the fact that even among those that would let a child this young have a gun, there are still far fewer that would allow them to be unsupervised with it.
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I agree with your last sentence.

Where I live most everyone owns guns, they take their children hunting and teach them gun safety. I don’t personally know anyone killed by a gun accidentally, (2 suicides with guns) but I do know personally of a child drowning in a swimming pool. There are a lot fewer pools than guns in our area. And I know personally of 2 teens killed on a dirt bike and four wheeler.
 
CatholicGeek1 said:
It is so rare because very few people give guns to children this small. Even some of the most pro-gun people I have ever met would not consider giving a gun to a child this young. Furthermore, it is made even more rare by the fact that even among those that would let a child this young have a gun, there are still far fewer that would allow them to be unsupervised with it.
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I don’t know about where you live, but it really isn’t rare at all. Some areas more so than others I’m sure, but it is far from a rare occurrence. Pocket knives are even more common, do you have a problem with knives as well? My kids all got their first knife by the age of 6, some were younger. My husband grew up in Mexico. His favorite toy was his dad’s machete, until he was 3. Then his favorite toy was his own machete. He got it as a Confirmation gift, a machete and a belt. He was so proud!!! It’s the culture in my husbands town. They use them as tools, and they use them for fun. If a kid gets hurt or, even worse, killed, most people would wonder how something so terrible could happen. It would be viewed as a tragic accident. No one would even think of punishing the parents more than they already are punished. It is so rare a kid is hurt that no one can imagine it happening. Do you think that is wrong of them too?
 
MaryandJoseph said:
A tiny child is dead and a mother must now grieve for her entire life.

5 year old brother accidently killed his sister and must live with this the rest of his life.

Horrible mistakes in judgement allowed this to happen, but for those who want to see older brother removed and parents jailed are wrong (my opinion). Forget about the parents for a minute and focus on the boy. He killed (quite by accident) his baby sister and now she is gone, and now some want to remove him from the rest of his family and make him live with strangers (well meaning as they may be, they are still strangers)? How will this help the boy emotionally start to heal?

What this family needs is prayers and intense therapy, not to be futher ripped apart.

I also own many weapons and keep them in a gun safe which only my husband and I have the key for…and they ARE loaded and ready to be used if needed. We live in the country and have had to use them many times. I have a 15 year old son, and we made him take a weapons safety course before allowing him to fire our weapons, and even then, we HAVE to be with him before he is allowed to even carry–much less fire it.
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The boy should be removed for his own safety and the safety of others at least until such time as society can be assured that these parents will not leave an unsupervised child with a loaded gun.

The parents should be in jail, because this was not a tragic accident, this was criminally negligent homicide. Society has a duty to punish these crimes, to protect society from the perpetrators of these crimes, and to protect the children of the people that committed these crimes.

Lastly, once the parents are out of jail, they should be barred from ever owning or possessing a firearm.
 
10gr8kids said:
I agree with your last sentence.

Where I live most everyone owns guns, they take their children hunting and teach them gun safety. I don’t personally know anyone killed by a gun accidentally, (2 suicides with guns) but I do know personally of a child drowning in a swimming pool. There are a lot fewer pools than guns in our area. And I know personally of 2 teens killed on a dirt bike and four wheeler.
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There is a difference between accidental deaths in pools or dirt bikes, assuming that proper precautions were taken in those cases, and criminally negligent homicide which is what occurred in this case as not even the most basic of precautions were taken.
 
7armyrugrats said:
I don’t know about where you live, but it really isn’t rare at all. Some areas more so than others I’m sure, but it is far from a rare occurrence. Pocket knives are even more common, do you have a problem with knives as well? My kids all got their first knife by the age of 6, some were younger. My husband grew up in Mexico. His favorite toy was his dad’s machete, until he was 3. Then his favorite toy was his own machete. He got it as a Confirmation gift, a machete and a belt. He was so proud!!! It’s the culture in my husbands town. They use them as tools, and they use them for fun. If a kid gets hurt or, even worse, killed, most people would wonder how something so terrible could happen. It would be viewed as a tragic accident. No one would even think of punishing the parents more than they already are punished. It is so rare a kid is hurt that no one can imagine it happening. Do you think that is wrong of them too?
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I think it is highly irresponsible to give a child a knife much less a machete. People need to get it out of their head that just because something was always done a certain way makes it right.
 
Brendan said:
I would say that it is no more rare than people having in ground swimming pools. Yet drowning accidents are far more common.
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While I doubt such statistics exist, I highly highly doubt that there are anywhere near the number of children with guns as there are swimming pools.
 
CatholicGeek1 said:
I think it is highly irresponsible to give a child a knife much less a machete. People need to get it out of their head that just because something was always done a certain way makes it right.
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As I said in an earlier post many things other parents do I find very irresponsible. If your a parent, you probably do things I would find irresponsible. People can point fingers at eachother all day long.
 
CatholicGeek1 said:
While I doubt such statistics exist, I highly highly doubt that there are anywhere near the number of children with guns as there are swimming pools.
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Maybe in your world, not mine. I don’t even have to guess, I know it.
 
10gr8kids said:
As I said in an earlier post many things other parents do I find very irresponsible. If your a parent, you probably do things I would find irresponsible. People can point fingers at eachother all day long.
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This is not pointing fingers, this is saying that a child died due not to being irresponsible or making a mistake but due to criminally negligent homicide, there is a gulf of a difference between those two things.
 
10gr8kids said:
Maybe in your world, not mine. I don’t even have to guess, I know it.
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I am not talking about what is true in your world or mine, what I am talking about is across the US as a whole, I would be willing to be large sums of money that there are more swimming pools than kindergarten age gun owners.
 
CatholicGeek1 said:
If you let a kid have a loaded gun alone, you are an idiot. If they kill someone with it, you are responsible and should go to jail, preferably for a very long time, not necessarily just for punishment either, but to protect other children and innocents from you.
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got to agree, that’s criminal negligence at its worst.
 
CatholicGeek1 said:
This is not pointing fingers, this is saying that a child died due not to being irresponsible or making a mistake but due to criminally negligent homicide, there is a gulf of a difference between those two things.
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I’m sorry, I must of read you wrong. I thought you responded to 7armyrugrats about her giving her child a knife with this…
CatholicGeek1 said:
I think it is highly irresponsible to give a child a knife much less a machete. People need to get it out of their head that just because something has always been done a certain way makes it right.
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CatholicGeek1 said:
I think it is highly irresponsible to give a child a knife much less a machete. People need to get it out of their head that just because something was always done a certain way makes it right.
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Well, even if you hide the machete in my husband’s town, the kids will get them. They are everywhere. They live in an area where they are needed for work and daily life. I understand you probably can’t comprehend that (I couldn’t until I went the first time), but that’s how it is. So parents take the fascination out of them by exposing the kids to them, teaching safety tips, having them use them as soon as the baby shows interest or can crawl around. Kind of like showing a baby what hot is, or the dangers of running into a street, or any number of things that fascinate children. Not all of us can wrap our kids in bubble wrap and put them in playpens when we aren’t holding them.

I have family in NYC. They send their kids to the store ALONE at 8 yrs old to buy milk or tomatoes or whatever. The kids ride the subway, city bus, walk across the street, all by 10 yrs old. I would never let my kids do that. To me it’s crazy. But if something happened to their child, I would never look at them as horrible parents that should have the other kids removed from their home. It can be viewed as negligent, but I don’t believe it is any more negligent than my kids playing in the woods where there might be a snake. Kids must know their environment and how to safely maneuver through it.
 
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