Bluehawk said:
We don't know any of the facts related to the death of this child...so why does this thread keep going on and on??
mykeal said:
No, we're engaging in useless speculation. If we actually had credible information about the incident, then we could discuss facts and make reasonable statements about things we could all do to prevent such an accident in the future.
I disagree that we don't have any useful facts. I think that it's a fact that most gun accidents involving children are due to firearms and/or ammo that are improperly secured and not locked away for safekeeping from inquisitive youths.
If this gun and/or ammo was properly secured then in all probabilty
the minor child would have never been able to get his hands on it unsupervised in the first place.
Even if the gun was over the fireplace, the ammo and powder should have been locked away.
Even if the ammo and powder were locked away and the child obtained them somewhere else, then some other adult somewhere didn't properly lock them away from the child.
The child wasn't "effectively" trained to have a healthy respect for the
firearm. If the child was trained in the proper use of the firearm and to have the proper amount of respect for the firearm then he wouldn't have touched it without supervision or tried to load it with the wrong ammo.
The use of the wrong ammo in the gun is a fact.
No one wants to blame the parent, but in some states the improper storage of a firearm is negligence.
It's basic training that firearms and ammo shouldn't be stored together or to be left accessible to children. That's a fact.
Just because the accident involves a muzzle loader doesn't make it any more acceptable that the weapon, ammo and powder were made accessible to a child by some adult.
I doubt if the child overcame a gun trigger lock, or broke into a locked gun cabinet or a gun safe.
If the key was left for him to find that could be considered to be negligence.
No training is required to buy a muzzle loader, and I don't support prosecuting parents for the firearms accidents of their children. But there's more than just speculation here since a firearm, ammo and powder where in the hands of a child who died by blowing up a gun.
I don't know how the items got into his hands, but evidently it was due to some adult being negligent.
If that's not a fact, then at the very least it points toward enough of a trend that many states make it unlawful to improperly store a firearm. Even if a muzzle loader isn't considered to actually be a firearm, I don't think that it's useless speculation to ponder the consequences of where we all store our guns when children may be in our houses.
So there I said what no one ever wants to say, that a parent or an adult could be at fault for the accident. It doesn't really matter whether the child died because it was loaded right or wrong or not. The fact is that a child was allowed to touch it who was not properly trained or ready with enough knowledge to use it unsupervised in his own yard.
The gun, ammo and powder belonged to someone beside the child, but if it belonged to the child without adequate training then may God help us all.
