11 year-old shoots and kills friend..

[FireStar_M40]

An 11 year-old boy will spend at least 18 months in a juvenile detention facility for shooting and killing his 13 year old friend.

The 11 year-old pleaded no contest to manslaughter.

Investigators said the two boys took turns pointing a loaded gun at each other. When the gun went off in the hands of the 11 year-old, it killed his friend.

The 13 year-old's parents said they want the shooter's parents to face criminal charges for having a loaded gun in the house.

The boy admitted to deputies he removed the gun from the family's safe.

www.baynews9.com/content/36/2004/10/28/59943.html

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Unfortunately, such a tragedy.. and one that shouldn't have happened.

There are several thoughts/questions that enter my mind. Was the safe locked.. and if so, how was the 11 year-old able to gain access? Keeping this question in mind, (from my perspective), if the parents knew he was able to have unlimited (combination/key) access to the safe, then YES.. I think they should be held accountable.

On the other hand, if the parents didn't know that the 11 year-old knew the combination (or had access to the key), then NO.. I don't see how they should face criminal charges.

One thing though.. this is something that the 11 year-old will have to live with the rest of his life. Maybe things would have been different if he had followed the NRA teachings of "Eddie Eagle".

http://www.nrahq.org/safety/eddie/

FireStar_M40

 

[mnrivrat]

Certainly a grave tragedy .

Unless there were some very unusual circumstances it is the parents responsible to keep firearms out of the hands of 11 year olds.

 

[FPrice]

Not enough information to make a rational choice. I certainly would not support criminal charges just for having a loaded gun in the house, but exactly how was it secured in the safe? If locked, how was the young man able to open it? Why were they playing with it?

A tragedy of course, but trying to determine "who" is to blame may be difficult.

 

[White Horseradish]

I say this is a 50/50 both parents for not teaching their children that guns are not toys.

 

[41mag]

Well,it's all fine & good to blame the shooters parents.BUT what about the shootees?The other kid is two years older but no smarter.Why didn't his parents teach their kid how not to play w/a gun?

Eleven & thirteen are both old enough to know better.

Whatever happened to Eddie the Eagle?

The 13 year-old's parents said they want the shooter's parents to face criminal charges for having a loaded gun in the house.

What good would come from that?Putting the kid into a foster home if/when he gets out of juvie?Or maybe there's a lawyer involved who's suggesting a civil suit?

Questions,questions.And a bad day was had by all.

 

[JBP]

In Maryland the parents, not the boy, would be liable for criminal prosecution.

 

[sumpnz]

I said 50/50 both boys. After all they took turns pointing it at each other until the 11 y.o. (apparently unintentionally) discharged the gun. It could have just as easily been the other kid that got shot.

 

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

[*] Insufficient data to decide whose fault it was.

- pdmoderator

 

[Yooper]

From the provided info, the only conclusion I can reach is that the accident wouldn't have happened the way it did had there not been two lids involved. 50/50

 

[SoCalGeek]

Unless there's some significant detail missing from the story, i blame everyone involved. The kids should have known better than to play with the gun, the shooter's parents should have either stored the gun better or ensured that he never touched it, and the 13 year-old's parents for not teaching their kid not to do that sort of thing.

The 13 year-old's parents said they want the shooter's parents to face criminal charges for having a loaded gun in the house.

Oh? How are you going to press charges for violating a law that doesn't exist? There's no law against simply having a loaded gun in the house in FL. Maybe something about child safety, but not simply having one.

 

[Sindawe]

Damn sad...

Sounds like my young cousin 14 years ago. He was 12, with a buddy and he got his fathers .357 out and was showing off. Put the thing to his head and pulled the trigger. His fool of a father had told him that "The 6th barrel will always be empty"

It was not.

Both kids at fault here. They are/were old enough to know better.

 

[GOT]

Not knowing more, I think, the parents should have taught their children much better. Also those 2 kids are crazy!

I can remember finding a BB handgun with two of my brothers, when I was 6 or 7 and we were scared to death of the thing. It was lying in an alley. We poked it with a stick for a while at first. Upon seeing that it was broken we picked it up carefully and took it home and showed it to dad. He carefully examined it with us and threw it away. We certainly didn't start pointing it at each other... I mean thats absolutely nuts!

When I was around 12 some twins that lived a couple of blocks from my parent's house where goofing off with a shotgun and low-and-behold it was loaded and they blasted a hole in the wall. I remember thinking then, that they were simply crazy!

For as long as I can remember my brothers and I were always taught, "NEVER POINT A GUN AT ANYONE"... so we didn't.

 

[tc300mag1]

i vote 100% the 11 year old since he started it and never should have taken it out of the safe

 

[JohnKSa]

My total added to more than 100%. I think that's right--in my experience I find that there's almost always more than enough blame for everyone to get a full dose.

 

[LynnMassGuy]

I voted 100% 11 year old's parents. SECURE YOUR MOTHER F*&^%$#@ FIREARMS FOLKS!! What the hell is so difficult about that? Smart enough to own a gun. Smart enough to buy a safe. To F&^%$#@! dumb to utilize properly and educate their child about firearms. CRIPES ALMIGHTY!!!!!

 

[Linux&Gun Guy]

Its both the kids problem. If your so stupid that you point a gun at your friend(or let him point one at you) then you deserve what you get.

 

[pax]

50% / 50% both boys. (They both should have known better than to be playing with a gun.)

Actually, I'd say it's 100%/100% both boys' parents.

To have a child reach the age of puberty without knowing better than to point a gun at another human being is unconscionable.

pax

I told you that juvenile delinquent is a contradiction in terms. Delinquent means failing in duty. But duty is an adult virtue - indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be, a juvenile delinquent. -- "Colonel Dubois" (Robert A. Heinlein)

 

[carpettbaggerr]

Of course we've only heard the 11 year-old's side of the story. Was the 13 year-old a willing participant? Did they both handle the gun? Dead kids tell no tales.

 

[MinScout]

These kinds of tragedys always make me sick to my stomach, so pointless and preventable.

 

[Tory]

Yes, both kids were stupid -

they are also KIDS. As in CHILDREN. Neither an 11 nor a 13 year-old has any adult responsibility because neither is deemed capable of fulfulling it.

Should they have known better than to play with a parent's gun? Of course. Does that make THEM responsible for the consequences of their childish actions? NO. Period. The law will find no fault in the child; it will likely find a parent who failed to secure his firearms liable.

In my state, the parent would be facing charges for negligent storage, exacerbated by the 1. foreseeable actions of 2. a child, resulting in 3. its death.

This irresponsible and tragic event makes gun owners look like irresponsible cretins.

 

[Wayne D]

I was hunting, unsupervised (but not untrained), at age eleven or twelve, I can't remember exactly, but it was before age 13. "My" .22 was kept in my parents room but I could go get it any time I wanted. Also, by that age I had attended two safety courses, one in the 4-H and the other in the Boy Scouts. At age 13 my dad gave me a Model 700 Remington .243. The rifle and the ammo was mine and kept in my room. That was 35 years ago, whatever happened to teaching kids to be responsible like that? Parents are terrified to let their kids hunt, shoot, or even touch a gun much less get proper training in such. Yet they let them watch unsupervised, unrealistic, sadistic killing on TV and video games where they never see the consequences of the actions. Kids don't have any idea what real death is. When I was that age I had hunted and killed animals, I knew that death was forever and not to be taken lightly, I knew the suffering I could cause if I didn't place my shot well. I knew what a bullet could do to a living creature. These kids raised on garbage don't have the slightest idea about any of it. Boys, and lots of girls, have a natural, almost instinctive, curiosity about weapons. That curiosity needs to be satisfied by teaching them what they want to know safely and intelligently. Later if they decide that they are not "into" guns or hunting that's their decision made based on facts not hysterics, and by God they'll know better than to play with guns by pointing them at each other's heads.

Sorry, rant off, I got carried away because this kind of needless death makes me livid.

 

[Andrew Rothman]

What Tory said. They are KIDS. If the kid was irresponsible, it's STILL his parents' fault for a) not securing the gun, b) not training the id, or c) realizing that the kid wasn't responsible enough to have access to the safe.

No matter how you slice it, the 11-year-old's parents come out as the people to blame.

This doesn't mean, of course, that I won't teach my kids to beat feet, should an idiot playmate pull out a gun. There are a lot of idiots out there, and many of them have children.

 

[Guns_and_Labs]

11 and 13, certainly old enough to have been trained not to violate so many safety rules. Certainly mine were. Sounds like annual school visits by Eddie the Eagle are called for.

On the other hand, only my wife and I know how to open the safe, and how to open the lockboxes with the loaded weapons. I would be considered criminally negligent if a child got access to my weapons and committed a crime, unless it was fully secured.

 

[jefnvk]

Everyone was at fault.

11 yr old: Got the gun out of a safe, pointed it at friend, pulled trigger.
13 yr old: Pointed at friend, kept the play going
11 y/o Parents: Didn't teach the kid to not play with guns/Possibly gave the kid the combo to the safe
13 y/o parents: Didn't teach the kids the rules with guns.

If you remove any of the above, the incident doesn't happen.

 

[mfree]

100% parent's responsibility for not gunproofing their child.

11 years old is plenty old enough to be taught the destructive power of a firearm and how to respect it and handle it safely, or not at all.