Even this was avoidable.

B

briandg

New member
I know this man, we were good friends in high school. This happened last year at christmas. This is a chopped up version of the news story.

My thoughts on it are that he wasn't so much careless as he just failed to retain control of a loaded firearm. Assuming that the kids wouldn't go into the room and play with the gun is acceptable when you have college aged kids who grow up with guns, but it would have been bone headed stupid to assume that with a houseful of 5 year olds. I think that even at 14, he should not have left a handgun in plain sight in the home while a group of teenaged girls were visiting.


County Sheriff * said the shooting took place when the girls ventured into a room in the two-story house that the homeowner did not anticipate them entering.

“He had received a new holster as a Christmas gift and got the gun out of a safe to try out the holster,” the sheriff said.

* had left the holstered gun on a piano in the room, he said. When the girls entered the room Monday night, one of them, another 14-year-old girl, spotted the .38-caliber weapon and removed it from the holster, assuming it was not loaded. She pointed the gun in a joking manner at the girl and the weapon discharged, the sheriff said.

“No one has been referred for charges and no one is in custody,” * said.
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I'm guessing the last line of that story will be changing soon. The gun owner was totally irresponsible in leaving a loaded gun lying around in a house where children live. I feel for him, but it doesn't change the fact that for gun owners, safety MUST be the most important thing. Murphy's Law must be obeyed; if you can anticipate it happening, it can happen.
 
That snippet doesn't say what happened to the girl who was shot. Very sad either way.

One thing I've learned from watching people unfamiliar with guns is that pointing a gun at someone for a joke and/or pulling the trigger on a gun without safety checking are practically hard-wired human behavior. Almost everyone who is not familiar with guns does it when given the chance. I mean, the very first time I held a gun, as a child, the first thing I did was point it at someone for a joke. My father was shocked and outraged...he couldn't believe it. But we were children who shot each other with toy guns every day. What did he think was going to happen? But it's not just kids - the first time I handed someone a gun - it was a gas powered airsoft pistol - he immediately held it up to his face with the slide in front of his eye. He was a grown man. I stopped him just before he pulled the trigger and blinded himself with the recoiling slide. Just about the only way an airsoft gun can injure you, and it was the very first thing he did - I barely had time to stop him. Next guy I taught to shoot, real gun this time, he wouldn't keep his fingers away from the muzzle. He wanted to hold on to the front end of the slide to stabilize the gun. Again, I caught this because I was watching like a hawk - but I was still surprised. The thing is...what right did I have to assume these guys would know any better? It was second nature to me - but their behaviour is second nature to almost everyone.

Because of all this, I feel that the standard safety rules for gun handling ought to include something on letting other people access guns. If you let a child or untrained adult get hold of your gun, it's no different than breaking any of the other traditional gun-handling rules.

That said, I feel very sorry for the guy and I am sure he is paying a terrible price.
 
The girl died.

The man is a truly good christian man, loves his family, pillar of the community. The starting point was him forgetting to return the pistol to the safe, and leaving it visible.

The second point was when the kids went into the closed room that they weren't supposed to go into.

The third point is, as was pointed out, when most kids see a gun, all they can think of is "toy."

It's unbelievable to me that a teenager would find a heavy steel revolver, mistake it for a toy, aim at a friend's head and pull the trigger, thinking it's all play.

Even taking into account that he left the thing plainly visible, I still fiind it hard to fault him for this. Every parent leaves their car keys, their bourbon, oxycontin, and so forth sitting around without locking them up. This thing was a whole lot more dangerous, and it was much easier to have one stupid impulsive act turn tragic.

I have mixed feelings. Part of me wants to blame him for the accident; part of me sees it as being the fault of the shooter's parents, but I mostly see it as being a huge string of failures on the part of a lot of people.

Just posted as a cautionary tale.
 
I continually have to remind myself that not everyone cut their teeth on a gun stock. I grew up with guns in plain sight and easy access. We learned about them from before we were big enough to hold one up and shoot it. Most of the people were I grew up with learned the same way. It took me a little time in the bigger world to relies that that is not the case for everyone.
 
I have a sword that I seized from another individual. Every once in a while, I show it to someone. What do they do? pick it up and start swinging it. :rolleyes:

Thanks to over 50 years of tv entertainment and the toy industry, weapons are no longer seen as things that transfer death from one person to another. They are toys, nothing but props in an imaginary game.

Swish! Swish! "look at me, I'm sir lancelot!"
 
Horrendous.

No charges need be filed. Any sane human being would be suffering for the rest of their life far more than any authority could enforce.

What an awful, awful thing. :(

This is why I am absolutely paranoid about gun safety. I'm probably overboard. I check, recheck. Hide the keys, rehide them. Never trust anything mechanical. I could not imagine the anguish of this situation. The thought of this makes me sick to my stomach.
 
I have a sword that I seized from another individual. Every once in a while, I show it to someone. What do they do? pick it up and start swinging it.

Thanks to over 50 years of tv entertainment and the toy industry, weapons are no longer seen as things that transfer death from one person to another. They are toys, nothing but props in an imaginary game.

Swish! Swish! "look at me, I'm sir lancelot!"
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Yep that is exactly the kind of thing I was on about. Those of us who don't pull the trigger or swing the sword are the strange ones, statistically. And we are nuts - just plain nuts if we think for a moment that there is anything intuitive or natural about safe weapons handling.
 
Very, very sad and unfortunate.

I do not "lock up" my weapons, but I do make it a habit to not have anything more hazardous than an air rifle out in plain view when I am not home.

My fiancee and I are the only people who reside in our apartment, she was raised around guns (still doesn't like them) but she knows where they are and I make it a point to tell her their status (loaded, unloaded, in pieces, etc.)

When we have children, my first investment will be a safe and my children will be taught gun safety from the time they are able to toddle around.

Avoidable, yes, but hindsight is 20/20.
 
Even growing up around guns doesn't mean one's brain is always engaged. Dad was a hunter and had tried to teach us basics; however, some things hadn’t yet stuck in my pre-gun owning eight year old brain. Twelve year old neighbor kid had a pellet rifle, which he was showing off and showed us it had a safety so it wouldn’t fire when the trigger was pulled. Short story is he laid it on a table while he went to set up targets, almost without thinking, I pulled the trigger and shot my brother in the hand (pellet still there). Natural instinct is to pull trigger.

Fast forward to 16 year old younger brother showing friend dad’s 222 mag, worked bolt action, laid the rifle on the bed, friend pulled trigger and shot through wall destroying three encyclopedias in next room. Natural instinct is to pull trigger.

Fast forward to three years ago when non-gun wife passed through as I was reading the new pistol owners manual, spotted the pistol, asked to see it, and when I handed it to her, she pulled the trigger within seconds. Natural instinct is to pull trigger.

I can understand how the tragic OP event happened. And have tried to take precautions this will not occur in my home.
 
The third point is, as was pointed out, when most kids see a gun, all they can think of is "toy."
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Poorly educated kids, and ill mannered, to boot.

"If it ain't yours, don't fool with it." is a maxim that will keep them out of trouble ..... that, The Four Rules, and the Golden Rule of Tool Use.

Of what value is an education that teaches algebra, yet neglects basic common sense?
 
bikerbill, I suppose it depends on the local DA, as to whether charges might eventually be filed. Personally, I hope not.

Should the gun have been locked up? Probably.

The problem I have with the "anticipation of stupid things other people might do" argument is that our society is seriously devolving, in my opinion, as more and more people expect somebody else to be found accountable for bad things that happen to them - even when bad things happen as a result of their own stupid actions.

My parents had one friend who had to put fencing along her property along a scenic bluff; apparently, case law in Oregon indicated that the fencing and "No Trespassing" signs along the front of the property would not hold her immune from civil suit by the survivors of any trespasser dumb enough to come over or through her front fence, then manage to fall off the cliff out back.

There was the notorious California case where a burglar was awarded $5M for breaking his back when he fell through a skylight of a public school he was attempting to burglarize...

Or the woman who was awarded $1M (I think) for spilling hot coffee in her own lap...

At some point, people have to be responsible for the stupid things they do. Leaving a holstered gun in your bedroom really isn't criminal. Pointing a gun at somebody is. Even a 14yo should know better.

That said, I have and use a large safe, and a couple small lockboxes - depending on which room the weapon is in. I'm more concerned with theft than with criminal stupidity, and I don't have kids in the house. However, should somebody break in and steal one of my weapons, that is morally on him, in my opinion.

My parents' friend shouldn't have had to fence her scenic bluff. McDonald's and other chains shouldn't have had to put warning labels on coffee (HOT!!!), and Big Brother shouldn't stop my chain of choice from heating a cappuccino above 140F. For that matter, Toro lawnmowers shouldn't need to include warnings in the literature about "Do not pick up by the skirt and use to trim hedges." (Yet another case that made it to trial, although I think that one might have been tossed, eventually.) Piper Aircraft shouldn't have nearly gone out of business when a widow initially won a suit because her husband, who had a heart condition and who had illegally modified a Super Cub with a front-seat mounted camera, so he could fly from the rear seat and shoot real estate aerial photography, somehow lost control of the plane, crashed, and died (assuming he didn't die of a heart attack while airborne, the illegal mod to the aircraft may have put it at the edge of its weight/balance controllability envelope).

Modern Americans expect to be protected from themselves. I find it disturbing and, in some cases, disgusting.
 
Modern Americans expect to be protected from themselves. I find it disturbing and, in some cases, disgusting.
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When stupid ceases to hurt, and is even subsidized in many cases, it becomes the norm.
 
MLeake, I agree strongly with your sentiment about people expecting to be protected from themselves. You think it's bad in America? It's much worse across the pond where I come from. The result of it is that people like me can't own most types of firearm, yet people's behavior is getting stupiter* by the minute. People need to be responsible for their own actions, period.

However, I do think this case, and weapons-related cases in general are at the extreme end of the scale, and here's why: they are not an everyday part of many people's lives. You may have a gun friendly house - everyone in your family may be totally responsible around firearms, and you may think this is normal - and yet your neighbors may be the pointing, waving, trigger-pulling type. If you're going to invite them over, clearly something has to be done. Who is responsible for taking the appropriate measures? Saying that they should know better is all well and good, but what is the standard you're holding them to? Your standards are way above the majority of the population when it comes to handling weapons. As are the standards of everyone who uses this forum, probably. By and large, as the anecdotes here have shown so far, pulling the trigger is the natural, instinctive thing to do.


*Yeah yeah I know
 
Modern Americans expect to be protected from themselves. I find it disturbing and, in some cases, disgusting.
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I will be retaining that for future use, thank you.

No, there will be no charges. If a civil suit was filed, I have not heard of it. it would have been a genuine slam dunk for the parents of the dead girl to file a wrongful death suit against him, but they are close friends.

Even in homes where firearms are a commonplace thing, kids still think of them as toys, and have for decades. Go back to the 20s. My maternal family lived on a fairly remote plot of land that they farmed while my grandfather worked at the stockyards.

My uncle corralled his 3 sisters, as german spies. he lined them against a wall, and he had the kitchen corner varmint gun. he pulled the trigger at all of their heads, the last time it went off, and he nailed my aunt in the head. 80 some years later, there doesn't seem to have been any damage.

He knew it was a real gun. the guy became an engineer, and worked with the navy, nasa, and other big concerns. yet he still screwed up as a kid and shot his sister.



Can you imagine, if I had 8 kids in my house, who all had lots of friends, and someone found out that I kept a loaded gun sitting in plain sight in my home?

I can't imagine what the soccer moms of today would do. I feel certain that most of them would just call the police and tell them that I have a gun, and they need to do something about it.
 
divil said:
Because of all this, I feel that the standard safety rules for gun handling ought to include something on letting other people access guns. If you let a child or untrained adult get hold of your gun, it's no different than breaking any of the other traditional gun-handling rules.
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At the Firearms Academy of Seattle, Marty Hayes teaches what he calls the Fifth Rule: Lock up your firearms when they are not in use. As one of his staff instructors, I strongly support this rule but feel it doesn't go as far as it perhaps ought. I much prefer the formulation given by Stephen Wenger in his book, Defensive Use of Firearms: Maintain control of your firearm. Wenger's wording covers safe storage, but also includes carry methods and other circumstances.

Regardless of which formulation is used, keeping your firearm out of the hands of inexperienced others is an excellent addition to the safety rules and should indeed be standard everywhere.

pax
 
I definitely concur with the maintain control/secure when not in use theory. As they say kids will be kids, in this case they went some place they should not have and the consequences were dire and tragic. At my local range some of the RO's were surprised that when I leave the line to get more targets, stretch my legs, etc, I pack up everything and tote it with me even if I'm just in the sales area which has viewing windows to the firing line. I figure it's my responsibility to make sure no one has unauthorized access to my firearms. It immediately nips in the bud any chance that someone may, accidentally or intentionally, take or use my firearms. As for the person in question it is certainly unfortunate that this happened, but that makes him no less responsible IMHO, he knew he owns firearms, he knew children were going to be in the house.
 
It isnt just kids with no knowledge of firearms, I came home one day after a overnight campout to find my kid had a party (15) and my gun cabinet was all messed up. The guns were out of order and the lock had been jimmied open.

All were loaded.

I went out that day and bought a gun safe, took the amount out of her Christmas gift money I save up over the year.

Just cant leave then unattended at any time.

I had 2 handguns under my waterbed below the wood, had to life up the water mattress and open a hidden hatch. My little brother found them, he was 21, he shot himself in the head with one in my Dads front room in front of dad and step mom.

Keep them locked up or in arms reach or this may happen to you.
 
I try to make a point of this in the CCDW classes I teach. As an example I lay out two Walther P99s. One is real and one is an expensive air soft gun. Visually you can't tell them apart. The scary part is when I show the students that they weigh the same, work similar, and the magazines are interchangable (each will fit in the other, just not operate). I then make my point that if they can't tell what is real and what is a toy, how is a child supposed to know?
 
I then make my point that if they can't tell what is real and what is a toy, how is a child supposed to know?
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That's an excellent point.

When I purchased my first NAA mini-revolver (I have several), I made a point of showing it to my children and explaining that even though it looked like a toy, it was NOT a toy.

We also added two things to the Eddie Eagle rules for our kids. Eddie Eagle teaches kids that, if they ever see a gun, they should

  • Stop
  • Don't Touch!
  • Leave the Area
  • Tell an Adult

We taught them that much, very early on. Later we added two additional rules:

1) If you ever see a gun that you really, really, really want to touch: stop, don't touch, leave the area and ASK an adult if you can; and

2) If you don't know whether it's a gun or just a toy, treat it like a gun.

That second rule came in very handy one afternoon when my three youngest boys were around ages 6, 7, and 8). Here's what happened:

One day I made a bad mistake that could have been very serious. A friend of ours had just come from the range, and offered to take the kids and me to town on a quick errand. I thanked him and told my three youngest boys -- then ages 6, 7, and 8 -- to go hop into the car while I grabbed my purse. Meanwhile our friend stepped into the house to use the restroom, so the boys were by themselves when they discovered our friend's open range bag in the back seat.

Six-year-old Timothy was the first to spot the gun, and said, "Stop! Don't get in! You guys, there's a gun back here."

Jonathan, our seven-year-old skeptic, disagreed. "I don't think that's a real gun. Mom wouldn't have sent us out here if it was real."

Eight-year-old David countered, "Don't you remember? If we don't know if it's real or not, we gotta act like it's real."

All three of them came running back into the house, with Timothy in the lead. "Mom! We didn't touch it!"

pax
 
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