5-year-old shoots his 2-year-old sister

The only thing that happened stupidly different was she left him alone with a loaded gun for a few minutes. I was taught about guns at a young age as well just my mom didn't leave me alone with a loaded gun in front of my three year old brother.

That and who in their right mind gets a five year old kid his own gun. I'd understand a bit more if they did a lot of hunting but 5 is just too young.

Exactly, who in their right mind gives a gun to a five-year old? Given the cases I've read where people, adults got careless cleaning their guns and shot themselves in the foot* one would think that would be more than enough reason to not let kids have rifles that could kill and just settle for real toy guns instead since there's a mighty big difference between putting your kids in a bubble and setting up a situation where just one moment of your inattention could lead to tragedy.

People always say it's only one minute or one second but that amount of time is much more difficult to swallow if it means someone could go from being a lively child to a corpse and even moreso when that's their child.

*I do believe this person was drunk, but then again cleaning a loaded weapon while drunk is a near ticket to the hospital.

Who gets a child a gun at the age of five?

I can kinda seen a teenager, for hunting. Kinda. Even then, I'd be a bit wary of it.

People are stupid.
This is just gonna push the 'stricter gun laws' and rile up the 'it's our right to carry weapons' activists even more.

Same reason kids are interested in sex education talks. free condoms

Teen pregancy is a different problem. There are still schools in this country that teach abstinence as the only method of birth control.

Abstinence-only sex education is terrible and should be abolished. Comprehensive, inclusive sex education is what the world needs, because people are going to have sex whenever they do, so it's important they know everything associated with it beforehand. As such, I'm happy if people get excited about sex education talks because of free condoms because at least that means they're using them.

Just stupid people doing stupid things. Giving a 5 year old a loaded gun... no amount of regulation could stop someone this stupid from doing that.

There may be room for a gun debate but IMO this is nothing but pure stupidity.

Impressive, buying a 5 year old an actual gun.

And, because the child safety seem to have failed, we know what is going to happen next.

Is it inappropriate for me to feel sorry for a large number of US citizens? I hope not.

Hadriel

I'm not sure if this is tragedy or comedy. Why is it even newsworthy?

It was the parents' fault, not the gun's.

To me this doesn't show that America needs to ban guns.

It shows that if you are about to purchase a gun or raise a child you should take a strict mental/psychological exam before taking either one home with you. No amount of regulation could have prevented this, because this is purely the fault of utter stupidity.

If the parents can teach their kid how to use a gun in a responsible manner at a young age, more power to them. This however, was just a huge disaster due to the brief but crucial moment of no adult supervision. I don't see this as an excuse to enforce more gun control; it's more of a freak accident.

Besides, you'd think a kid's first experience to a gun would be a nerf gun, or a BB pellet gun at the most. I thought this gun was using non-lethal ammo, but had to look it up to realize that NOPE it's real ammo alright. I worry more for the son once he grows up to realize he killed his sister. That's going to be loads of guilt and possible mental problems if he lets it get to him.

Off-tangent: Know what my uncle did when me and the rest of my family visited his summer home one time? He let me, and both of my sisters do a little target practice with his hunting shotgun on some empty cans/bottles. I was probably ~19, but my sisters were 14 and 12 respectively. Amusingly, I believe my younger sister was a better shot than me.

The stupidity of some people just plain amazes me.

...with the .22-caliber rifle he got for his birthday...

"In this part of the country, it's not uncommon for a 5-year-old to have a gun or for a parent to pass one down to their kid," he said.

Adding Kentucky to the list of places to never visit.

Adding Kentucky to the list of places to never visit.

Dont judge all of kentucky because of the stupid people some of us here are smart.

Goddamn it America. Just when I think we've run out of ways to make ourselves seem complete and utter morons to the world at large, we just have to go the extra mile.

Goddamn it America. Just when I think we've run out of ways to make ourselves seem complete and utter morons to the world at large, we just have to go the extra mile.

Go for gold, bro.

America #1 tattooed on my bicep, bro.

What I also find hard to believe is that "my first rifles" are sold to kids in the same country where Kinder-eggs are banned because of suffocation risk. You would think that if the kids are too f'cking dumb not to eat a chocolate egg in one bite, they are too f'cking dumb to handle a rifle, don't ya?

Wow... I was going to say that this s'hit only happens in the Southern U.S, but then I noticed that there was a similar incident recently in NJ.

God dam people. Just because you have an ethusiastic fetish for guns does not mean that you have to give them to your kids.



People who are pro-guns keep make excuses for why we do not need more regulations or background checks for guns. I keep hearing things like: "This is all just an excuse to unarm the U.S. citizenry so the federal government can opress us" and "guns aren't harming people, it is stupid people with guns harming people."

While there may be some truth to the second argument, guns are clearly too abundant in this country and at the very least, people are using them way to irresponsibly.

Also the NRA has a ton of pull in Congress, which makes it nigh impossible to get regulations passed.

We don't make excuses for people who don't know how to use their guns. That's just ignorance and plain stupidity on their part. The actual people that are against gun control are the ones that know that you can't keep a gun out of a criminal or wrong doers hands no matter how hard you try to regulate guns.

It was the families choice to give their son a weapon. They didn't teach him what it does, or how to use it. Children that age don't even realize the difference between life or death at that point in their lives. So you can only blame the ignorant parents.

Also, guns are abundant in nearly every country in the world, except Great Britain, but there are an abundance of knives there. I wonder if they'll pass a knife-control law?

Also, this doesn't happen in the south 99% of the time. You knowing nothing about where I live makes me giggle like a school girl.

We don't make excuses for people who don't know how to use their guns. That's just ignorance and plain stupidity on their part. The actual people that are against gun control are the ones that know that you can't keep a gun out of a criminal or wrong doers hands no matter how hard you try to regulate guns.

It was the families choice to give their son a weapon. They didn't teach him what it does, or how to use it. Children that age don't even realize the difference between life or death at that point in their lives. So you can only blame the ignorant parents.

Also, guns are abundant in nearly every country in the world, except Great Britain, but there are an abundance of knives there. I wonder if they'll pass a knife-control law?

Also, this doesn't happen in the south 99% of the time. You knowing nothing about where I live makes me giggle like a school girl.

And yet here the US sits with one of the highest amounts of guns per capita and the highest amount of annual deaths frlm gun violence out of all developed countries.
http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-...ws-2012-12

Joke around about knives all you want, but this country has a serious gun problem. Clearly our society feels it is acceptable to do this s'hit, which is illustrated by the very article this thread is about: giving young kids guns is common practice in some states. You can chalk it up to individual stupidity all you want, but when this is happening on a fairly wide scale clearly there is an inherent problem with the system.

Increasing background checks and some regulation would not make it impossible to get guns, just harder. There are already a pineapple load of guns in this country and increasing regulations are not going to suddenly disarm the populace and leave everyone vunerable to criminals.

Btw, in my post I did agree that this was clearly a result of the stupidity and ignorance of the parents. Most of what you quoted was in response to Razmos' question about the US's thriving and insane gun culture. I also corrected myself and ended up not saying that these things only happen in the South, but I guess you can read my posts however you want.

And yet here the US sits with one of the highest amounts of guns per capita and the highest amount of annual deaths frlm gun violence out of all developed countries.
http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-...ws-2012-12

Joke around about knives all you want, but this country has a serious gun problem. Clearly our society feels it is acceptable to do this s'hit, which is illustrated by the very article this thread is about: giving young kids guns is common practice in some states. You can chalk it up to individual stupidity all you want, but when this is happening on a fairly wide scale clearly there is an inherent problem with the system.

You also have to look up where most gun-based homocides are by city/state. And check their gun control regulations. The knife thing was mostly a joke, but it was also just something to say.

Increasing background checks and some regulation would not make it impossible to get guns, just harder. There are already a pineapple load of guns in this country and increasing regulations are not going to suddenly disarm the populace and leave everyone vunerable to criminals.

Said nothing against this, background checks are fine. But you got to realize who sells and buys weapons. instead of background checks, make it restricted to people that aren't walmart. Because you can go into walmart and buy a rifle anytime you want (where I am anyway).

Btw, in my post I did agree that this was clearly a result of the stupidity and ignorance of the parents. Most of what you quoted was in response to Razmos' question about the US's thriving and insane gun culture. I also corrected myself and ended up not saying that these things only happen in the South, but I guess you can read my posts however you want.

Arrived after that. Mostly because that one hits close to home in many different ways. I appreciate you changing that.

What I also find hard to believe is that "my first rifles" are sold to kids in the same country where Kinder-eggs are banned because of suffocation risk. You would think that if the kids are too f'cking dumb not to eat a chocolate egg in one bite, they are too f'cking dumb to handle a rifle, don't ya?

These are four-five year olds were talking about right? Most kids I know this age don't even know what death is. They're too young and ignorant to know any better. But that doesn't mean that it's entirely their fault. The adults are to blame 99.9% of the time.

I can remember in gradeschool when I was 5-7 years old. All my friends would try to eat as fast as they can to go outside, or just eat something whole just because their friends dared them to. Kids are stupid.

Adding Kentucky to the list of places to never visit.

-Facepalms- Really? Kentucky is an amazing place to visit. If you're really basing this off of one person and their opinionated comment then I've pretty much lost any respect for you. And there was a lot of it. (Unless this is purely sarcasm).

Ok, so first mistake was keeping a gun where a freaking five year old could find it. The second mistake was trying to teach said five year old how to handle a gun!
There are limits to just how stupid people can be, but humans just love proving that limits can be pushed further...

Seriously, this almost tops the story of a man who accidentally killed himself and his entire family by leaving a generator running inside of his house for an entire night, thereby suffocating everyone in their sleep.