ID - 2 year boy accidentally shoots and kills mother in walmart in ths US

[pukasonqo2]

on november 26:
Nov 26, 2014 11:55 By Nina Massey

Police say Christa Engles was killed in a "horrible, horrible accident" when the three-year-old found a loaded semi-automatic weapon in the house
A tragic young army mother was shot dead by her three-year-old son as she changed her 10-month-old daughter’s nappy.
The toddler is believed to have found a loaded semi-automatic handgun on a table and accidentally fired it at Christa Engles' head as she tended to his baby sister.
No one else was was home at the time.

it might be rare but children shooting adults because the gun was not safely put away does happens
and again here we have a family ruined and another child with a difficult future because a gun was left on the table
i am not going to go into the gun control and all that jazz issue but here we have to similar tragedies in which the adults did not secure those guns and were left within easy reach of children
my problem is that here we have two smart, gun educated (as the families said one was an army reservist and the other knew her away around guns)women who were shot not but those intruders there were arming themselves against but by their children.
do guns give a false sense of security, a "it won't happen to us" mentality?
i am on my ipad and have no idea how to post the link to the mirror.uk were i found that story


The 26-year-old U.S. Army Reserve specialist was found by the children's grandmother when she returned home to the bloody scene in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Engles was taken to hospital in a critical condition, but later died.

 

[Montjoy]

Link to confirm pukasonqo2's story, above:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/toddler-shoots-mom-dead-baby-diaper-cops-article-1.2023300

 

[al66pine]

Originally Posted by al66pine Aside from constitutional issue, seems unworkable on practical, operational levels. Maybe a well-intentioned idea. (But still curious)

Mandating a national 20mph speed limit on all roads all the time for everyone would save a heckuva lot more lives. And would be less invasive of the sanctity of our homes. I could get behind such a proposal.

sonjay,
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I didn't mean 'well-intentioned-idea' like that;
meant it like well-intentioned but not well thought out (maybe stupid?); just did not want to say it so bluntly.

Like mandating national 20mph speed limits on all roads at all times.
Yes, could reduce injuries & deaths from MVAs, but undoubtedly other negative unintended consequences would/could outweigh. JM2cts.

 

[al66pine]

Originally Posted by al66pine
Aside from constitutional issue, seems unworkable on practical, operational levels.
Maybe a well-intentioned idea. (But still curious)

Mandating a national 20mph speed limit on all roads all the time for everyone would save a heckuva lot more lives.
And would be less invasive of the sanctity of our homes. I could get behind such a proposal.

sonjay,
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I didn't mean 'well-intentioned-idea' like that;
meant it like well-intentioned but not well thought out (maybe stupid?); just did not want to say it so bluntly.

Like mandating national 20mph speed limits on all roads at all times.
Yes, could reduce injuries & deaths from MVAs, but undoubtedly other negative unintended consequences would/could outweigh. JM2cts.

 

[Donjeta]

It's already illegal in every state that I'm aware of to leave a gun where a 2-year-old can get hold of it. What, we need to make it more illegal?

There is no additional regulation needed. People simply need to be perfect, that's all.

That doesn't seem to be true. There are plenty of cases on WS where there are never any charges because allowing kids to shoot people is not a crime. Here's just one:

Caroline Sparks, 2, was shot by her brother, 5.

A spokesman for the Kentucky State Police said last week that it was too soon to determine if charges would be filed in the death of Caroline Sparks. Although some states have strict laws aimed at negligent gun storage, including criminal liability for adults, Kentucky’s laws are looser, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The state does not hold adults liable when a child gets hold of a firearm and causes an injury or death.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/us/kentucky-town-rejects-girls-gun-death-as-a-symbol.html?_r=0

http://www.wlwt.com/news/local-news/no-charges-to-be-filed-in-ky-childs-shooting-death/20880758

If leaving firearms for kids to cause havoc with was a crime everywhere this would obviously be a crime but no such thing according to LE:

http://www.wlwt.com/news/local-news/no-charges-to-be-filed-in-ky-childs-shooting-death/20880758

Cumberland County Commonwealth's Attorney Jesse Stockton said in a statement Monday that he "believes there is no probable cause that any crime occurred" in the April 30 shooting.

http://leg.wa.gov/Senate/Committees/LAW/Documents/SummaryOfStateChildAccessPreventionLaws.pdf

Here you can see which states impose criminal liability and which don't.

 

[Donjeta]

You sound like you may be a proponent of the gun confiscation proposal that I posted about. It appears that this is a rampant problem with parents of small children. It's obvious that these parents will not do the right thing and remove guns from their homes so it's up to the government to do it. Right? Or am I reading you wrong? Let me know.

You are in fact putting words in my mouth.

Please see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

It's so easy to get outraged by making the false assumption that people are advocating for ridiculous scenarios.

But isn't being a felon in possession of a firearm already illegal in most states and federally?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felon_in_possession_of_a_firearm

Here's a radical idea: you could make it a felony to allow kids the opportunity to shoot people with your gun, and then you could prohibit the felons from further owning firearms that they have no idea what to do with quite constitutionally.

JMO from following these cases on WS, it seems to me that quite often it's the parents with a criminal record who get prosecuted because you might get them on weapons charges even, and if it's middle class parents who were equally reckless in storing their firearms they get off without charges because "it was a tragic accident".

 

[Donjeta]

There are many groups working to reduce the rates of gun accidents. Which group do you prefer?

I support the NRA Foundation. They provide grants for many firearm safety courses.

I also support the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Gee, look at what's on their home page: Project ChildSafe:
http://www.nssf.org/

These groups, and others like them, have been very successful in reducing accidental firearm injuries and deaths. With your support, they'll be able to be even more successful.

I do not believe in the general line of the NRA politics. What is the NRA role in influencing the firearms death rates in general?Don't they support the rights of the weapons industry to sell any kind of guns to any kinds of people without background checks? How is that going to influence the overall death toll?

Do you have a link for some impartial studies showing that the reduction in accidental firearms injuries is thanks to NRA? How well do the courses work? Have they been shown to be effective in reducing the odds that the participants are involved in accidents?

It has been repeatedly stated in this thread that Veronica Rutledge was trained in gun safety and look what happened to her.

This research suggests that parents might be getting the wrong idea... in an observational situation having had gun safety training didn't actually have an effect on whether the kids touched and fired a gun that they found. Parents were pretty poor in predicting whether their kids would touch a gun or not.
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,129342,00.html

The National Rifle Association has long held that the combination of gun safety education and parental involvement is key to keeping kids safe around firearms. Now, a new study from a controversial researcher suggests that those generally acknowledged defenses are not enough to stop young boys from picking up, examining and even firing guns they stumble upon.

When it comes to toddlers they're too young to have attended gun safety courses and remember the lessons anyway.

The kids whose homes have more firearms available have more accidents. The international statistics seem to bear this out. NRA promotes more firearms to more homes, so.

The Eddie Eagle GunSafe program is an easy to remember message. If you see a gun:Stop!
Don't Touch.
Leave the Area.
Tell an Adult.

http://eddieeagle.nra.org/information-for-parents.aspx

This is a good idea to teach kids this but does it actually work?

Here's a study examining the effectiveness of the NRA kids' gun safety course Eddie Eagle and the results are quite disappointing IMO:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14702451


The Eddie Eagle participant kids learned to recite a memorized verbal safety instruction but that knowledge did not actually generalize in any situations where their behavior was observed.

Existing programs are insufficient for teaching gun-safety skills to children. Programs that use active learning strategies (modeling, rehearsal, and feedback) are more effective for teaching gun-safety skills as assessed by supervised role plays but still failed to teach the children to use the skills outside the context of the training session. More research is needed to determine the most effective way to promote the use of the skills outside the training sessio

Unless something has radically changed in the instruction methods making kids attend these courses could actually be harmful for some kids if it gives the parents the false sense of security and makes the parents less vigilant.

Fourteen percent of non-gun-owning parents, 23% of gun owning parents, and 35% of gun owning parents with unsafe storage practices trusted their child with a loaded gun. Ten percent of the non-gun-owning parents and 14% of the gun owning parents trusted their child as young as 4 to 7 years of age with a loaded gun, although trust did increase for both groups as age increased. Both groups of parents consistently trusted their own child more than another child with a loaded gun. Eighty-seven percent of the gun owning parents believed that their child would not touch a real gun and these same parents were more likely to store a loaded gun unlocked in their home. This study and others have established that parents have unrealistic views of children's safety around guns, falsely believing their children capable of gun control

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/515681_2

 

[Donjeta]

More interesting data from the previous link
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/515681

Parents believed safe firearm storage was important to protect children. Only 22% of parents reported having a firearm in their home. However, of those reporting a firearm in the home, 85% did not practice safe gun storage despite reporting they believed it was important.

More than 400 children die annually in the United States from unintentional firearm injuries (Center to Prevent Handgun Violence [CPHV], 2000) and over 3000 children sustain non-fatal firearm injuries each year (Beaman, Annest, Mercy, Kresnow, & Pollack, 2000; Cummings, Grossman, Rivara, & Koepsell, 1997). There are in excess of two hundred million guns in America, and 43% of US households with children report owning at least one gun (CPHV, 2000).

Thirty-three percent of firearms kept in homes are not stored safely (Stennies, Ikeda, Leadbetter, Houston, & Sacks, 1999).

Despite parents' perceptions, children can and do play with real guns regardless of being instructed not to (Hardy, Armstrong, Martin, & Strawn, 1996).

Senturia et al. (1996) conducted a survey of rural and urban pediatric practices to determine gun storage practices in homes with children. Out of 5,233 parent respondents, 1,682 parents (32%) reported having at least one gun in their home. Sixty-one percent of these parents reported that at least one firearm was stored unlocked, 30% stored all firearms unloaded and locked, and 7% kept at least one firearm loaded and unlocked in the home.

Women may not be the best source for determining how guns are stored in the home, as males are frequently the gun-owners (Azrael, Miller, & Hemenway, 2000). A telephone survey conducted by these researchers showed that women often were unaware that guns in their homes were stored in an unsafe manner.

Assessment of a child's ability to pull a trigger revealed that 25% of three to four year-olds, 70% of five to six year-olds, and 90% of seven to eight year-olds have trigger pull strength of at least 10 pounds. Forty out of 64 handguns require trigger pull strength of only five pounds leading these researchers to conclude that young children are able to fire most commercially available handguns in circulation today.

 

[waitin'4thewrld2chg]

Just a stray thought, but I wonder if the two-year-old knew how to go for the trigger on a gun from having played with a toy gun.

 

[Elley Mae]

You are in fact putting words in my mouth.

Please see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

It's so easy to get outraged by making the false assumption that people are advocating for ridiculous scenarios.

But isn't being a felon in possession of a firearm already illegal in most states and federally?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felon_in_possession_of_a_firearm

Here's a radical idea: you could make it a felony to allow kids the opportunity to shoot people with your gun, and then you could prohibit the felons from further owning firearms that they have no idea what to do with quite constitutionally.

JMO from following these cases on WS, it seems to me that quite often it's the parents with a criminal record who get prosecuted because you might get them on weapons charges even, and if it's middle class parents who were equally reckless in storing their firearms they get off without charges because "it was a tragic accident".

bbm If you mean like below then yes I would agree.

In apt 1 we have Two dudes sitting around and talking about which place to rob with the stolen gun and then leave the room for a toddler to get the gun and shoot someone.

In apt 2 we have a couple that own a gun and keep it in the closet on the top shelf, but while watching tv their toddler pulls out a chair and gets the gun and shoots one of the parents.

 

[Sonya610]

I've read in the past some proposals that parents of small children not be allowed to have guns in their homes because of the danger. The government would search for and remove any guns that are found. The guns would be returned after the kids reach a certain age and government safety requirements are met.

Anyone think this is a good idea?

LOL. It is a crazy idea. Plus it would never work. Whoever proposed that must have NO idea about current gun laws.

Most states do NOT register guns for this very reason! Legally the feds are not even supposed to retain personal gun ownership data when they run checks for new purchases (though they probably do it anyway). Those laws are in place SOLELY to keep the government from tallying a list and going after private citizens for purpose of disarming the masses.

I suppose those that suggested searching the homes of parents might also want to burn the constitution and allow home searches and property seizure without a warrant or just cause too. Besides, why stop at parents? Add grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc...to the list in case the child visits their home.

If a politician or group actually suggested that or tried to pass legislation they are either lying to rally support from idiots, or they themselves are idiots.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

bbm

RANCH
I just saw your later post about this confiscation proposal and see you are not advocating this. TY

Sounds Good on the Surface Idea.
As if
- All ppl w newborns have previously registered their guns, so gov't could locate & confiscate guns.
- After gun confiscation by govt, ppl w babies, infants, children could not acquire another gun, either legally or illegally.
- ppl w'out children permanently living in their homes, never have children visiting for an afternoon, a weekend, or the summer.
Grandchildren, anyone? Home-daycare providers? Scout leaders? Sunday school leader hosting home gatherings? Et al.

For confiscating guns, does gov't compensate gun owners?
After confiscating these guns (how many? 1000s, 10,000s, 100,000s?) what does the govt do w the guns before returning them
to the homes after the children reach the approp age?
What about households where a parent is LEO? Or does proposal ban LEOs from having children? Or ban parents from entering LE positions?
What about members of armed forces?

Need to learn more about this proposal. Where? Link, anyone? TIA.

I read about this idea a few years ago and can't remember where. It's a crazy idea but it would work in keeping guns away from children. I think the Second Amendment would have to be repealed before it could happen and I don't see that happening.

The scary thing is that there are people out there who think this is a good idea. JMO.

 

[Donjeta]

bbm If you mean like below then yes I would agree.

In apt 1 we have Two dudes sitting around and talking about which place to rob with the stolen gun and then leave the room for a toddler to get the gun and shoot someone.

In apt 2 we have a couple that own a gun and keep it in the closet on the top shelf, but while watching tv their toddler pulls out a chair and gets the gun and shoots one of the parents.

And cases where couples own a gun and store it in the corner and let their five year olds play with it while mom is out.

The bullets don't know the criminal history of the careless parents.

All parents know that children can climb chairs.

 

[Donjeta]

Here's some ways that the NRA works so hard to prevent gun accidents and promote responsible gun storage practices:

NRA News host Cam Edwards attacked laws to prevent children from accessing guns by positing that there should be no criminal penalty even when an admittedly careless adult allows a child access to a gun that the child then uses to kill themselves.

On the January 6 edition of NRA News program Cam & Company, Edwards attacked Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America founder Shannon Watts for advocating for state laws that create a criminal penalty for adults that negligently allow children access to firearms. In an interview with USA Today, Watts cited the fact that only 15 states have child access prevention laws and contended, "This idea that a shooting that involves a toddler is accidental is asinine. If I was drinking and driving and hit my son, I would immediately go to jail. But if I left my firearm on the top of the refrigerator and he found it and shot himself, everyone says, what a horrible accident."

dwards responded to Watts' USA Today interview by suggesting that if "you are careless with a firearm and one of your own children accidentally kills themself" that the "horror" of the incident alone would be sufficient punishment for the adult. But in arguing against laws that criminalize negligently allowing children to access guns, Edwards ignores that research has shown that these laws are associated with a reduction in gun deaths among children resulting from accidents and suicide.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/08/nra-news-fights-for-the-right-to-leave-unsecure/197479

 

[Elley Mae]

Since Idaho does not have a child access prevention law that would be a good place to start, along with some regulation into how people carry their weapons when out in public.

I don't see Idaho changing any laws over this. jmo
.................................................

No state permit is required to possess a rifle, shotgun or handgun.

Idaho law requires a license to carry a concealed weapon.

http://www.idaho.gov/laws_rules/firearm.html

.............................

In the U.S., the FBI numbers show that there were 367.9 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

In Idaho, though, the number is about 204.7 incidents of violent crime per 100,000 people,

http://www.ktvb.com/story/news/crime/2014/11/15/idaho-crime-rate/19094173/

 

[Deleted member 39678]

LOL. It is a crazy idea. Plus it would never work. Whoever proposed that must have NO idea about current gun laws.

Most states do NOT register guns for this very reason! Legally the feds are not even supposed to retain personal gun ownership data when they run checks for new purchases (though they probably do it anyway). Those laws are in place SOLELY to keep the government from tallying a list and going after private citizens for purpose of disarming the masses.

I suppose those that suggested searching the homes of parents might also want to burn the constitution and allow home searches and property seizure without a warrant or just cause too. Besides, why stop at parents? Add grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc...to the list in case the child visits their home.

If a politician or group actually suggested that or tried to pass legislation they are either lying to rally support from idiots, or they themselves are idiots.

BBM

CPS search peoples homes all the time in child abuse cases. Having a gun in the house would be the same as having a meth lab. Hell, the government could threaten to take the children away if a gun is found in the parents home or it is found that they have taken their child to a home that has a gun in it.

I don't think this will ever happen but there's people out there who don't want guns around children who think this a good idea. They are the same people who think that the government knows how to raise children better than their own parents. JMO.

 

[sonjay]

I do not believe in the general line of the NRA politics. What is the NRA role in influencing the firearms death rates in general?Don't they support the rights of the weapons industry to sell any kind of guns to any kinds of people without background checks? How is that going to influence the overall death toll?

You don't have to believe in the general line of NRA politics to support the NRA Foundation. It's a completely separate 501(c)3 organization with completely separate funding, whose goal is to teach firearm safety, law enforcement training, conservation, hunter eduction, and women's self defense, among other things. The NRA Foundation doesn't lobby and doesn't engage in political campaigning. It strictly provides grant money in support of eligible educational programs.

If your dislike of the NRA is so strong that you simply cannot support such a mission, you could support Project ChildSafe of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. http://nssf.org/safety/education.cfm

The very first paragraph of the NSSF's ChildSafe page says this:

"The number one way to prevent accidents and unauthorized access to firearms is to ensure guns are securely stored when not in use. Storing firearms responsibly is a 365-day-a-year obligation, and if someone cannot or will not accept that obligation, we strongly urge them not to own a firearm."

Can you disagree with that? Will you support Project ChildSafe?

A little further down that page:

"That’s why NSSF launched Project ChildSafe in 1999. It’s a national program to promote firearms responsibility, provide safety education to all gun owners, and distribute free gun locks in communities across the country. To date, Project ChildSafe has provided more than 36 million free firearm safety kits through partnerships with law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and five U.S. territories. Over the past decade, the number of accidental firearm fatalities has dropped by more than 20 percent"

Do you have a link for some impartial studies showing that the reduction in accidental firearms injuries is thanks to NRA? How well do the courses work? Have they been shown to be effective in reducing the odds that the participants are involved in accidents?

The rate of unintentional firearm deaths and injuries has been consistently decreasing for decades. As you know, it can be difficult to impossible to assign cause to effect. E.g., drunk driving deaths have been decreasing for decades. Is it because of educational and awareness programs? Is it because of stronger penalties for people who get caught driving drunk? Is it because of safer cars and safer roads? Is it because of better first-responder and ER medical care? I don't know, but I don't slam awareness and educational programs about the dangers of drunk driving because I can't absolutely prove their effectiveness.

I see that MADD takes total credit for the reduction in drunk driving deaths. http://www.madd.org/drunk-driving/about/history.html

"When MADD was founded in 1980, more than 21,000 people were killed in drunk driving crashes each year. Since then, we've been able to cut that deadly toll in half, but there is still more work to be done."

Sadly, drunk drivers still cause about 10,000 deaths per year in the U.S. -- about 10 times the number of unintentional firearm injuries. People drink and then get in their cars and go barreling down the highway, and they kill 10,000 people a year doing that. But we don't refer to a "stupid obsession with drinking and driving culture" and we don't refer to cars as "instruments of death."

The fact is that despite anyone's obsession with unintentional firearm injuries, they are in fact freakishly rare. Every firearm safety course I've taken has emphasized the need to keep guns out of the hands of young children. Every firearm manual that came with every firearm I've ever bought has emphasized the need to keep guns out of the hands of young children. I doubt there's any gun owner in existence who isn't aware that leaving a loaded gun where a toddler can get his hands on it can result in tragedy. And yet.... sadly, people aren't perfect, and people make mistakes.

No laws will ever change that hard, cold fact. We will always, forever, have some number of fatalities every year due to someone's momentary inattention or lapse in judgment. Sometimes it will be children who die. Children will drown in pools, at beaches, in ponds, and in 5-gallon buckets. Children will get into mom's medicine. Children will drink cleaning solutions. Children will fall off ladders. Children will play with fire and will stick metal things into electrical outlets.

Children frequently take their parents by surprise at their ability to do things, go places, and get into things that their parents didn't know they were capable of doing, going, or getting into.

Some years ago, there was a boy in the neighborhood where I lived -- he was 3 at the time -- who climbed onto his parents' bedroom dresser while they slept and grabbed their car keys, snuck out of the house, got into the family car, drove it down the street, hit several parked cars and ended up in a ditch. A month later, that same little boy burned down the family's house while playing with a cigarette lighter. Seriously. Yeah, I got a link for anyone who doesn't believe me:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...K1NAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gPwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6966,1962825

Parents of young children need to be more vigilant, even while asleep, than is humanly possible. Fortunately, most of us manage to get our children to adulthood without something tragic happening, but I would submit that in almost all cases, and possibly all cases, it's not because we were perfect parents but because we were simply lucky.

 

[Elley Mae]

And cases where couples own a gun and store it in the corner and let their five year olds play with it while mom is out.

The bullets don't know the criminal history of the careless parents.

All parents know that children can climb chairs.

I gotta tell you I grew up with Grandparents that kept a gun (shotgun) in the corner and never did any of the grandkids touch, or play with that gun, and being one of 5 siblings and having a father that was LE none of us ever touched or playing with his gun, which was kept on top the fridge, never. I guess it's just good parenting, idk.

 

[Donjeta]

Many Americans are surprised when they learn how simple many guns are for even toddlers to fire and that the same two-year-old who can’t open a childproof medicine bottle might be able to pull a trigger and shoot herself or someone else. In fact, a 1976 amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Act that the National Rifle Association advocated for specifically forbids the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) from regulating the sale and manufacture of guns, despite the fact that they are one of the most lethal consumer products, killing more than 30,000 people a year and injuring 72,000 others. As a result, the CPSC can regulate teddy bears and toy guns but not real guns -- even though common sense design changes and safety mechanisms like trigger locks can save lives. Eleven states and the District of Columbia have acted to fill this void, passing laws requiring locking devices on some or all firearms. But that means that in 39 states, there is no such requirement.

Another common sense answer is child access prevention laws, which require gun owners to store their guns so that children and teens can’t access them unsupervised. Studies have found these laws reduce accidental shootings of children by as much as 23 percent. But only 14 states currently have such laws and support of stronger child access prevention laws is often drowned out by the same loud voices of the gun lobby that fight background checks and other common sense gun safety measures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/it-didnt-have-to-happen_b_3368567.html

 

[Donjeta]

I gotta tell you I grew up with Grandparents that kept a gun (shotgun) in the corner and never did any of the grandkids touch, or play with that gun, and being one of 5 siblings and having a father that was LE none of us ever touched or playing with his gun, which was kept on top the fridge, never. I guess it's just good parenting, idk.

Yeah, it might work for some... But there is research and unfortunate incidents showing that for many parents who think their kids would never, they actually do.