There’s not much more to the article, but it looks like the little girl will recover.
And WTF is up with the cops wanting to interview the 2 year old? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, they gotta follow regulations, but come on! She’s two freakin’ years old! The kid’s got to be freaked the fuck out and I can’t imagine that she’d be able to give the police much useful information.
Dipshit dad is only 19 years old himself. What the HELL is a 19 year old doing with a loaded gun in the first place, let alone giving it to his little kid to play with?
Are 19yr olds allowed to have gun licences in the US??
Without looking it up, I think so. I believe 18 is the age in most states, if not all.
This is pretty sad. I wouldn’t mind keeping a couple guns around the house (you know, in case the government and it’s tanks ever get uppity) but I have two small boys and there’s just no way I can justify having them. They are way too curious, would find them, etc. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with them even in a safe unloaded and locked. And then you kind of ruin the purpose of having a firearm handy and ready for home defense.
And I cannot for the life of me imagine why a father (albeit a kid himself) would actually GIVE a loaded weapon to a toddler. Insanity.
And those cops…?
I am trying to imagine a scenario whereby police would neet to talk to a two year old, let alone a recent shooting victim. If the doctors tell you the victim isn’t ready to talk yet, then you wait until he says you can.
Not in New York City. Possession (simple ownership) of a weapon small enough to be concealed is a misdemeanor, actually concealing it and carrying it around is a felony.
In other places a 19-year-old may own, but they can never legally buy a handgun until they’re 21.
In any event, while I’m not defending this guy (he’s clearly an idiot), I will note that 18 is the age of majority in this country.
Funny. My dad managed to grow up in a house with firearms with no problems at all, and I managed to do the same.
Right now in my house are seven unloaded firearms, one loaded one, one extremely careful wife who won’t let me get away with anything unsafe and three kids aged 5, 5 and 3. And both the guns and kids are perfectly safe, and the handgun is ready anytime I need it.
You can manage this. It is surprisingly easy and affordable. It just takes some planning on your part.
While the police can try and pressure the hospital with arrests, I’ve got dollars to bet the courts and probably the prosecutors themselves will tell the cops, in effect, to shove it. I highly doubt hospital administrators would bother the police in their duty unless they really, really needed to keep the child isolated from everyone except doctors and nurses and such.
Well, if I were to own a firearm (for home defense and occaisonal target shooting), I would probably choose a shotgun, as they’re very effective at close range, powerful with the right kind of shot, and much more difficult for a small child to accidentally discharge than a handgun.
Shotgun is my last choice for in-home defense. Many people assume that the shotgun’s multiple pellets will allow you to spray the invader as with a fire hose, and critical aiming will not be needed. In point of fact, at the distances inside most homes (just how wide is your bedroom, really?) the shot pattern has not opened up at all, and the resulting hole in your wall (or in the invader, if you’re lucky) could be covered with a business card. Plus, that long gun will be really difficult to swing and aim at such a range. (Bad guy runs from foot of bed to closet door, you have to swing through 40, 90, even 120 degrees of arc to track him. Not easy with a shotgun. Whereas in the field, tracking that quail at 25 yards distance, you may only need to swing through 15 or 20 degrees of arc before taking your shot.)
Like Mr. Moto, that’s one reason I own several guns.
I will say this, too - last time I went trap shooting with a buddy of mine, he brought his four-year old son. The boy sat quietly on the bench behind the fence and watched us miss tons of clay birds and hit a few. Afterward we bought him ice cream.
The man at the counter said he had a .410 sized for the boy when he got to about age 7. That’s probably when he’ll start shooting. For my kids I might wait a couple years past that - I started at 12, I might introduce it to them at 9 or 10.
You have to play this by ear and judge when they’re ready and able to handle the firearms safely with supervision, and understand that the things aren’t toys. I don’t want guns to be a mystery for my kids - I want them to understand that if a shotgun can break up a clay disk flying all those yards away, it can kill them or someone else just as quickly.
But I do shoot and enjoy it, and I intend to share this activity with my kids if they want to do it.
I think this the way to go. We already have enough children in the US and a few shooting themselves here or there will reduce our carbon footprint. The footprint of a two year old is pretty small though, so I recommend waiting until they are about 8 to hand them a loaded gun.
I love these threads They start with “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” discussion of who has a bigger gun, and end with one handed typing as posters fantasize about what type of weapon is best suited to turn an intruder into a fine, red mist.
