“More Frequent Than You Might Think”: Do We Really Want To Lead The World In Toddler Shootings?
I remember last fall when I saw this article by Christopher Ingraham I hesitated to share it because it is so sad.
This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: A little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead.
But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I’ve found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself.
This week, Ingraham updated the numbers.
There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year.
In the vast majority of cases, the children accidentally shoot themselves. That’s happened 18 times this year, and in nine of those cases the children died of their wounds.
Toddlers have shot other people five times this year. Two of those cases were fatal: this week’s incident in Milwaukee, and that of a 3-year-old Alabama boy who fatally shot his 9-year-old brother in February.
I know we all despaired when even the shooting of 20 first and second graders in Newton wasn’t enough to unseat the power of the gun lobby in blocking the implementation of small steps towards common sense gun control. But are we really willing to be the world’s leader in toddler shootings?
Recently President Obama initiated one step in a process that could prevent these kinds of tragedies.
President Obama will use the power of his office to try to jump-start long-stalled “smart-gun” technology that could eventually allow only the owner of a firearm to use it, the White House announced Friday…
The administration stopped short of mandating the use of smart guns by federal agencies but said it saw promise in committing more federal money and attention to a technology that has evolved in fits and starts over more than two decades.
The idea behind the smart-gun technology is to limit the use of a firearm to its owner, through personalized identifiers like a biometric sensor on the gun grip, a ring sensor worn by the owner or a digital pass code entered on a wristband.
Advocates see the technology as a way of stopping criminals from using stolen guns — or children from accidentally shooting themselves or others.
In reporting on this, the Fox News headline reads: Obama set to push for ‘smart gun’ tech despite concerns. You might wonder about the source of those “concerns.”
The NRA does not oppose the technology. But in responding to the president’s controversial January executive action, the group’s Institute for Legislative Action said the private market, not the government, should drive its development.
“Although NRA is not opposed to the development of new firearms technology, we do not believe the government should be picking winners and losers in the marketplace,” the statement said.
While the administration may not be pushing an executive order mandating the purchase of smart guns, Second Amendment advocates fear a slippery slope.
There is no argument to be made here that this is an attempt by Obama to take away anyone’s guns. In light of that, the fallback position is to worry about a “slippery slope”…the case to be made when all else fails.
Second Amendment advocates can’t stop President Obama from pursuing the possibilities of this kind of technology. But in light of these numbers on toddler shootings, it actually blows my mind that they would even attempt to raise objections.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, May 3, 2016
“Negligent Homicide At Best”: If You Shoot First And Ask Questions Later, You Should Go To Jail
It happened yet again: a trigger-happy homeowner hears something go bump in the night, pulls the trigger of a gun, and an innocent victim dies. This time it was a mother gunning down and killing her own daughter:
A woman in St. Cloud, Florida, woke up just before midnight Tuesday and fired a shot at a person she thought had broken into her home.
But the person wasn’t an intruder; it was her 27-year-old daughter. The woman fired one round, but police didn’t say where the bullet hit the daughter. She died at a hospital. The shooting appears to be accidental, police said. An investigation is ongoing.
The only problem with that story is the use of the word “accident.” Such shootings–and they occur all too frequently in America–are never accidents. They are not tragedies. They are negligent homicides at best, and 2nd-degree murders at worst.
The number of home invasion robberies that lead to physical harm for the victim is low–particularly in the sorts of neighborhoods in which “defensive gun use” tends to take place. There is very small chance that whatever is going bump in the night actually means you and your loved ones harm.
Most of the time that bump in the night isn’t even human, and doesn’t need you to pull out your gun.
Most of the time a human is involved, there’s an innocent explanation–whether it be someone who got lost, an intoxicated person who can’t find their proper way home, a neighborhood kid playing a prank, a teenager’s romantic partner sneaking into a bedroom, etc. Twice in my life I’ve encountered a current or would-be home invader, and twice resolved it without violence because both men were under the influence of drugs and mistook my home for that of a friend or associate. I would have had every right to use a gun and fire on them, but that would have made me a reckless killer, not a responsible gun owner.
Even when there really is a criminal situation, the vast majority of the time it’s a petty thief looking to boost some electronics or jewelry to make a quick sale. They just want their next fix or meal ticket, and they’re not looking to up the ante on possible jail time by hurting you. Hurting you generally gains them nothing. Which means that common thieves can usually be scared off simply by shouting and alerting them to your presence.
There is almost never an excuse to fire a gun at an intruder without trying to talk to them and assess the situation first and at least try to scare them off. The notion that an intruder might have a gun which they might use on you first unless you have the element of surprise is essentially Hollywood fantasy. When Oskar Pistorius tried to defend himself from murder charges by suggesting he thought he was shooting behind a door at a potential burglar, the answer shouldn’t have been so much to contest his intent as to state that he’s a murderer regardless of his intent. No one should ever fire a gun in a domestic situation without having any idea what they’re firing at.
If you shoot first and ask questions later, you should go to jail. It’s not an accident. It’s a crime.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 2, 2015
“Fact Is No Match For Fear”: For Every Gun Used To Wound Or Kill In Self-Defense, Four Are Used In Accidental Shootings
It was the kind of a statistic that would have left a sane country stunned and shamed.
This country barely noticed it.
It came last month, courtesy of the Washington Post, which reported that, as of mid-October, toddlers in America have been shooting people this year at a rate of one a week. You know how the story goes. Little one finds an inadequately-secured gun and starts playing with it, too young to know that death lurks inside. The thing goes off with a bang, leaving a hole — sometimes a fatal one — in human flesh.
Sometimes it’s Da-da. Sometimes, it’s Nana. Sometimes, it’s the toddler himself.
That’s how it was for Darnal Mundy II. As detailed by Charles Rabin in Tuesday’s Miami Herald, Darnal, age 3, was looking for an iPad one morning in early August when he climbed a chair and opened the top drawer of his father’s dresser. Instead of a tablet computer, he found a Smith & Wesson. With the gun pointing directly at his face, he pulled the trigger. A .40-caliber bullet struck him between the eyes, exiting the left side of his skull.
Improbably, Darnal survived. More improbably after brain surgery and rehab in a Miami hospital, he is walking, talking, laughing and playing and has recently begun feeding himself. Darnal still lacks full use of his right arm and leg, but seems, in most other respects, to be perfectly fine, not counting the depressed area on the left side of his head where doctors removed a piece of his skull.
He and his family, it seems superfluous to say, were very lucky. Indeed, they were blessed.
The gun that so nearly proved fatal is now kept disassembled in a safe. We do not know why Darnal’s father, who works as a fitness attendant, feels the need to own it in the first place. But who would be shocked if it turned out that he keeps it for home security? Putting aside the crackpots who think they’re going to have to defend Texas against the U.S. Army, that seems the most common rationale for gun ownership. People fear being caught empty-handed when the bad guys come.
It is, of course, a fear completely at odds with statistical fact.
Like the fact that, according to the FBI, crime has fallen to historic lows and your life, property and person are safer now than they have been in decades.
Like the fact that, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, for every gun that is used to wound or kill in self-defense, four are used in accidental shootings.
Like the fact that toddlers are now shooting themselves and others at the rate of one a week.
But it’s not just that fact is no match for fear; it’s that we live in a media culture that has the effect of maintaining fear in perpetuity, keeping it a low-grade fever simmering within the body politic, a heat that abides, but never abates.
A 2014 study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, found that exposure to violent crime on TV dramas intensifies the fear that one may become a victim. “CSI,” anyone? And a 2003 study from the same source found that the more people watch local TV news — where if it bleeds, it leads — the greater their fear of crime.
And here, it bears repeating: We have less to fear from crime now than we’ve had in many years.
But, though lacking cause to fear, we fear just the same, fear all the more, making life and death decisions about personal security based on perceptions that have little to do with reality. We fixate on stopping the stranger kicking in the front door. Meantime, there goes the toddler, balancing atop the chair, chubby little hands closing on the gun in the top drawer.
The irony is as sharp as the bang of a gunshot down the hall. We fear so many things. But some things, we don’t fear nearly enough.
By: Leonard Pitts,Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald: The National Memo, November 9, 2015
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