Abilene teenager dies after accidentally shooting himself in head while playing with gun

I want the over on that.

 

Evolution happens

 

It's not that teaching is 'encouragement', it's that it transmits the message that the topic is important. Clearly, neither sex nor guns are important in childhood. Not in any way or form. And certainly, every child over the age of 12 already knows how babies are made, so it's not as though that information is needed.

Kids don't have the keys at all. They know that the palace exists, but understand implicitely that it's locked until adulthood. Just like mortgages, and taxes, and careers, etc etc. And on the contrary, it's insulting to assume they actually need to be told how sex works. I can't speak for guns, but I'll assume kids who've grown up around them know how they work.

The upshot is that kids who've grown up with very good impulse control will not need to be 'taught', and teaching those who have poor impulse control will do more harm than good.

 

Certainly. But that was when our 14 year olds were raised to be responsible and self-disiciplined. Such 14 year olds still exist outside of Western societies, but our modern kids have been encouraged to live as though responsibility isn't a thing. That's what immense privilege does.

 

That comes back to poor impulse control ... and confirms what I've been saying.

 

I was told that I could touch the guns so long as I asked first, and was supervised by either my dad or grandpa. Touching the guns without permission was the only thing my dad ever threatened me with a beating for. I always got permission.

 

Unless your kid is very bright and mechanically inclined, a trigger lock is pretty secure. I dont have kids but if I did, a trigger lock AND safe.

 

Maybe we should ask his teacher. I suspect she may have a few enlightening things to say.

 

I've seen videos of gun owners doing stupid things too. I've seen lots of people doing stupid and dangerous things in all sorts of different situations. When you point out what they're doing, they'll often immediately understand what the problem was. Ignorance often isn't the issue, simply not thinking clearly in the heat of the moment. And that is doubly true of teenagers.

 

You don't know much about how teenagers think, do you? teen age boys are not primarily known for absorbing the safety truths of their elders and consistently applying them. Maybe you should take a look at actuarial tables, demographics, and car insurance rates.

 

Pray tell. Exactly how much training could one possibly need to understand that putting the muzzle of a firearm to their head is a bad idea?

 

How much mechanical inclination is actually needed to use a key to undo a lock?

If a minor can find the firearm itself, they can easily find the key needed to undo whatever lock may be in place. Humans are very lazy by their nature, and the older they become the lazier they become. Any key will naturally be stored in some location where they will easily be able to find it when they need it.

 

And yet, untold numbers of teenagers handle firearms w/o incident.
This kid died because of his ignorance.

 

Or take out to the garage and use dad's drill press.

 

Combination safe.

 

either way it is bleach in the shallow end of the gene pool.

 

That is because stupid is so very often not punished by the potential consequences of being stupid. Most kids that dive into waters they do not know, do not ever end up with broken necks, and most kids that do not use bike helmets, do not ever end up with brain injuries. You have no idea what he was or was not taught. You only know that like thousands of other kids, he was not being safe when he died.

 

End result was his ignorance killed him, it doesn't take a lot of training to understand putting the muzzle of a gun to the side of ones head and pulling the trigger will have very negative consequence's.

This child was an unsupervised idiot, who knew where to access a gun and while trying to impresses some friends, painted a wall with his brains, the downside is he's dead, the upside is his friends learned that doing such an action is not a good idea.

So I will give him credit for training his friends to be safer with guns, but he still went out as an idiot.

And whoever left that gun unsecured needs to do hard time.

 

The same problem with the key applies to combination locks. The combination will be written down and stored somewhere, meaning that it can and eventually will be found by the minor in question.

It is not a question of if it will happen, only when it will happen.

 

A few decades back a associate of mine's teenage boy moved in with us, his parents where having serious problems, his dad was screwing around and became HIV positive, his mother wasn't doing much better screwing her husband's so called best friend, it was a really messed up situation.

We let him move in with us to help stabilize his life, he was a good intelligent child and still is.

When he moved in and while unloading a couple of backpacks, I noticed he has a semiautomatic handgun, I asked where did he get that?

His answer was, "my dad wrote combination on the side of the dresser next to the safe," I asked why did he believe he needed that firearm, his answer was "dad's getting nuts and if I have to live on the street I need a gun."

He was 14 years old at the time and that speaks volumes about how children in the U.S. are treated and what they fear, which they should never have to do.

His parents where upper middle class, but dug themselves into a deep credit hole and from there everything fell apart.

 

I remember several combinations, pins, passwords. It just seems like the position you are trying to angle towards, is that it's simply not possible to safely have guns around kids.

So if you have a notebook (assuming you cant remember a combination) you could not slip it in but that junior would try every number combination around the house?

 

Not everyone is able to do such, however.

Factually incorrect. It is indeed possible to have firearms around children and still have safety. The position being taken is that it is physically impossible to store firearms in a manner that renders them physically inaccessible or otherwise unusable to any minor under the age of eighteen, and believing otherwise is nothing less than foolish. It is nothing more than adults looking to substitute their own responsibilities with mechanical devices so that they can engage in laziness. Such should be condemned, not promoted and embraced.

Anyone who stores a firearm within the home is going to keep it in a manner that is easily accessible to them. It is a simple aspect of human nature. Security is useless if it hampers the individual who is supposed to be protected by it, and it will be bypassed and sidestepped.

 

Not everyone owns a gun for protection. I own a .44 cap n ball. It's never loaded until I'm in the woods and ready to fire. It's sitting unloaded in the other room, right now.

What's foolish, is the bolded. Your position on trigger locks and gun safes being a "substitute for their own responsibility" is just silly and assumes all people who own and use such devices dont use them in combination with teaching their children, firearms safety.

 

And beyond the safety aspect of training is self defense, I have come across numerous news reports where teenagers have used their parents firearms to protect themselves, their parents and their siblings from home invaders.

 

Those who do such, do so for their own reasons, and based upon their own decisions. However such does not serve to undermine the decision of those who do associate firearms with personal protection.

Considering the corrosive nature of black powder and its modern substitutes, such is a rational decision. Otherwise the firearm would eventually be rusted and rendered useless for anything.

If the minors are taught firearms safety, what purpose do trigger locks actually serve that justifies their use?