March 23, 2008
Guns Injure Children
In a blow to the argument that hand guns help keep people safe, three children have been injured by stray bullets this weekend. First, there was 1-year-old Dashaun Turner. He was standing behind her sister while she cooked noodles at the stove in their West Pullman home when a stray bullet blew through the cabinet and struck his hand. Dashaun’s mother told the S-T:
"I heard him holler, and, at first, I thought he'd cut his hand. For his first accident to come from him being shot ... that's crazy."
Crazy? That’s fucked up. Dashaun is recovering nicely, but one person in the apartment below, Derrick Franklin, 28, is not. He was killed when a bullet ripped into his apartment, hitting him in the shoulder. His father, also wounded by a bullet, watched him die.
In a separate incident in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, two boys were injured when a loaded handgun hidden in an oven discharged. Parolee Anthony Smith hid the gun that fired. Bullets hit a 4-year-old boy in the leg, and a 12-year-old boy was hit in the forehead by debris caused by the gunshots. The boys were taken to the hospital and are doing okay. Smith has been charged with two counts of endangering the life of a child and one count of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. [S-T, S-T]
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This is kind of silly, starting with the title. Guns - when fired, have the potential to injure anyone - children or adults. Secondly, this doesn't strike any blow to the thought that handguns help keep people safe any more than someone being wrongly arrested strikes a blow to the thought that cops help keep people safe.
The issues that are spoken of in this post are incidences of misuse. There is no mention of what caused a stray bullet to enter into the two apartments in the first place. Was someone defending themselves against an intruder or were the gunshots the result of a criminal act like a drive-by shooting?
In regards to the second issue, we're talking about not only a parolee with a gun, but a parolee with a gun hidden in an oven. Who is to say whether either gun used in the incidences were registered and lawfully owned and obviously the second instance has to do with improper storage.
To claim that either of these is worthy of being included in an argument against the right for lawful citizens to own a handgun is irresponsible.
How many kids die a year by drowning in a swimming pool?
How many kids die a year choking to death on a sucker?
How many kids die a year by falling down a flight of stairs?
How many kids die a year in a car crash by a drunk driver?
How many kids die a year in a car crash period?
How many kids get injured a year playing Baseball? Football? Soccer? Sports in general?
That's exactly what i thought, Guns are a tool just like a crescent wrech or socket set. They don't do anything on their own, But they work like their suppose to when PEOPLE use them cause of their design? Guns were designed to hunt for food and protect our civil liberties against tyranny. I never once hear you mention about the man responsible for putting the handgun inside the oven. He was a convicted felon and had no business touching a firearm, He lost his rights when he committed a felony, You should be blaming the FELON for hurting the children not the gun. It's a inanimate object that doesn't think or act on it's own. I swear to god himself the more Editorials i read by retarded journalist like yourself the dumber i become.
How about a headline of priests hurt children. Or water hurts children (that dont know how to swim). The gun didnt hurt those kids the criminals in control of the guns did.
I'm all for gun ownership, but I laugh out loud when someone starts talking about how guns will protect us from tyranny.
Dude, the "tyrants" have directed energy weapons and "pain rays". Also, F-22 Raptors, unmanned recon drones, and guns that can shoot around corners. Not to mention nuclear warheads.
Do you seriously think your Glock makes you free?
that kid's name is really Parolee?
No Rachelle the Parolee's name is Anthony Smith. The kids are unnamed in this article.
Either Rachel is joking or she has no business being an editor of anything.
Wait a minute, isn't this proof that gun-control DOESN'T protect children. Afterall, hand guns ARE illegal in Chicago!!!
Plum: Well, to be devil's advocate, I must point out that people armed with simple AKs and simple bombs have managed to do pretty well against 150,000 trained, Western troops and all their gear--this includes planes and satellites--for about 5 years at this point.
I think SammyDavisJr is on to something. We need to get rid of swimming pools and suckers and sports and anything that can hurt anyone.
No wait. Strink that. Reverse. Get rid of the kids and then you get rid of kids getting hurt.
That's how stupid you sound, SDJ. You're defending the wrong side this time. Yes, we have the right to bear arms. But with that right comes responsibility. Putting a shot gun in an oven is beyond retarded. Defending said person's right to own a gun and then having the balls to equate the dangerous environment that it creates to playing organized sports is 10x retarded.
"...In a blow to the argument that hand guns help keep people safe..."
The above incidents are not a blow to that argument at all. A handgun, for some occupations and neighborhoods, might help a person WITH a brain more safe. That same handgun will make a person WITHOUT a brain less safe.
@ Matilda:
Point taken. I also would have accepted that a primitive society armed with mere rocks and logs held off a battalion of troops armed with lasers in the Ewok battle on Endor in "The Return of the Jedi"
How could I forget the Ewoks, Plum?
To be fair, we probably laugh at the same things when it comes to guns and tyranny and the whole "from my cold dead hands" argument. For various reasons, I don't see an armed uprising in America's future, even if we were to have the sequel to the Great Depression, despite the deep hopes of some neo-Marxist types.
wow, i read that really fast and wrong. sorry. matty, my name's not rachel.
I have to agree with Ward Up, that these aren't good examples of stories refuting the "easily available handguns keep us safe" idea.
The stories that support the gun ban are the kids who pull the gun out of a box in the back of the closet and blow some friends head off, despite the owners' attempts to secure the gun. OR the stories of how many more guns are stolen out of people houses by 'robbers' vs. the number of instances of "responsible" gun owners actually fighting off such 'robbers'.
guns were not invented for hunting or to protect anyone from tyranny.
if you believe that, you are beyond delusional.
guns were invented to kill people more efficiently than the previously available weapons.
Guns were invented to eradicate human life. That is it.
Guns were more effective at killing people than a bow and arrow or a crossbow and bolt or a sword or other hand to hand combat weapon.
Therefore, the bow and crossbow and sword went to the wayside.
Guns were designed to be put in peoples hands so that governments could more effectively fight wars.
That is all. Protection from tyranny? Bullshit. Hunting? Bullshit.
Guns are designed to kill people more quickly, at greater distance, and with greater efficiency than a sword or spear or arrow.
The solution to gun violence is simple. All that needs to be done is to eradicate every bullet from the planet.
It might help too if Rev. Jesse and Fr. Mike had the balls to confront the street gangs rather than the gun shops.
Simple, until you remember one tiny little problem: it can't be done. The gangs will always be able to get guns as long as they exist, and if mass murder has been part of one's career path, an unlawful weapon possession charge comes almost as a joke. You're going to add - what - maybe a one year sentence onto a death penalty? Not much of a deterrant, especially from the point of view of somebody who will have acquired some interesting enemies during that career, and might wonder what will happen if he runs into those enemies at a time when they're armed and he's not.
What such a law does do is turn somebody who attempts to defend himself into a criminal. For a law abiding citizen, even one year in prison is going to be a life altering experience, especially since he's not going to have the kind of friends who might help him stay in one piece, unknifed and unraped. What such legislation does is tilting the battelfield in favor of the gangs, because they need not fear the possibility that the terrorised population around them might return fire, if sufficiently provoked, at least in the short run.
In the long run, said terrorised population may well come to the conclusion that their own government has become a net liability, and that is where dark ages have been known to come from.
@plumbum82 :
"Dude", the "tyrants" referred to in such arguments are not, in general, the governments we see today, but the governments we might see tomorrow. Any "it can't happen here" assertion has an ugly bit of historical reality to contend with: The Roman Republic had enjoyed stability over a period noticable longer than the time our own republic has been in existence, before Sulla came to power. 200 years and change is but the blink of an eye, historically speaking.
Let me present you with a thought experiment. Let's say that you're a latter day Julius Caesar wannabee. You have the finest aircraft in the world shrieking overheard. As you get up, one of the disgruntled plebians fires a bullet at your head. Do you suppose that your aircraft will be able to get to ground level quickly enough to block the bullet as it enters your cranium, or do you suppose that you will die, proving the next would-be dictator with an excellent reason to not follow in your footsteps? The same consideration is going to apply to your foot soldiers, without whom you will not be able to hold territory.
Your argument falls apart in two words: Guerilla Warfare. An armed resistance is not going to cooperatively march out in easily sighted ranks. It is going to be shooting at the authorities out of every corner, with the result that by the time you've set up the bulky microwave transmitter that you seem to think will protect a would-be dictator from an insurrection, the more nimble and maneuverable resistance will have vanished into the proverbial night.
As for the guns that shoot around corners, I think you might be taking a Tom Selleck movie a little too seriously.