PA Bill Number: SB945
Title: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals.
Description: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals. ...
Last Action: Third consideration and final passage (199-0)
Last Action Date: Apr 17, 2024
10-year-old shoots his 6-year-old sister: Can we keep guns away from children? :: 12/10/2017
In June, a 4-year-old girl in a small South Carolina community was shot by her 6-year-old brother when the gun he was holding accidentally discharged. Carley Mack was fatally struck by a single bullet.
In October, an 11-year-old boy in northwestern Pennsylvania was shot when a gun he was loading with his younger brother went off. The boys, who were home alone at the time, thought they heard a noise in the basement and fetched an unloaded gun from a cabinet and ammunition stored in the kitchen. Police said the two boys loaded the gun and accidentally fired it, striking the 11-year-old boy once in the leg.
And in August, a 10-year-old boy in rural Wisconsin accidentally shot and killed his brother during a game of "cops and robbers." Police said the boys thought the rifle was unloaded, but in fact, it had a round in the chamber. The bullet struck the boy's 14-year-old brother in the chest. He died at the scene.
Those are but three of the hundreds of narratives law enforcement agencies log annually of children killed or injured as a result of accidental or unintentional gun shootings.
On Thursday, a 6-year-old Harrisburg girl became the latest addition to that registry: The girl was shot by her 10-year-old brother, who thought the gun was a toy, police said. The girl remains at a hospital in critical condition.
This latest accidental shooting involving a minor underscores what many experts call a public health problem - that guns contribute substantially to premature death and injury of children.
'She is very lucky to be alive': Felon left gun in home where boy shot sister, police say
In June, the journal Pediatrics published a report that said nearly 1,300 children die and 5,790 are treated for gunshot wounds each year. Boys, older children and minorities are disproportionately affected. The most common circumstance involving unintentional firearm deaths of children: the shooter was playing with a gun.
"People always think kids don't know where the gun is but we know time and again that kids know or they find out and they are curious," said Shira Goodman, the executive director of CeaseFirePa, an advocacy group.
"Telling the kids alone 'don't touch this' doesn't really work," she said. "You need to take extra steps."
Among the extra steps Goodman would like to see in place are stringent gun laws. She argues, for instance, that Pennsylvania does not have laws requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns, nor to store them under lock.
Such child access prevention laws, she said, would go a long way to preventing accidental shootings among minors.
"They can hold an adult liable who didn't secure a gun and the gun ends up in the hands of a child," Goodman said. "You don't know how many times parents may get charged with negligence and recklessness but we don't have specific laws that require that guns are locked up. We choose not to do that in Pennsylvania."
The nation saw downward trends in the number of unintentional firearm deaths among children from 2002 to 2014, still public health experts agree that guns contribute to an inordinate number of gun-related deaths and injuries among children.
Firearm-related deaths are the third leading cause of death overall among U.S. children aged 1 to 17 years, surpassing the number of deaths from pediatric congenital anomalies, heart disease, influenza and/or pneumonia, chronic lower respiratory disease, and cerebrovascular causes. Guns are the second leading cause of injury-related death in this age group, surpassed only by motor vehicle injury deaths.
In the case of Thursday morning's shooting involving the 6-year-old girl, the gun had been stolen from Susquehanna Township and not secured in the Cloverly Road home, law officials said.
Police are looking for 24-year-old Tremayne James, who faces charges including receiving stolen property. Police said James hid the 40-caliber handgun in the home, where the 10-year-old boy was able to find it.
Police are looking for 24-year-old Tremayne James, who they say, faces charges including receiving stolen property. James is wanted in connection to the accidental shooting of a Harrisburg girl on Thursday morning. Police say he hid a 40-caliber handgun in a home, where a 10-year-old boy was able to find it.
Among the reams of statistics Goodman cites is the fact that 1.7 million children under 18 live in homes where firearms are kept loaded but unlocked. More than 75 percent of the guns used in teen suicides were found in the victim's house or the home of a relative or friend.
"This is how people are getting access to guns," Goodman said. "It's a big deal."
Statistics culled by databases from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pennsylvania Department of Health, among others, include:
- 119 people died between 2014 and 2016 from firearms shot by children under age 12; 268 more were injured.
- A firearm in the house raises the risk of accidental shooting death by more than three times for one gun; four times for more than one.
- 3 out of 4 kids ages 5 to 14 know where firearms are kept in their home.
Laws are only part of the equation, though, said Tom Gross, executive director of the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association
The fact that a stolen gun ended up in the hands of a child points to lack of resources, time or people, he said.
"A lot of time it's a matter of the huge number of guns stolen and trafficked and that are getting into the wrong hands, in this case children," Gross said.
Gross said he is not opposed to a re-examination of gun laws, but cautions against laws that would penalize law-abiding gun owners.
That was the crux of one of the arguments made in Pennsylvania last year when gun rights advocates helped to strike down ordinances that would have required gun owners to report lost or stolen guns.
"If you penalize a gun owner who has in some sense been a victim, then that gets to be problematic," Gross said.
Pennsylvania has historically guarded its gun rights laws, but municipalities have attempted to sidestep some of them with their own ordinances, including those that would hold liable owners who did not store guns under lock or report them lost or stolen.
Three years ago, the Commonwealth Court dealt a blow to many of them when it struck down a law that allowed any legal gun owner to sue municipalities over gun regulations. The law, known as Act 192, prompted 20 municipalities to repeal gun ordinances to avoid litigation. Some cities - including Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Lancaster - stood firm by their ordinances.
Kim Stolfer, president of Firearm Owners Against Crime, echoes the perspective posed by Gross: "Requiring a person to lock a gun is a concept meant to attack the lawful use of guns for self defense. It's meant to criminalize how you handle your personal property."
He argues that most gun laws are designed to criminalize a person - not stop the act in which a gun is used.
"This is what we are losing, the context," Stolfer said. "These laws don't stop crimes. If they did, we wouldn't have murders."
Stolfer points to declining numbers of gun-related accidents even as gun ownership in this country has increased.
"I don't want to minimize this tragedy," he said. "The natural grief we feel tends to cloud our judgment to what the solutions are."
He argues that in 60 to 80 percent of incidents involving fatalities or injuries of minors in accidental gun shootings, the firearms were unlawfully possessed by an adult.
On that point, Gross said law enforcement agencies need the help of the public.
"I still think the focus needs to be on what is the right thing to do and the right thing is to report a stolen firearm. The right thing to do is to lock your firearm at home," he said. "We are handling a firearm every day and the responsibility we know that has to be taken. I'm not dismissing the need to review what laws are best for these situations but I'm not sure the law is the only issue in this particular case."
Stolfer argues that adults need to do a better job of educating children about gun safety.
"It's a very simple process, too," he said. "You teach them to leave the area, don't touch and tell an adult."
For Goodman, that line of reasoning falls short of what she considers the necessary tactic to prevent additional tragedies.
"Even homes of responsible gun owners of families whose kids have hunted with them and whose kids would never touch a gun, they may have people visit their home who don't have the same experience," she said.
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/12/a_10-year-old_boy_shoots_his_s.html
