Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Guns

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps statistics on  how many children are killed in unintentional shootings but the Centers do not compile national data on the age of the person who pulls the trigger. Children who pull triggers and the other children they kill are victims of the gun culture in the United States. Four of these tragic shootings are highlighted below.

1. Two-year-old Kaleb Ahle of Tarpon Springs, Florida, "died by accidentally shooting himself in the chest with a loaded .380 caliber gun he found in the glove box of his father's vehicle."

2. Nine-month-old Corbin Wiederholt "was killed when his [five]-year-old brother accidentally shot him in the head. The older brother found the loaded .22-caliber Magnum revolver in the Elmo, Missouri home of his grandfather, William Porter, whom the family was visiting. Porter told authorities he kept the gun loaded for security in a locked case but admitted that the case could be opened with a screwdriver or random key."

" 'I told the boys they weren't supposed to be in my bedroom where I keep the gun cabinet and they knew it,' Porter said in an interview. 'But like I said, boys will be boys.' "

3. A ten-year-old girl living in Colleyville, Texas, "was accidentally shot by a handgun that went off while her father was showing visitors the weapon in another room of the family home. The bullet went through a wall and struck her."

4. "And then there was the young, educated and gun-proficient Veronica Rutledge who was accidentally shot and killed [by] her [two]-year-old son at a Wal-Mart in Hayden, Idaho. The toddler had found his mother's loaded small-caliber handgun in her new gun-toting purse, a Christmas gift from her husband."

" 'They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case.' Veronica's father-in-law, Terry Rutledge, angrily told The Washington Post. 'This wasn't just some purse she had thrown her gun into.' " (Source: Joline Gutierrez Krueger, "Taking aim at loaded guns," The  Albuquerque Journal, January 24, 2015.)

These four shootings are just a sampling of the many more accidental shootings that happen when young children find an unlocked but loaded gun in the home and start to play with it. One survey found that 43% of respondents who had guns in the home had at least one unlocked gun. It is  too much to expect that those people who keep a loaded gun near the bed to fend off an intruder, will, every morning, lock up the gun in a secure place where children cannot access it.