Local news reports
The 7-year-old boy who was shot Friday, died at 6:44 p.m. Saturday at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Saline County Sheriff Glen Kochanowski said Sunday morning.The gun-nut family of father and (living) sons should be doing their mourning in the local jail. Then, upon release they should surrender all their guns.
In an email from the Sheriff's office, the boy was identified as Gavin Brummett from northeastern Saline County.
The sheriff's office reported that Gavin had been with his brothers and his father, Rodney Lee Brummett Jr.,shooting a Master Piece Arms semi-automatic 9 millimeter handgun. Kochanowski confirmed Sunday that Gavin was shooting the gun.
The case is still being investigated and the sheriff's office is awaiting results of an autopsy that will be performed Monday.
Oh, the horror of being unprotected, of being deprived of the best tools for self defense, cry the gun-rights fanatics. But, how about the horror of allowing a 7-year-old to shoot a gun he couldn't handle?
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Hey! Mike now wants to jail children of gun owners for being at the scene of a tragic accident too!
ReplyDeleteYour depravity knows no bounds. Maybe the father did something wrong, and maybe he didn't, but that doesn't matter to you. The only thing you care about is that he had the temerity to own a gun and let his children shoot it.
Note, I'm not saying he shouldn't be punished if there's something punishment-worthy here. I'm just saying that your analysis almost never gets deep enough to say one way or another. After all, you've said that we're sick if we introduce children to guns, so we know that deep down, you'd be fine with jailing all people who let children shoot, whether there's an accident or not--it would be a Win for your cause--right?
But now, you don't just want to jail the grieving father, you want to jail the traumatized siblings as well.
You're becoming ever more the vulture, tovarisch Napoleon.
I am fleshing it out a bit too much to assume that the older brothers were also guilty of child endangerment. Maybe it was only the dad.
DeleteI know this. If I took a 7-year-old shooting, I'd never give the kid a chance to shoot himself with the gun twice. I'd be right on top of him, my hands on his hands holding the gun, something like that.
Wouldn't you?
Remember Christopher Bizilj?
Here, you make some rational comments.
DeleteYes, I remember Christopher, and that's what seems to have happened here. Judging by the two rapid shots, I'd guess that the gun had a light trigger, and that he pulled an accidental double-tap--one went down range, and one hit him when it fired while recoiling.
As for your comments about helping the kid hold the gun and being on top of him, with your hands on his: Bravo! That's how it should be done--best practices as it were. (I believe that's what was being done in a video where a father was teaching a daughter to shoot--one that you posted a while back with comments about it being sick to teach a kid so young.)
In this case, maybe the father didn't hold the gun like that. Or maybe he did the first time the kid shot it, and then let the kid shoot it solo once he thought his grip was strong enough--who knows, he could have been correct, and the kid may have shot the gun a lot, and just screwed up this time, after a history of shooting it the right way. We simply don't know what happened here yet--hence my not jumping on the bandwagon and declaring the guilt of the father.
MikeB wrote, "I'd be right on top of him, my hands on his hands holding the gun, something like that."
DeleteI don't often agree with you Mike but you are absolutely correct this time ... especially given the fact that the boy was 7 years old. (It might be different if the boy was 13 or 14.)
I did the exact same thing when I took my daughter out to shoot when she was about 9 years old. My hands were on her hands. Now that she is older, I don't put my hands on her hands any more. Nevertheless, I stand right next to her and never take my eyes off of her: I stand ready to verbally or physically stop her if she begins to do something that could be unsafe.
Here is another detail. If you take a young child shooting such as in this case, only load one single round of ammunition into the firearm at a time. Put your hands on them and help them. After they shoot, the gun is empty and they cannot accidentally shoot anyone, including themselves, no matter what they do.
From what little the story tells us, it sounds like the father should go to prison for some sort of child abuse or neglect conviction.
- TruthBeTold
I am fleshing it out a bit too much to assume that the older brothers were also guilty of child endangerment.
DeleteLet's see--"fleshing it out" is, I take it, your way of describing just making shit up, blissfully unconcerned about evidence, because as long as it puts more gun owners in jail, it's gotta be good, right?
Or another, more concise, way to describe your "fleshing it out," would be to call it a lie, because lying is what you do best, and what you have to do, because you cannot allow reality to crash in on your pathetic fantasy existence.
Sound about right?
No, Kurt, fleshing out is filling in the blanks in a story. It's not making shit up and it's certainly not lying. As a precision vocabulary mavin you should know this.
DeleteBut you are filling those blanks in, not based on clues in the text, but according to your own prejudices. That's why you always flesh out that a person probably has a permit, and that they'll probably keep it and their guns.
DeleteThis time, you went even further and "fleshed out" that the brothers were involved and had to pull back on that. Frankly, since there is no mention of where the brothers were or what they were doing when the incident happened, that bit of fleshing out definitely qualifies as making shit up.
Pulling back on this tendency would do a great deal to enhance your credibility.
I did back up on the brothers, but it was not a case of making shit up. I pictured the brothers as having been delegated the responsibility of supervising their young sibling by the dad. That's why dad himself wasn't there to do it. Ultimately it was dad's responsibility.
DeleteStill you seem reluctant to blame anyone. Is that some kind of misguided loyalty between gun owners?
Mikeb, for my part, when I have the evidence in hand, I call things as I see them. Why can't you understand that what I and others are saying here is a suggestion that we don't judge before we know?
DeleteYou don't really know the details here, but because a gun is involved, you feel you know. I and others have argued repeatedly for due process. If negligence or bad intent is found to be the case, I want the guilty party to be punished. But I don't want a rush to judgement.
There is a reason you do not give a 9 year old a loaded weapon, here's the reason. Negligent homicide? Gun nuts would not want any prosecution, they don't think this father did anything wrong. WRONG, and now he pays for it with the death of his son. His stupidity caused the death of his son, he is a failed father. I wonder if the family would give up firearms as the family outing from now on? Hell no! He will scream his rights til his other children are dead also.
ReplyDeleteJust so that we can have this discussion without making any assumptions, what exactly did the father do wrong here?
DeleteLetting the kid be in the vicinity of guns?
Letting the kid shoot a gun?
Letting the kid shoot too much gun?
We all know that something tragic and incurable has happened here, and there may well be blame to go around, but I wonder, WHERE do you perceive that a line was crossed where the father deserves to be punished?
I would think the outcome proves the deadly mistake the father made, but I understand that gun nuts don't care how many innocents die.
DeleteYou may wish to call me a "gun nut" if you like -- suit yourself. I do care how many innocents die. That is why I go to great lengths to make sure my firearms will never kill an innocent person. That is why I go to great lengths on forums and in person with other "gun nuts" to teach them impeccable safety protocols.
DeleteYou appear to dismiss the fact that firearms often save the lives of innocent people. MikeB tries to claim that only a few hundred citizens save their lives annually with a firearm which is absolutely silly. Aside from the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of obvious self defense events, we will never know how many more innocent lives firearms saved because the mere fact that a citizen could have been armed caused the attacker to go do something else.
What we do know is that people with firearms will accidentally kill less than 600 people this year. That is tragic and almost totally avoidable. But tell me any other sport, activity, hobby, etc. that never leads to accidental deaths? Every year a high school student athlete dies on a football field or basketball court somewhere. Every year people riding bicycles die from crashes. Every year people who swim in pools, lakes, rivers, and oceans drown. Every year lightning strikes and kills someone on a golf course or baseball field. We cannot stop living because something could go wrong. There are no guarantees in life. Live life to the fullest, be safe, and hope for the best.
Why try to understand it, when you can simply ban it?
DeleteAnonymous (I think that's Tennesseean), why are you so reluctant to point a finger at the dad who was ultimately responsible for his young son?
DeleteAbout DGUs, you have to get the count up to near a million to be able to say guns do more good than harm. Now, that's silly.
Mike, I sometimes forgt and hit the Anonymous button when I post, but none of those Anonymous posts above were mine.
DeleteEven though it turns out that your question was aimed at someone else, I want to re-raise an issue related to your closing comment. When we talked about knives, you said that their use in the kitchen is a good to be weighted against the harm they cause. I find it interesting that you would allow non-defensive uses of knives to be stacked against knife crime, but only defensive uses of guns. It is in their other legitimate uses that guns Far outpace their criminal uses.
Sorry, but I don't count shooting animals as a "good." What other non-defensive uses of the gun do you have in mind?
DeleteMikeb, that puts you out of the mainstream. Many people aren't hunters, but vegetarians make up about five percent of the American population. The rest of us may differ on the methods we use to get our meat, but we accept the killing of animals somewhere along the supply chain. (Haven't we heard somewhere before that if more than 90% support something, it must be right?) Hunters make up around twelve percent of the population, according to one report, and public opinion supports hunting.
DeleteAccording to a lot of people, shooting animals is a good.
Good one, turning that 90% around on me like that.
DeleteAs a gun nut, I too care about the death of innocents (and I don't mean anything to do with Herod here, Dog Gone). What I recognize, though, as Anonymous at 3:03 (British?) p.m. pointed out, is that accidental death is rare, and cases of self defense are plentiful, no matter how much Mikeb wants to exaggerate the former and deny the latter.
ReplyDeleteMikeb, I don't know the details of what this father did. He may be guilty of a crime. If so, I want him to be punished. But I also want the investigation to be done properly, rather than the kind of rush to judgement that you favor.
You see, I don't excuse people who commit crimes of negligence. I just believe in due process And I don't tar every member of a group with the same brush. You do that with your implications. When you're called on it, you weasel about and complain about unfair treatment, but the truth remains.
That's pretty slick, Greg. You want to copare "accidental death" to DGUs.
DeleteActually that's worse than slick, that's misleading and mendacious.
If you want to compare something to DGUs, you start with the 500,000 gun crimes each year that the FBI knows about. Then you add all the violations of the 4 Rules and all the times gun owners get too drunk or take too many pain pills. Let's throw in there all the times people leave their guns around the house for the thief to take.
Your plentiful number of DGUs doesn't even come close.
Except that most of the things that you named aren't crimes, and many aren't even wrong.
DeleteTHE 500,000 ARE CRIMES. DO I have to yell?
DeleteAll the more evidence that we need guns in the hands of good citizens.
Delete