The thing is the variables, the unpredictability. Except that you can predict the accidents and associated death.
This 7 year old will get to be 8, who knows if he Father will grow from this experience?
Personally, that would be all the gun playing for my children forever. They don’t get 9 lives and this was all the gun luck that he is likely to get.
There aren’t many hunting lodges in big cities. On our lodge if you kill a large animal you get your trophies and one cut but the meat goes to the poor, handed out every Sunday at church during hunting season. Guns are not toys for little boys. Seven years old is too young for a BB gun, that is stupid. Give him a bubble gun or a water gun. Let him have kid fun not propagandistic deviant daddy pleasing behaviour . Perverting a child for your politics is stupid. Stupid does not run in my family.
dense too
Does TPM consider all guns bad? because this is not some kind of failure of oversight. it seems unfortunate, but the parents didn’t endanger the child.
Knee jerk often?
Unusual indeed. Almost unbelievable.
A kid down the street from me was hit in the eye by a bb/pellet that ricocheted from a target he was shooting at in his backyard.
Placing a gun in a child’s hand is endangering a child’s life and those around him, supervised or not. You do not give driving lessons to seven year olds for the very same reason, it is stupid.
The danger is inherent and goes with the territory. Playing with risky things brings risk. Playing with deadly weapons brings the chance of death and this proves it.
Denial doesn’t change the fact that the kid took a bullet to the chest. With just a little less “safety”, we’d be talking about a dead kid.
Would they let their 7 year old play lawn darts? I doubt it, because that would be endangering their child.
Right, full supervision by adults, gun never pointed at another person, but the the child was STILL hit with a ricochet bullet dead center of mass. My goodness, how unlucky of these perfectly responsible gun owners.
And so much responsible gun ownership from people who had their own makeshift shooting range (really just a metal can on a tree stump).
How about a much more likely story: the kid was chasing some other kid, they were ‘pretending’ to shoot each other with their guns, and then one of them accidentally pulled the trigger and hit the other kid. Parents, like good GOPiers, decided to ‘take personal responsibility for their actions’ and lied their assess off to the police.
I don’t know, this never happened to me so I’m not so sure there’s any huge problem here, it just seems like an accident…
…oh, wait. I forgot. My parents read books to me instead. Books apparently don’t ricochet. I looked it up.
Perverting a child for your politics is dangerous, the child would have had far more fun shooting daddy with a water gun than having daddy foster him into propagandistic deviant daddy pleasing behaviour that placed him in the hospital. I suppose they want to teach their women and children to shoot so they can use them as a shield as they so often do.
So what age do you people think is appropriate to introduce a child to handling and firing a gun? 7 might be a bit young to some. But sorry, this story does not rise to the level of irresponsibility to me. And I am a firm gun control proponent. However, I also believe that America’s drug and alcohol laws are draconian and encourages abuse.
Leaders in the Ranking of States on TPM & Raw Story with the most Careless Firearm
incidents
Florida - 14
Texas - 13
Pennsylvania - 10
New York/South Carolina (tie) - 7
Indiana/Georgia (tie) - 6
Arizona/California/Colorado/Ohio/Tennessee (tied) - 5
You people huh? I don’t exactly know, how about, "you people?
Let’s put it this way. My daughters weren’t even allowed to wear make-up until they were 12 and no dating until 14. Earrings were not until 10 I think.
I don’t think that you are able to grasp the numerous dangerous possibilities and the risk that is being taken. Gun accidents are tempting fate and losing.
That is irresponsible from a parent and I’ll bet that Dad has a different POV after nearly losing a son.
You can see the drug and alcohol problem but not the gun danger. That is odd.
The average age for a hunting licence is 14, in high school. And just like driving a car you have to get a gun safety certificate before you get to have a licence. It would be just as irresponsible to allow your child to drive. This is just common sense. I grew up in the woods inside a hunting lodge and my folks would not give us a BB gun until we were 12 and we were on probation the first year. I you could not follow the rules with a BB you had to wait an extra year, when you were 15, to get your first hunting licence. It makes sense to be strict with weapons because they are the most dangerous of things and our children are our most precious of things. Unless you think your rights supercede society’s rights.
MT @neeratanden
I’m a little unclear on why you have to be 16 to drive, 18 to vote, 21 to buy alcohol, but can legally handle an Uzi at 9.
Personally I introduced my oldest son to guns around 12 and then under direct adult supervision. My two middle step sons were introduced to guns by their father when they were 9 or 10. My daughter was 20 when she asked me to teach her how to shoot. My daughter and I took an eight hour safety class together. All of my kids have taken and passed gun and hunter safety classes.
Our granddaughters learned to shoot, under the direct supervision of their parents and grandparents at 12 or so. My 6 year old grandson isn’t allowed anywhere near a gun, and won’t be for several years. Then he will be taught by a parent or grandparent.
My son stored his hunting rifle in my safe while his kids were young. Why, because he didn’t want to take any chances. My daughter’s pistol is in my safe and will be until she can store it safely.
What we didn’t have at my house were bb guns. You can put your eye out with one of those. Just ask the person up thread. My family takes guns seriously.
Whether we like it or not firearms are part of our world. That is the way things are going to be for the foreseeable future. We owe it to our children to teach them how to use firearms responsibly and safely.
Like many of the other people leaving comments here, I was immediately suspicious of this story. A .22 bullet simply doesn’t travel 40 or 50 yards down down a shooting range, hit a target intended to absorb the bullet, and then bounce directly back the full length of the range to hit a spot a few inches away from where it was fired.
That simply does not happen. And it certainly couldn’t happen with enough momentum to cause serious injury.
But then I followed the link and read the original story. Whoops! It turns out that the “responsible father” WASN’T supervising the child and teaching him how to shoot the gun:
The family constructed the shooting range on the property. At the time of the boy’s injury, the dad was using a larger-caliber rifle. The pair stood a few yards away from one another, side by side.
Ah. Now we’re getting a little closer to the real story.
OK, but none of that means that a 7 year old ought to be firing real weapons. I bought my first gun at twelve and we (Dad, Bros, family friends) shot all the time at clay pigeons. We occasionally hunted birds. The safety issue was a given and I fully understood the responsibility. I couldn’t have done that at 7.
We also owe to our children the lesson that parents need to make the adult decisions and not give in to our children’s whims. The time for guns, if it must be, will come and waiting for that time is just how it goes. I couldn’t wait to drive but I did. Christmas was a long wait as a kid also but my parents made the wait fun.
The responsibility is the parents, full stop! They should’ve waited.