Boy killed BY a shotgun?

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Owen Sparks

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The local TV news update on several radio stations in town. Yesterday, the anouncer said:

"A local boy was killed by a 12ga shotgun yesterday. It seems that the gun went off while it was being moved, striking twelve year old ________ in the chest and killing him."

Now does this sound odd to you?
 
Shotguns don't just go off and kill people by themselves. It sounds like the news could have been reporting on a vicious animal that turned on someone rather than an inanimate object. Is the verbage of this story designed to ascribe evil volition to guns or is this just the way the person who wrote the story thinks?
 
The talking head wasn't an English major or the editor clipped him for time.

'A 12 year old boy was accidently killed by a' ,,, would be more correct.

'An accident involving a loaded 12 guage shotgun resulted in the death of',,, would have been even more appropriate.
 
"Safety off, round in chamber, gun falls, boy dies."

I doubt that is what happened. It is possible but unlikely. Modern firearms manufacturers go to great lengths to make sure that can't happen because of liability. Usually when you hear about a gun going off when bumped it is one that has had a trigger job.
 
Hoplophobia
Firearms instructor Colonel Jeff Cooper coined the word in 1962 to describe a "mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons".[2] Cooper employed the clinical-sounding term as an alternative to slang terms, stating: "We read of 'gun grabbers' and 'anti-gun nuts' but these slang terms do not (explain this behavior)." Cooper attributed this behavior to the irrational fear of firearms and other forms of weaponry. He stated that "the most common manifestation of hoplophobia is the idea that instruments possess a will of their own, apart from that of their user." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplophobia
 
This reminds me of what a buddy told me. His mother in law found out that he bought a pistol and said:

"How could you live with yourself if that thing went off and killed a child?"
He responded with "The same way you can live with that evil staircase that broke your hip."
 
Could shotguns nation wide be rising up against their owners? What did this poor boy do to piss off this shotgun? Is the real reason for trigger locks and safes so guns don't murder us in our sleep?
 
Gun on seat of pickup, boy reaches in, grabs by muzzle, pulls, safety off, trigger hits seatbelt buckle... Joe
Click to expand...

We had a similar incident in my town. It happened with an older Marlin
30-30 without the hammer block safety. It had a hammer extention that sticks out the side for use with a scope. Evidently the extention caught on the seat and cocked the hammer back just short catching the sear. When it slipped the rifle fired taking the top of a highschool boys head off.

Another time two men were illegally spotlighting deer. There was a loaded .30-06 proped up aginst the seat between them. They simeltaniously saw a buck and both grabed for the rifle. One grabed it by the muzzle end and the other by the trigger area. It fired into the armpit of the guy holding the muzzel. He survived but it blew his shoulder joint out and after much surgery, one arm is about six inches shorter than the other and he can't raise it.

In all these cases the four basic safety rules were violated. Even if a faulty mechanism did cause a gun to go off by itself while being handled, keeping the muzzel pointed in a safe direction will keep anyone from being shot.
 
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