Toddlers Are Shooting Themselves and Others On a Weekly Basis

A news report claims toddlers are shooting people on a weekly basis.

Christopher Ingraham from the Washington Post reports:

This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: A little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead.

But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I’ve found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself.

Common sense would dictate this people at fault in these shootings (if anyone is at fault) are the parents who failed properly secure their guns–not the American people at large as a body politic. But of course, Mr. Ingraham takes this as an opportunity to make such news a symbol for pushing further and more intrusive gun laws:

These cases are invariably referred to as “accidents” in media reports. But as Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws, argues, many incidents like this are preventable. In a study of accidental shootings by children of all ages (not just toddlers), they estimate that “more than two-thirds of these tragedies could be avoided if gun owners stored their guns responsibly and prevented children from accessing them.”

There are policy and technical responses to preventable childhood gun deaths as well. States and localities could require guns to be locked up at home, a policy supported by 67 percent of Americans. Various types of smart gun technology, which prevent anyone other than their owners from firing a given gun, exist as well. But gun lock requirements and smart guns have been vehemently opposed by the National Rifle Association and its allies.

So, what do you think TLR readers? Do toddlers accidentally getting their hands on their careless parents’ firearms mean you must give up your liberty? Even if you haven’t been careless or shot anyone yourself?

Or, as Mr. Ingraham puts it in the usual loaded collectivist vernacular of the left, is this “the price we must pay” for the 2nd amendment?

Hell, but why focus on the guns? Why not focus on the greatest cause of inequity there is: bad parents running that silly little thing called “the family?”

Actually, nevermind. I don’t want to give the left anymore ideas for curtailing liberty in the name of “safety” and “equality.”