Kansas City 3-Year-old Shot - No One Responsible

Fox News KCTV5

When interviewing the little girl’s brother, he told police that he had found the gun that morning in the living room, on the fireplace mantel, behind the mirror leaning against the wall. The brother said he took it to the back bedroom and it was then that his little sister shot herself with it.

Police say the little girl is expected to be OK, but has damage to her liver and kidneys.

Authorities say several adults were in the home at the time of the shooting and are being questioned by detectives. Both the mother and [family friend Kenneth] Lee were asleep at the time.

“She is a good mother. She has good kids. Situations happen like that all the time. You know you hear about it on the news, ‘keep the guns away from the kid’s reach.’ Like I said, we didn’t even know there was a gun here,” Lee said.

Police said in their written report that they found a Smith and Wesson .38 Special laying on the bed in the back bedroom and it was loaded with five live rounds and one spent shell casing. Officers also said they found another live round in the living room.

The mother told police the gun belongs to her boyfriend, who is the children’s father, but he wasn’t home at the time.

Murder Suicide in El Paso VA Hospital

Washington Post

The doctor who was fatally shot at an El Paso Veterans Affairs clinic on Tuesday had previously filed a threat complaint against his alleged killer, FBI officials said Wednesday.

VA psychologist Timothy Fjordbak, 63, was allegedly shot and killed by Jerry Serrato, 48, on the fourth floor of the El Paso Veteran Affairs Clinic,  FBI special agent Doug Lindquist said. Then Serrato “actually went to the third floor, and that’s where he took his own life,” Lindquist said.

Serrato, who was once in the military, worked at the VA in 2013 as a desk clerk. But the incident that prompted Fjordbak to file a complaint took place in a grocery store, Lindquist said.

“Mr. Serrato approached Dr. Fjordbak, who did not recognize him, and he made a verbal threat,” said Lindquist, who paraphrased the threat as: “‘I know what you did and I will take care of that,’ something to that effect.”

3D-Printed Guns Are Only Getting Better, and Scarier

Gizmondo

A couple years ago, when a 25-year-old law student in Texas said he was going to 3D-print a gun, nobody took him seriously. Then, he actually did it. And then, a lot of people started doing it. Now, it's so easy that some protestors are going make a gun inside the Texas State Capitolwith a special gun machine. This is scary stuff, and it's going to get worse.

The 3D-printed gun debate is a frustrating one for peace-loving Americans. On one hand, it really does feel like it should be illegal to plug in a machine, wait a few hours, and then get a plastic however durable gun that can possibly slip through metal detectors. Guns are dangerous. They kill people. Surely, there should be some sort of oversight.

But on the other hand, there is. It's called the Bill of Rights, and it fully supports citizens' right to bear and manufacture arms. Gunsmithing is completely legal as long as you don't sell the guns you make. However, gunsmithing has historically been a pretty difficult endeavor, requiring metal and woodworking skills to make a sturdy, dependable weapon. The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco told me a while ago that they're aware of this 3D printing thing, but remain unconvinced that it can produce a "consistently reliable" firearm. But that may not always be the case.

As we all now know, 3D printing a gun that fires bullets requires almost no skills at all. Cody Wilson, the law student who gained fame for creating the first fully 3D-printed gun, didn't even know how to operate a 3D printer when he set out to make a gun. It took him less than a year to design and print his first gun, "The Liberator." Then, he uploaded the files that let anybody 3D-print the gun to the internet, and over 100,000 people downloaded them before the State Department took down files. In the meantime, Wilson showed off an AR-15 with 3D-printed parts that could fire hundreds of rounds. That sounds pretty consistently reliable.

Guess what: 3D-printing a gun is going to get even easier. Less than a week into 2015 and three days into CES, it's already clear that the 3D-printing industry is on the cusp of a significant transformation. So far, we've seen not one but two multi-material 3D-printers aimed at consumers. That means that tech savvy folks willing to spend a few thousands dollars can now start printing things out of composites like limestone, bronze, and iron.

Missouri Woman Charged in Grandson's Accidental Shooting

Cheryle J. Spaeth

from ssgmarkcr

    I came upon this and it caught my eye.  Its a pretty good example of prosecuting improperly stored firearms in states that don't have a real solid child access law.  Missouri's law isn't very clearly written IMHO,

"Missouri prohibits any person from recklessly selling, leasing, loaning, giving away or delivering a firearm to a person underage 18 without the consent of the child’s custodial parent or guardian.¹

State administrative regulations may govern the safe storage of firearms in other locations."

http://smartgunlaws.org/child-access-prevention-in-missouri/

    But other avenues are available. 

WILDWOOD • Police say Cheryle J. Spaeth went to take a shower while her three grandchildren played in her bedroom last August. Soon, she heard a gunshot.

Her 6-year-old grandson had been shot in the leg after one of the children apparently got a handgun from atop a high dresser.

The boy's injury Aug. 22 wasn't life-threatening, police say. He was treated at a hospital and released.

Spaeth was charged Friday with first-degree endangering the welfare of a child, a felony. Spaeth, 60, has not yet been arrested so no mugshot was available Tuesday. She could not be reached for comment. Bail is set at $25,000.

The shooting happened in the 18300 block of Rathbun Hills Road in Wildwood, in a home Spaeth shares with her adult son and grandchildren.

The gun had not been in a holster or locked up. 

"The kids were playing," County Police Officer Shawn McGuire said. "I'm guessing she thought (the gun) was high enough that they couldn't get to it."

According to a county detective's probable cause statement, police say the boy shot himself. Yet officers say the children in the room were scared when police arrived and details were difficult to sort out.

The children's father, who was in another room of the house at the time, heard the shot too and rushed into the room to find his bleeding son. The father owns several guns, but it wasn't immediately clear who owned the gun on the dresser in the grandmother's room.

Endangering the welfare of a child in the first degree is punishable in Missouri by up to seven years in prison and a $5,000 fine. The crime is defined, in part, as "knowingly (acting) in a manner that creates a substantial risk to the life, body, or health of a child less than seventeen years of age."

Police say the four-month-old case ended up at the prosecutor's office only in the last few days because the Ferguson unrest and police detail following the Aug. 9 killing of Michael Brown had taken so much of the police department's time.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/grandma-of--year-old-boy-who-shot-himself-in/article_f165b64f-7117-59fd-b65e-bec63b9eed52.html

A Future 911 Call

Florida Target Shooters Kill Neighbor - Charges???

Local news reports with video

Deputies say Thomas Nastasiak of Saint Petersburg and John Bell of Clearwater were target practicing on Bell's property in Old Town when a stray bullet struck a neighbor in his chest.

Deputies say the 62-year-old man whose name has not been released, was raking his yard when he was shot. He died at the scene.

Even as Shootings Rise, Murder Rate Falls in New York City

Reuters

The number of shootings in New York City has spiked by 13 percent so far this year, though the murder rate is on track to hit a 50-year low, a statistical paradox that experts said reflects quick medical response.

As of Sunday, some 507 people had been struck by bullets since Jan. 1 in New York City, up from 448 in the comparable period a year ago, according to data compiled by the New York City Police Department.

There has been a particular uptick in shootings over the past month, with 121 victims of gunfire over a 28-day period ending Sunday, compared with 86 for the same period last year, marking a 41 percent increase.

But homicides have continued to fall in the nation's largest city. There were 120 murders reported so far in 2014 compared with 140 a year earlier, a 15 percent decline, the data indicated. That puts the city on track to set a new low after posting a total of 333 murders last year, the fewest homicides recorded in citywide crime statistics dating back to 1963.

Police Commissioner William Bratton has said spikes and declines in crime rates are not unusual.

The declining homicide rate, despite an increase in shooting victims, reflects in part improved emergency medical response time, said Steven Messner, a criminal justice professor at the State University of New York at Albany.

Isn't that interesting. It seems the gun rights fanatics have been trying to pull a fast one over on us, again. Murder rates are dropping overall (just slightly) but the number of shootings has been increasing. Combined with the fact that fewer and fewer people own guns, in other words the average number of guns per (gun owning) capita has increased, this destroys one of their main talking points: more guns means less crime. Ha, take that.