Unintentional Shooting of 4-Year-Old Witchita Girl Raises Multiple Points

There is rarely going to be an unintentional shooting that won’t bother me. I guess if a rapist or pedo shot themselves, particularly in their junk, I’d find that hilarious, but most of the time, we’re just not that fortunate.

Instead, far too many of those injured in unintentional shootings are children. Yes, it’s a negligent discharge, but a four-year-old really shouldn’t be in a position to have one of those, now should they?

Unfortunately, I didn’t pick that age out of my posterior.

That’s based on an incident out of Wichita, Kansas, and it brings up a few points I think we should talk about.

Wichita police are encouraging citizens to secure their firearms following another shooting in Wichita involving a child accessing a gun.

A 4-year-old girl was critically hurt in a shooting on Friday afternoon in south Wichita. Wichita police said she accidentally shot herself with a gun that was left unattended.

Police arrested 50-year-old Ana Sorto on suspicion of aggravated child endangerment, and they forwarded the case to the district attorney’s office.

…

Wichita police are issuing a reminder that free gun locks are available, and they’re calling on gun owners to make sure their guns are stored safely.

Now, I’m in agreement with the police. Secure your guns, people. Free gun locks make it so no one has an excuse not to secure their guns.

This is a drum that I’ll beat to death until I stop seeing any reports of kids being shot because of an unsecured firearm

But I do want to point out something else.

Kanasa, you see, doesn’t have a mandatory storage law. Anti-gunners routinely say such laws are needed to prevent things like this from happening. They say there needs to be a mechanism in place to punish irresponsible adults who fail to secure their guns, and that since Kansas didn’t have such a law, it led to this horrible incident.

Except, they have a way to punish the allegedly irresponsible adult.

In fact, this seems like a pretty reasonable approach, especially as it doesn’t try to dictate who stores their guns in what way, only that if they fail to do so properly and someone gets hurt, they’re responsible for it and can face prosecution for it.

It seems the state didn’t need a mandatory storage law in the first place.

“But a law would prompt people to lock their guns up,” someone might say, and they might be right. Some people may well lock their guns up when they wouldn’t have otherwise.

The issue is that the people most likely to ignore that law are also the people least likely to take even basic precautions anyway. Those are the same cases where we see incidents like this happen. 

All mandatory storage laws–and I will not call them “safe storage” laws, even upon pain of death–do is tell you what you have to do with your guns, regardless of your own personal situation. It doesn’t account for literally anything else. The truth is that if you’ve never been awakened in the middle of the night by gunshots or breaking glass, you don’t understand just how long it can take to get a gun, even if it’s not locked up.

People need to be able to decide for themselves what meets their needs best, not the state making that decision for them.

Be responsible with your firearms, but don’t back the government telling you what that means.