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

[Marchese 1st MRB]

I gotta stop coming to the Politics threads all they serve to do is piss me off, make me more anxious and depress me.

[Armstrong 1st MRB]

In any case, if you guys want facts, here are a few I pulled up on accidental shootings involving children, this section is from Princeton:

Gun Deaths and Injuries among Children and Youth (3/3)

Unintentional Shooting Deaths

Unintentional shootings among young people most frequently happen when children or youth obtain a gun and play with it, not realizing that it is real, or loaded, or pointed at themselves or a friend. In 1998, more than 7% of children and youth under age 20 killed by firearms died in unintentional shootings,36 and these shootings accounted for 27% of firearm deaths among children under age 12, according to the article by Fingerhut and Christoffel. Boys, African American children, and Hispanic children are more likely to die in accidental shootings than are other groups of children. The death rate from unintentional shootings among children is nine times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized nations combined.37

Although accidental shootings of children have declined significantly in recent decades, they still attract a great deal of public attention, perhaps because the victims, and sometimes even the perpetrators, are seen as blameless and the deaths preventable. If guns were not present in the home, if they were designed with safety features making them difficult for children to fire, or if they were stored safely—unloaded and locked, with ammunition stored separately from the guns—the risk to young children could be virtually eliminated.

Firearm Injuries

For every gun death among young people under age 20, there are more than four injuries. Although the data about nonfatal firearm-related injuries to children and youth are incomplete,38 the article by Fingerhut and Christoffel summarizes what is known: From 1996–1998, an estimated 18,400 children and youth visited emergency departments for gun injuries each year, with nearly one-half of these visits requiring hospitalization. About 85% of these firearm injuries were among older teens, ages 15 to 19. Males were 7 times more likely than females to be injured. African American youth were 10 times more likely and Hispanic youth 2 times more likely to be injured than were white youth.

The Need for Better Data

To develop and evaluate policies for reducing youth gun injuries and deaths, policymakers need more complete data on how firearms are used by and against children and youth. Although 13 national data systems collect information about persons who are killed or injured in the United States, none of these systems is designed to capture information about firearm deaths and nonfatal injuries generally, or about firearm victimization of children and youth specifically. A substantial number of cases lack vital information about shootings involving children and youth, such as the victim–offender relationship, alcohol or drug involvement, the location where the shooting occurred, crime and gang involvement, and the frequency with which injuries occur.39

Without more complete data, policymakers and researchers cannot answer many basic questions about gun violence among children and youth, or use data to design effective interventions.40 For example, because public health professionals do not know the circumstances most likely to result in children and youth being shot, they may not know where to focus prevention efforts. In addition, ATF has concluded, “Insufficient information about how minors and criminals illegally acquire guns has impeded efforts to investigate and arrest illegal suppliers of firearms.”41 Two major efforts to improve data collection related to youth and guns are under way; they should be supported and expanded.

Or here, from a Online news agency called "The Survivors Club", not the best source, but I think it still fits:

The number of accidental shooting deaths in the United States has been slowly declining for many years, although there was a slight jump in the number of deaths in 2008, the last year for which we have statistics. In 2008 there were 680 accidental shooting deaths in the United States, with more than 15,500 shooting injuries. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the number of children involved in accidental shootings. Every day approximately five children are injured or killed on a nationwide basis as a result of handguns. The primary cause of youth-involved shooting rests with the fact that children find loaded handguns in the home – and natural curiosity leads them down the road to disaster.

Each year approximately 100 people are injured or killed while cleaning a firearm and failing to exercise proper caution. Every gun, whether loaded or unloaded, must be treated as if it is loaded at all times. Many accidental shootings occur because someone believes a gun is unloaded, points it at someone and pulls the trigger as a “joke.” The problem is, many guns can still fire even after the magazine has been removed if a bullet has been inadvertently left in the chamber.

So, this isn't just an isolated event, though it is being sensationalized by news agencies. Even so, this whole "Gun Debate" going on is completely moot since both of these articles, and just about every other source will claim that data has not be properly kept by federal agencies for more or less the past decade. So I personally don't know why politicians are going on with this since they cannot even pull data from a central or even complete source to support or defend whatever course of action they want to take.

[S. Richards]

4. Good another idiot with a gun forgot to separate the ammo from the weapon and lock it all up in a gun case, even though in states like NY and CT you have to go to gun safety courses to own a Rifle, and a Hunting License.

5. This thread should stop running, due to the uneducated thought processes that happen just to stir the pot.

Yup, CT just enforced the Assault Weapon ban and High capacity magazine ban, didn't change the fact a pregnant woman was shot and killed in the north end of Hartford this past week.

And seconded, the entire politics sub-forum should just be removed altogether as it does nothing more then give people a chance to beat dead horses ten times over and exude an exorbitant amount of ignorance through the stereotyping of people based on flawed govenments and over-hyped media, in turn creating uneeded conflict and tension in the unit.

I find it worrisome that some of you people decide to judge another nation's population off of media, government and the occasional morons/nutjobs instead of using experience and actual communication between such people. I used to be the same way before deploying to Iraq, feeding off of media hype and second hand stories from others, and then I realized I had more in common with those people once I actually talked to them instead of morons in the western hemisphere. All just another side effect of that barrier called social media I guess.

[Arevicci]

Not saying you said this Zorbanos, but I really detest the "Criminals are going to have illegal guns so why hinder law abiding citizens." It makes no sense. If we follow that logic, Criminals will always break a law, so why have laws at all?

Regardless if we follow that logic or not criminals will always break a law.

People seem to think that recently the gun issue has gotten worse and is such a big ordeal and they should be banned/restricted and what not, when in reality, gun violence has been much worse than it is now. It's the media that is popularizing it and constantly displaying any gun related crime or event because of the lobbyists and many public officials who want to put a restriction or ban on firearms.

[Armstrong 1st MRB]

Of course, it always comes down to whoever is paying more for whatever they want that specific news agency to focus on. Its like telling us that the two bothers involved in the Boston Bombings had no permits for the guns they had, we didn't need to know that information and its not really necessary that we know whether or not they had the proper documentation for firearm ownership if they've already gone and set off a couple bombs at a public event. Its expected that they might not be the most law abiding of citizens, but they tell us anyway. Why? Because they are trying to point out, "Hey these guys had illegal firearms, we need more gun control so that these people cannot get their hands on them."

The recent bout of major shootings doesn't seem to be helping the situation, nor the fact that nobody can really claim anything with a degree of certainty about gun violence in the past decade in America since the major agency responsible for keeping track of them has had its funding cut back substantially in that time, and has not been able to keep track of them anywhere near as effectively.

[H. Stone 1st MRB]

4. Good another idiot with a gun forgot to separate the ammo from the weapon and lock it all up in a gun case, even though in states like NY and CT you have to go to gun safety courses to own a Rifle, and a Hunting License.

5. This thread should stop running, due to the uneducated thought processes that happen just to stir the pot.

Yup, CT just enforced the Assault Weapon ban and High capacity magazine ban, didn't change the fact a pregnant woman was shot and killed in the north end of Hartford this past week.

And seconded, the entire politics sub-forum should just be removed altogether as it does nothing more then give people a chance to beat dead horses ten times over and exude an exorbitant amount of ignorance through the stereotyping of people based on flawed govenments and over-hyped media, in turn creating uneeded conflict and tension in the unit.

I find it worrisome that some of you people decide to judge another nation's population off of media, government and the occasional morons/nutjobs instead of using experience and actual communication between such people. I used to be the same way before deploying to Iraq, feeding off of media hype and second hand stories from others, and then I realized I had more in common with those people once I actually talked to them instead of morons in the western hemisphere. All just another side effect of that barrier called social media I guess.

Amen to that