There is a real tragic story coming out of North Carolina this week and it involves a 3 year old shooting herself in the head with an unattended weapon that she found in a parked, unlocked vehicle.
Let's get one thing straight before I get started on this: I am very pro gun, I own many firearms and strongly believe in the 2nd amendment. I strongly believe that people should be allowed to own firearms and also be legally allowed to carry them with them wherever they go.
However, this does not mean that I think that weapons should just be kept lying all over the place willy nilly and that extensive precautions should not be made to ensure that accidents like this do not happen.
src
Most weapons these days have safeties on them but you don't have to be a genius to realize that these safeties are for the safety of a person who actually knows how to use said weapon. It is meant to protect the user, not to prevent it from being fired at all. This is the situation as it is being reported in the case in Asheville, North Carolina where a little girl found a 9mm in a truck, toyed around with it, and shot herself in the head.
Kids fiddle with things, kids can accidentally figure stuff out. This little girl probably didn't even have much of a concept of what she was holding, let alone the knowledge of how dangerous it is. She probably just messed around with it enough, disengaged it and then toyed with it until it fired right into her head.
src
The above image is NOT the girl in question by the way. Photos of minors are usually not allowed in the media.
The really stupid thing about this situation is that the little girl in question was the daughter of a retired police captain, who should have known better if it was his weapon - which is not clear in the little bit of information that is being released about this. I suspect that since there is a police officer involved, even a retired one, that we are unlikely to get the whole truth about this incident.
When things like this happen it angers me on many levels: An innocent life was lost because of the foolishness of adults and when things like this happen the people who would seek to take away my right to have firearms have a new "case" to cite when they make their mostly BS arguments about why regular people shouldn't have guns.
I am almost always packing heat, but the weapons that I do not have on my person in a holster at that particular moment in time are locked away, unloaded, with trigger locks on them. There are exceptions of course, such as the Mossberg that I keep loaded in a specific location in the center of my house in the event of a home invasion situation. If I am having company over, especially if they have kids, I of course remove this because I am a responsible gun owner that realizes the lethal potential of these items.
This level of irresponsibility is just unfathomable to me and I don't know what sort of charges the owner of the weapon is going to face, but he or she needs to face some sort of justice because it is because of their negligence that an innocent life was cut extremely short.
src
I remain in full support of all gun ownership rights, and my state is a good one to be in if you feel the way that I do. This is also a situation of not just bad gun safety practice, but also bad parenting. Where were the parents when their 3 year old was running around opening up cars?
It drives me crazy how careless some fellow gun owners can be. Especially those with kids.
They really should use common sense and pay closer attention to how their weapons are stored. I am a parent of small children and own dozens of handguns, rifles and shotguns, but I keep most of them secured in a vault room inside of a safe. Guns that I have loaded and "ready to use" are inside heavy binary lock boxes around the house. I have a lock box bolted into my shelving in my pantry with a loaded 9mm ready to rock at a moments notice. Same as with my bedroom.
!LUV
@dyson-the-booper(1/1) gave you LUV.
!hivebits
@masterofwolves(2/1) You mined .9 HBIT and the user you replied to received .1 HBIT on your behalf. You can receive 100% of the HBIT by replying to one of your own posts or comments.
official HBIT mine | my wallet | market | tools | connect | <>< HBIT miners: the bot's confirmation reply may come and go as resource credits allow. You can still mine HBIT, even without comments. To monitor your mining see tool A or tool B or Discord (best).
and that's the way it should be done. I've been eying up one of those safes that uses biometrics in order to open. They are expensive but pretty damn awesome.
Leaving a loaded firearm in an unlocked car at a party with kids at it is just a new level if idiocy
A weapon left unattended? How stupid must the owner be to do this?
I have all weapons locked in safe and doesn't matter if it's loaded or unloaded. Only unlocked gun is in my holster.
I think kids should learn how to handle the weapons from some age, but never should has the possibility to touch weapon without supervisor.