Some facts about guns in the US

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And Another One Gone ....

Hopkinsville, Kentucky

The Huffington Post offers the rundown:

In the latest tragic shooting fatality to involve small children, a 4-year-old boy in Kentucky allegedly shot and killed his 6-year-old sister Sunday morning after the boy picked up his grandfather's gun.

The names of the two children have not yet been released.

The apparently accidental shooting occurred sometime Sunday morning in Hopkinsville, according to local NBC affiliate WSMV. The station reports that William Wyatt, the siblings' grandfather, had been cleaning his gun and walked away for a few moments, which was when the brother picked it up and allegedly pointed it at his sister. The bullet entered through the girl's face and lodged in her spine.

"I'm sitting here, I just came off the chair and picked her up, and put her in my arms, and I held her until the rescue squad came here," Wyatt said, according to WSMV.

The sister was taken first to Jennie Stuart Medical Center and then transferred to Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, where she died late Sunday night, according to News Channel 5.

The gun was a .38 caliber pistol, according to the Kentucky New Era. So far, no charges have been filed against Wyatt, but the investigation is ongoing, according to News Channel 5.​

Sigh.
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Notes:

The Hufington Post. "4-Year-Old Kentucky Boy Fatally Shoots 6-Year-Old Sister ". July 1, 2013. HuffingtonPost.com. July 1, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...6-year-old-kentucky-loaded-gun_n_3529486.html

 

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And another one gone. The captions are not helping your perceived humanitarianism, here.

 

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Well... he would, actually. I suppose it's a matter of personal taste in the US whether 'spray and pray' also clips a few bystanders.

 

... And Another One Gone ...

... And Another One Gone ...

WKBN:

Three handguns were found inside the room where a 4-year-old boy was fatally shot.

Reports said the boy, Ray-twon Briggs, 4, died after being shot at about 11 p.m. Sunday in the 400 block of Fairgreen Avenue.

The boy's grandmother told police the boy was playing with one of the guns and fatally shot himself through the head while two other children, ages 1 and 5, were inside the room with Briggs.

Police Chief Rod Foley said the children accessed loaded guns in a 26-year-old man's room. He said investigators are trying to determine who owned the guns.

The grandmother told 911 dispatchers the kids were playing in the room and a found a gun. The woman pleads for help while children scream in the background.

Officers noted finding two guns in the room and a third with a bullet casing under a bed. Gun-shot residue tests were performed on everyone at the home. The boy's mother and father were not at the home at the time of the shooting and showed up later, reports said.​

While officers are "working with the theory" that the shooting was accidental, police are treating the incident as a homicide; Chief Rod Foley said that while it appears the shoooting was accidental, "we got a long way to go yet until we can say that for sure".

We humbly pray to the almighty Glorified G that It might accept this sacrifice, offered up because, you know, America, and freedom, and all that stuff. Amen.
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Notes:

WKBN Staff. "Boy, 4, fatally shot on Youngstown's North Side". WKBN. July 8, 2013. WKBN.com. July 8, 2013. http://www.wkbn.com/2013/07/08/4-year-old-killed-on-youngstowns-north-side/

 

And. Another one. Gone. Do you mind not portraying it as a joke?

 

Insurance

Well, What Do You Know? The Private Market Comes to the Rescue

Marketplace solutions.

As more schools consider arming their employees, some districts are encountering a daunting economic hurdle: insurance carriers threatening to raise their premiums or revoke coverage entirely.

During legislative sessions this year, seven states enacted laws permitting teachers or administrators to carry guns in schools. Three of the measures — in Kansas, South Dakota and Tennessee — took effect last week.

But already, EMC Insurance Companies, the liability insurance provider for about 90 percent of Kansas school districts, has sent a letter to its agents saying that schools permitting employees to carry concealed handguns would be declined coverage.

“We are making this underwriting decision simply to protect the financial security of our company,” the letter said.

(Yaccino)​

The NYT also notes other schools running into this sort of trouble. Jenny Emery of the Association of Governmental Risk Pools esplained, "I haven't seen evidence yet that suggests people are determining that arming teachers is a recommended way to manage risk. Far from it." Schools in Oregon, Tennessee, South Dakota, and Kansas are all facing difficult insurance questions about plans to put more guns on school campuses.

To the other, Kansas and Texas are leading the way for states looking to arm their teachers:

For three Kansas community colleges, which were insured by EMC but decided to allow concealed carry on their campuses under the new law, the search for another insurance provider was easier than expected.

Dan Barwick, the president of Independence Community College, said his college and two others recently signed a joint insurance plan with another company at a rate that he expected would save the group about $2 million over the next decade. Advocates for arming teachers point to the colleges as evidence that some insurance providers are willing to stomach the risk, should K-12 schools in Kansas decide to shop around

“What will happen is the market will take care of this,” said Forrest Knox, a Kansas state senator who helped pass the concealed carry legislation. “Other companies are going to do the dollars and cents.”

That theory is certainly true in states like Texas, where strong tort protections have made it easier for about 30 districts to arm their employees this year. Dubravka Romano, who oversees a cooperative that insures about half of the state's 1,035 districts, said schools there were not charged extra for having guns on campus.​

In the end, there are always market players willing to play according to dollars and cents. But how long before the numbers inform those players? Take Texas as an example; the laws limit all sorts of liability in the name of improving business. Like, say, storage of explosive chemicals and safety inspections. And, what in all those years the West Fertilizer Company Facility only really had one accident. It's probably worth the trade to Texans; just think of all the business Texas has attracted because of that sort of regulatory environment.

And so it goes. Meanwhile, consider Los Angeles. Compared to a school district with a grand total of 103 students, even smaller cities like Seattle, Tacoma, Boise, Portland, Salem .... Well, okay, in the first place, you probably couldn't sell the school boards on the idea. But if you could, the insurance hit would be tremendous. A town of four hundred operating under extraordinary circumstances in an environment with special liability protection saving five dollars per student by switching insurance companies? The numbers, at least, make sense. But not so with a fifty-five square mile school district with a student population in excess of twenty-eight thousand, spread over fifty-seven campus facilities, a staff of over 5,000, and a $280m budget that represents a $4m revenue shortfall. And that's the third largest district in the state of Washington. The actuarial outlook just can't support that kind of endeavor. Tacoma is still climbing out of a gang violence problem that has long plagued the city. The last thing they need right now is more bullets flying.

And Los Angeles? Over 1,100 campus facilities in LAUSD. Nearly half the student body enrolled in year-round schools. A student population of over 660,000. Nearly 32,000 teachers. So big that in addition to two unions to deal with, one of them is for Los Angeles teachers specifically. Budgeted at $7.3b, it's the second largest school district in the country, and it is plagued by the fact of being underfunded. I cannot imagine the actuarial outlook on arming LAUSD teachers is encouraging.

In the end, the private sector might well be what keeps teachers unarmed in most of the school districts around the nation. And it will be interesting to see if conservative legislatures and executives in the states will establish a publicly-financed liability insurance market in order to arm schoolteachers, or follow the Texas anti-regulatory lead.
____________________

Notes:

Yaccino, Steven. "Schools Seeking to Arm Employees Hit Hurdle on Insurance". The New York Times. July 7, 2013. NYTimes.com. July 9, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/us/schools-seeking-to-arm-employees-hit-hurdle-on-insurance.html

Wikipedia. "Tacoma Public Schools". June 14, 2013. En.Wikipedia.org. July 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Public_Schools

—————. "Los Angeles Unified School District". June 9, 2013. En.Wikipedia.org. July 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Unified_School_District

 

I wonder why insurance companies would do such a thing? More frequent claims for critical care after someone is shot maybe?
If there is one thing I trust insurance companies to get right, it is risk assessment.

 

Tuscon's Finest

Responsible Gun Owners?

Really, I mean, one would think that regardless of the vagaries we might find in a phrase like "responsible gun owner", we should be able to count our local police officers among them.

Then again, there is Arizona.

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Tuscon's Finest: Tuscon police officer Kyle J. McCartin (l.), points a gun at a Giant Gas Station clerk, July 16, 2013.​

Via Associated Press:

A Tucson, Ariz., police officer has been fired after authorities say he pulled a gun on a gas station attendant while off duty and apparently intoxicated.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department notified Tucson police that 23-year-old Kyle James McCartin was arrested early Tuesday on two counts of aggravated assault.

Deputies were called to a Giant Gas Station and learned two men who appeared very intoxicated entered the store wearing bulletproof vests.

Authorities say one of the men pulled out a handgun and pointed it at the clerk twice.

Deputies found the men at a nearby apartment complex and the clerk identified McCartin as the man with the gun.​

By the time I get to Arizona ....

Oh, wait. I'm not going anywhere near Arizona anytime soon.
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Notes:

Associated Press. "Kyle James McCartin, Off-Duty Arizona Cop, Accused Of Pointing Gun At Clerk". The Huffington Post. July 16, 2013. HuffingtonPost.com. July 18, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/kyle-james-mccartin-arizona-cop_n_3610113.html

 

True, That

And I am what is supposed to be "honorary white" (Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hocus Pocus) mixed with real, northern European white. Rural folks tend to think I'm some sort of Hispanic or Romani.

In truth, it's not the idea of being shot in itself that compels me to say stay the hell out of various places, just like it isn't the idea that I won't ever be running up against idiotic prosecutors in Indiana or South Carolina since I won't ever be pregnant and can't miscarry and end up charged with murder.

But, yes, as you note, the paucity of culture. True, I'd loathe the weather, too. But the bizarre stuff going on in Arizona—whether it's the ego-dystonic homosexual sheriff who likes dressing minority men in pink lingerie, the psychotic governor who can't answer obvious political questions without her brain seizing, this moronic cop, or whatever—trying to remain civilized while swimming in that toxic stew of Arizona culture?

I think of the paradoxical morons I won't tolerate who protest libraries and such because librarians don't like censorship, who say their First Amendment rights are violated as long as some writer's or musician's are still intact. You know, the kind of people whose Christian faith is under siege if a library doesn't remove Heather Has Two Mommies, or Demon Walk, or a Wrinkle in Time from circulation.

And then I try to imagine spending a day in Arizona, where that kind of idiotic thinking is a requisite of social nicety, and no, I just can't do it.

Even more than the danger of some idiot with a gun shooting me, it's the thought of how low I would have to stoop in order to construct a pretense of assimilation.

 

What confuses me about the Zimmerman case, is the fact that he was able to shoot an unarmed person in a public place at all.

IMO, this is a direct result of the "stand you ground" laws, that gives you license to kill anyone, anywhere, any time, merely on the grounds of fear.

Why did I not see the narrative that an unarmed Trayvon Martin (walking home from the grocery store with a bag of skittles) was being stalked by a guy in a truck, Zimmerman, who circled around 3 times, armed himself with a concealed weapon, then left his truck to confront Martin.

At this point Martin should have had the right to "stand HIS ground", which he probably did, and died as a result, in spite of that law. Zimmerman was breaking the law by invading someone else's zone of comfort while armed and then killing him because Martin stood his ground. IMO, this court case was a travesty of justice.

If Martin had managed to kill Zimmerman, would he have been able to claim the right to "stand your ground" or would they just have found him guilty of murder?

IMO, there are some profound questions to be answered here.

 

Another One Bites The Dust

Another One Bites The Dust

In the Name of Freedom:

Yellowstone National Park officials are investigating after an Idaho woman reported her 3-year-old daughter shot herself with a handgun in a campground.

Park rangers responded Saturday morning to Grant Village Campground, but resuscitation efforts failed, resulting in what officials said was the first shooting death in the park since 1978.

Park spokesman Al Nash said Sunday that part of the campground remained cordoned off while park rangers and special park agents conduct the investigation. He said he didn't know where the girl's body was taken.

"We don't have all of the information, and we haven't drawn any conclusions," Nash said.

(Associated Press)​

Amen.
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Notes:

Associated Press. "Yellowstone Shooting Death: 3-Year-Old Girl Allegedly Shot Herself With Handgun". The Huffington Post. September 8, 2013. HuffingtonPost.com. September 8, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/08/yellowstone-shooting-death_n_3891379.html

 

If you are counting road collisions, deer kill way more people than bison.

Used to be deer killed more people by attacking them than any other wild animal as well - mostly pet deer hitting puberty. Seems like since regulation of pet deer ownership became common, it's been bears.

Just so Tiassa won't be the only source, one from Minneapolis: http://www.startribune.com/nation/222628041.html. The age of the juvenile uncle who accidentally shot the two month old baby nephew was not given in other news reports either.

 

A Loaded Rifle, Curious Children ... What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

A Show They'll Never Forget

Call it the latest in post-psyche interactive art:

A child pulled the trigger of a police rifle at a Southern California elementary school Wednesday, firing a bullet that shattered and created shrapnel that injured three youngsters, authorities said.

The AR-15 was locked to the side of a motorcycle that was on display at Newman Elementary School during an anti-drug program when a student managed to fire it, Chino police spokeswoman Tamrin Olden said.

"The bullet disintegrated when discharged by striking a metal plate where the barrel rests against the weapons mount," and metal debris apparently struck some children and caused minor injuries, she said in a statement ....

.... The weapons mount holding the rifle had several fail-safes, including the metal plate, Olden said.

There was no immediate word on whether a police officer was nearby when the accidental discharge occurred.

Rifles have been removed from other police motorcycles while the shooting is investigated, Olden said at a news conference.

(Associated Press)​

So ....

Right.
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Notes:

Associated Press. "3 kids hurt by shrapnel as student pulls trigger on police rifle at Calif. elementary school". The Seattle Times. October 23, 2013. SeattleTimes.com. October 23, 2013. http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2022109636_apxschoolgunaccident.html

 

Check out this one: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/24/justice/california-fake-rifle-boy-killed/

One thing that really bothers me about police is that they are employed to protect the law and the public trust, so if they feel their life is threaten why do they have the right to shoot first and potentially kill law abiding pedestrians and damage the public trust? Police should not have that right, no right to lethal pre-emptive self defense, police should only shot at people that have already shot at them or others.

 

i wonder who the bright boy was that decided to strap a loaded weapon to a display at an elementary school, and the dumb fuck that approved such a thing.

like most other gun issues in the US . . . can you spell PROPAGANDA!!!