At first, if you don't read carefully, this is going to sound like an anti screed. It's not. Guns aren't evil, but some people are, or at least idiotic. Bear with me.
The headline in the newspaper says that an 11 year old girl was shot when a group of children discovered an unattended firearm. It was a 2 year old's finger that managed to discharge it.
The truth is that at least one, or both, of the adults were responsible for this, the gentleman friend for ditching it there with no precautions, and the mother for either acquiescing to its introduction, loaded and unsecured into a household full of kids, or at least for choosing to associate with someone inclined to such irresponsibility.
Firearms, like other weapons, bladed and blunt, are a fact of urban life. Almost everybody has something. Even Granny has a hat-pin, if not a straight razor. Many people in the city would prefer to believe that firearms are in the inner-city because of some mysteriously inexplicable evil symbiosis between rural and suburban gun owners and gangsters in the 'hood. The truth is that some are sold right in the city by the few remaining FFLs in and around cities. Others are purchased elsewhere and illegally trafficked, and the remainder are taken in burglaries and robberies. Yes, we all know this, but I'm leading to a point.
In all the years that I worked in and around the inner city, I never once ran into any sort of an effort to train people in the proper use, maintenance, and storage of anything remotely resembling a pistol or a rifle, outside of air rifle training years ago by the few JROTC detachments in the school system. Yes, lots of tears and sign-toting on the part of grieving mothers, whipped up by charlatans running on the public dime, but never any effort to approach the firearms issue in the cities, other than offensive paternalism and stupid buy-back programs. I've sat there in churches, dragooned into attending for either professional or religious reasons, under the guise of "peace rallies," listening to the illogical rants and the under-the-breath racist imprecations of the angry mothers as the meetings devolved into an anti chanting session. Where possible, I've tried to counter the propaganda, and not always to my personal benefit. But I've never seen one hint of anything organized, other than JROTC, that admits the presence of arms, both powder-actuated and compressed-air, in urban life and seeks to address it with a mature message of competent responsibility and appropriate caution.
I know that many, if not most big-city administrations are inimical to anything like this. Air rifles and pistols are, in fact, illegal in Philly now. But where are we, from our end, on this? I'm not aware of any great effort on the part of the national three-letter organizations to try and counter this ugly trend. Folks everywhere deserve the enjoyment of the rights that we so proudly celebrate. And yet, there seems to be an attitude, both from within and without, that this stops dead at the city line. Where, pray tell, is Eddie Eagle these days that he doesn't alight in the unaccustomed venue of an urban school room?
We need to draw more people to our fold, from wherever it is that they come. Looking around at the other participants at the last activity that I attended, I realized that, by and large, we were pretty much a single demographic. Somehow, this has to change.
...
Police believe the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old girl Saturday morning occurred as children played with a loaded firearm inside a Mantua home.
Investigators said a male friend of the victim’s mother came to the home on the 3800 block of Wallace Street sometime Saturday morning. He allegedly stashed a loaded gun on the top of the refrigerator in the kitchen.
At some point, the firearm was moved to the master bedroom, where it was left unsecured, according to authorities.
Police said the victim was in the bedroom with her mother and three other children – a 16-year-old, a 2-year-old and a child under the age of 10.
When the mother left the room to use the bathroom, the children found the gun, according to investigators.
Police said as they played with the loaded, cocked firearm, the 2-year-old pointed the weapon at the 11-year-old.
The gun discharged shortly before 10 a.m., striking the 11-year-old girl in the arm. The bullet then entered her chest.
Though the victim was rushed to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, she died about a half-hour later.
Cops: Girl, 11, killed as kids played with gun
The headline in the newspaper says that an 11 year old girl was shot when a group of children discovered an unattended firearm. It was a 2 year old's finger that managed to discharge it.
The truth is that at least one, or both, of the adults were responsible for this, the gentleman friend for ditching it there with no precautions, and the mother for either acquiescing to its introduction, loaded and unsecured into a household full of kids, or at least for choosing to associate with someone inclined to such irresponsibility.
Firearms, like other weapons, bladed and blunt, are a fact of urban life. Almost everybody has something. Even Granny has a hat-pin, if not a straight razor. Many people in the city would prefer to believe that firearms are in the inner-city because of some mysteriously inexplicable evil symbiosis between rural and suburban gun owners and gangsters in the 'hood. The truth is that some are sold right in the city by the few remaining FFLs in and around cities. Others are purchased elsewhere and illegally trafficked, and the remainder are taken in burglaries and robberies. Yes, we all know this, but I'm leading to a point.
In all the years that I worked in and around the inner city, I never once ran into any sort of an effort to train people in the proper use, maintenance, and storage of anything remotely resembling a pistol or a rifle, outside of air rifle training years ago by the few JROTC detachments in the school system. Yes, lots of tears and sign-toting on the part of grieving mothers, whipped up by charlatans running on the public dime, but never any effort to approach the firearms issue in the cities, other than offensive paternalism and stupid buy-back programs. I've sat there in churches, dragooned into attending for either professional or religious reasons, under the guise of "peace rallies," listening to the illogical rants and the under-the-breath racist imprecations of the angry mothers as the meetings devolved into an anti chanting session. Where possible, I've tried to counter the propaganda, and not always to my personal benefit. But I've never seen one hint of anything organized, other than JROTC, that admits the presence of arms, both powder-actuated and compressed-air, in urban life and seeks to address it with a mature message of competent responsibility and appropriate caution.
I know that many, if not most big-city administrations are inimical to anything like this. Air rifles and pistols are, in fact, illegal in Philly now. But where are we, from our end, on this? I'm not aware of any great effort on the part of the national three-letter organizations to try and counter this ugly trend. Folks everywhere deserve the enjoyment of the rights that we so proudly celebrate. And yet, there seems to be an attitude, both from within and without, that this stops dead at the city line. Where, pray tell, is Eddie Eagle these days that he doesn't alight in the unaccustomed venue of an urban school room?
We need to draw more people to our fold, from wherever it is that they come. Looking around at the other participants at the last activity that I attended, I realized that, by and large, we were pretty much a single demographic. Somehow, this has to change.
...
Police believe the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old girl Saturday morning occurred as children played with a loaded firearm inside a Mantua home.
Investigators said a male friend of the victim’s mother came to the home on the 3800 block of Wallace Street sometime Saturday morning. He allegedly stashed a loaded gun on the top of the refrigerator in the kitchen.
At some point, the firearm was moved to the master bedroom, where it was left unsecured, according to authorities.
Police said the victim was in the bedroom with her mother and three other children – a 16-year-old, a 2-year-old and a child under the age of 10.
When the mother left the room to use the bathroom, the children found the gun, according to investigators.
Police said as they played with the loaded, cocked firearm, the 2-year-old pointed the weapon at the 11-year-old.
The gun discharged shortly before 10 a.m., striking the 11-year-old girl in the arm. The bullet then entered her chest.
Though the victim was rushed to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, she died about a half-hour later.
Cops: Girl, 11, killed as kids played with gun
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