Friday, August 20, 2010

Texas 10-year-old Dead

The Dallas News reports on the latest accidental shooting.

Brazos County authorities say an apparent accidental shooting has left a 10-year-old boy dead after a .22-caliber rifle held by a 12-year-old neighbor discharged.

Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk says the older boy was handling the rifle when it accidentally fired, striking Rumfield in the chest.

Kirk says the older boy's mother was on the front porch or near the house at the time of the shooting.

The mother was on the front porch, Bob S. was writing his blog and all the rest of the pro-gun crowd were insisting that guns are necessary and good, that kids can be taught safe gun handling and in the meantime this kid ends up DEAD.

Shame on you all. Keep talking your percentages and your statistics, keep lying about the chances of your needing a gun to save your life vs. the chances of something bad happening with it. Keep it up.

I blame you, you stubborn, selfish pro-gun advocates. I blame you for disseminating the lies about gun safety and for resisting by every means the common sense gun laws which would prevent many needless deaths. I blame you for propagating the gun culture myth which so permeates our society, the myth that says it's cool and good and necessary for self defense to have a gun and that it's a god-given, Constitutionally protected right while the real reason for gun ownership is usually fear and insecurity, paranoia and mental illness.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

11 comments:

  1. If only MA-style laws were in place, you wouldn't feel guilty.

    If only the reason for keeping the gun was to facilitate armed robbery then you wouldn't feel guilty.

    If only none of the boy's siblings shared fathers, then you wouldn't feel guilty.

    If only the boy was raised in thug culture instead.

    There still is a child dead in both places, but at least you don't get to guilt and blame when it happens in gun-control paradise MA rather than gun-owner paradise TX.

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  2. Kids can be taught firearms safety. Mine were. Apparently, this kid wasn't.

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  3. I blame you for disseminating the lies about gun safety and for resisting by every means the common sense gun laws which would prevent many needless deaths.

    Well that is pretty ballsy. You blame us for lies about gun safety? So far you have been very outspoken about not allowing gun safety to be taught to children AT ALL. You equate teaching gun safety to children with child abuse. Then you shift the blame when a kid who was not taught gun safety handles a gun in an unsafe manner and kills someone. You really are a piece of work.

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  4. In other news, this year, thousands of children safely handled a gun and didn't shoot anyone because they were properly trained and supervised.

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  5. "...while the real reason for gun ownership is usually fear and insecurity, paranoia and mental illness."

    Back to name-calling because your side has nothing else, huh? That'll win over any fence-sitters to your side.

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  6. You know, kids CAN be taught firearms safety. I know this because I started shooting at 7 years old. I was given my first firearm at 12. Four months later I shot my first deer. There was NEVER a time were firearms were not present in the home.
    Yet for all that, no negligent discharges, no accidents and certainly no problems.

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  7. Oh, but Kevin H, you had to be the exception, not the rule, because MikeB simply will not do the math, will not accept the math.

    Children are dying and it must be your fault, because MikeB wants it to be!

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  8. "real reason for gun ownership is usually fear and insecurity, paranoia and mental illness."

    While advocating bans due to fears of what "might" happen, calling people "wannabe Rambos" and refusing to acknowledge facts when they come up is the epitome of common sense.

    Mike, the simple fact is, your side has no claim to the moral high ground. The anti-gun side is guilty of lying far more often than the pro-gun side is.

    Every time you insist on blaming the innocent gun owners, you show yourself to be an unscrupulous person.

    You barely stop short of saying they should be ashamed of telling the truth and resisiting irreponsible restrictions. You call them liars, while refusing to acknowlege that your side lies far more frequently, and all for your "Greater Bad".

    If you were once a good and honest person, you'd apologise for your disgraceful lies here. Doubt it will happen, people on your side aren't exactly known for being good people.

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  9. Gun safety can be taught to some kids successfully, as proven by Kevin's experience. But not all, not every single one. You guys are accusing me of arguing that teaching kids gun safety NEVER works. I don't say that. The percentages are not acceptable. That's what I say.

    Kevin started at 7. Many of the tragedies we argue about involve kids younger than that. So how does that work? Can you "teach" a kid to be responsible at 5, how about at 2? Yet, you guys, SOME of you guys keep leaving your guns around for the kids to find.

    I know, most of you don't, only a tiny percentage of you do that. I say that percentage is unacceptable.

    That's what I'm talking about when I say you lie about gun safety. I guess I could acquiesce to the idea that it's not a lie if you believe it and just see it differently than me. But, I call bullshit on that one too. You have a self-serving opinion which disregards whatever bloodshed results.

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  10. "You have a self-serving opinion which disregards whatever bloodshed results."

    You make it sound like we want there to be deaths, like we're bloodthirsty savages that seek to have children dying from gunshot wounds.

    I'm sure you realize that nothing is further from the truth. We don't want kids dead, and we are saddened by it too. But we completely disagree with how to further reduce or mitigate those tragic deaths.

    You say laws help. We say education works.

    "I know, most of you don't, only a tiny percentage of you do that. I say that percentage is unacceptable."

    Mike, we're talking about a percentage so low, it would measure in the .0001 to .000001range. The former is assuming kids dying left and right, the latter assumes once in a while. Either way, it doesn't even begin to approach a percentage that would make most people think twice about it.

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  11. MikeB: “You guys are accusing me of arguing that teaching kids gun safety NEVER works. I don't say that. The percentages are not acceptable. That's what I say.”

    More than likely was that this kid was not taught gun safety- as opposed to being taught and it not working. We don’t know this for sure, but it seems to be the theme in the majority of these cases. These gun accidents (being accidents), are by definition preventable. I don’t like using superlatives, but I’ll say that there is ALWAYS a major mistake on the part of the parents that precedes these tragedies. Kids can be taught to be safe with a gun. They can be supervised. Guns can easily be kept away from children that are simply too young. If we can agree on all these then our side can work together disseminating messages that help reduce these tragedies. Responsible parenting goes a long away, especially since we know that guns are not the only danger to a child.

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