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Psycho
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7 Year Old Girl Shot in Arm.
I decided to put this in politics and not general discussion, I don't know if that was necessarily the right choice hopefully a mod won't be mad at me if they have to move the thread...my comments about this article are at the bottom of the article.
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Girl, 7, Shot in Arm by 8-Year-Old Boy
The gun was brought to a day-care center in Maryland from home. Boy's father is charged.
By Matthew Hay Brown, JoAnna Daemmirch and Greg Barrett, Baltimore Sun
GERMANTOWN, Md. — A 7-year-old girl was shot in the arm at her before-school day-care center Tuesday morning by an 8-year-old boy who had brought his father's handgun from home, police said.
The unidentified girl was in stable condition with what police described as a serious but not life-threatening wound. The boy, whom police also would not identify, remained in custody on unspecified charges pending a review by the Department of Juvenile Services.
The boy's father, 56-year-old John Linwood Hall of Germantown, was charged with leaving a firearm in a location accessible by an unsupervised minor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and possession of a firearm by a felon.
News of the shooting, which occurred just before 7 a.m. at the For Kids We Care day-care center, shocked this Washington suburb.
"I think parents realize if this could happen here, it could happen anywhere," said Loretta Favret, principal of the nearby S. Christa McAuliffe Elementary School, where the girl is in second grade. "We all know that there are guns in our community, but the fact that they're getting so close to our children is scary."
Montgomery County police said the boy had carried his father's .38-caliber Taurus revolver and bullets to the day-care center inside his backpack. He was handling the gun inside the pack when it fired, striking the girl in the arm, police said.
The girl was airlifted to Children's Hospital in Washington.
Police said the boy found the gun, which had been in Hall's possession for "a number of years," in an unsecured container inside a closet. Maryland is one of 18 states with laws that hold gun owners liable if they leave guns accessible to children.
Montgomery County State's Atty. Douglas F. Gansler would not detail the charges against the boy.
He said the boy was charged, in part, so he could be "available for the treatment and counseling" offered by the Department of Juvenile Services.
"It was a very difficult position for the police in this charging incident," Gansler said. "In one instance, you have the severity of this case. But on the other hand, the alleged shooter is only an 8-year-old boy."
Gansler said the boy knowingly brought the gun but did not intentionally shoot the girl.
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One of 18....last time I checked there weren't 18 stars on the flag. If you wish to own a gun you should also bear the responsibility of what your kids do with the weapon that you introduced into your home. I don't understand what's the argument against such a law, and also why haven't more states adopted a similar law? If you can't properly secure your gun you shouldn't own one...if it's sitting in a box in a closet somewhere and you don't even know exactly where it is then you don't really need a gun. Crimes such as these shouldn't happen. I can understand having a gun to some degree of accessibility when you are home and can keep an eye on your kid and the gun, at any other time there is no excuse…simply if a child does something with that gun it’s partly the owner’s fault and they should be punished.
Checking up on the law 19 states not 18 have such laws(including my home state)....
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/faqs/?page=cap
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Q: What states have CAP laws today?
A: Including Florida, 19 states have laws or legal holdings that specifically hold gun owners accountable for leaving a firearm easily accessible to a child. They are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas (through judicial ruling), Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin. In addition, some cities have enacted local CAP ordinances including Elgin and Aurora, Illinois; Houston, Texas; Wichita, Kansas; and Baltimore, Maryland.
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Below is another article on the effect of the law on suicides .....
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August 3, 2004
Gun Laws Requiring Safe Storage Prevent Some Youth Suicides
A new study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health provides evidence that the child access prevention (CAP) laws for firearms enacted by 18 U.S. states significantly reduced suicide rates among young people 14 to 17 years old. CAP laws require gun owners to store their guns so as to prevent unsupervised access by children. The study is published in the August 4, 2004, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
The study used data from 1976-2001 to examine the association between federal and state firearm laws and suicide rates among youth. State CAP laws were associated with an 8.3 percent reduction in youth suicide rates for 14- to 17-year-olds. As would be expected if these laws in fact reduce youth access to guns, CAP laws reduced suicides with firearms, but had no effect on non-firearm suicides.
The study’s authors estimate that CAP laws prevented over 300 youth suicides during the years that the laws were enacted (1989-2001), saving 35 lives in 2001 alone. In 2001, suicide was the third leading cause of death among 10- to 19-year-olds.
“Our findings demonstrate that many youth suicides are preventable by making firearms - an especially lethal means of self-harm - less accessible to adolescents,” said Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, lead author of the study and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The study also examined two other categories of youth-focused laws - minimum purchase age and minimum possession age laws for firearms - and did not find an association between these laws and significant reductions in youth suicide. “This finding should not be particularly surprising, since other research indicates that most youth firearm suicides involve guns already owned by the victims’ parents,” according to Jon Vernick, JD, MPH, co-author of the study and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. The study did not examine the effects of these laws on youth homicides or accidental shootings.
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