3-year-old Fires Handgun, Gets Injured

There is NO gun registration in Utah. There NEVER has been.

Since we have no Gun Registration in Utah then I guess that would answer your question.

Looks like some mother failed at educating her child.

And as others have already said, Utah is a free state with NO GUN REGISTRATION.

Parents need to control their firearms better. I am not apposed to firearms in the house, however parents need to control their guns. Guns should be kept away from small children and when they are old enough they should be taught gun safety. Hunter education is a wonderful tool to help teach firearm safety. Locking up a gun so children can't get to them is a parental responsibility.

I happen to know that this is not a mother that has not educated her children on gun safety, but made a terrible mistake. She will pay for the lack of better judgement, but who are we to judge her. We all know that just a lapse of better judgement and these terrible accidents take place. This mother doesn't use drugs or leave her children unsuperivised but thought that this gun was out of reach and should of had it locked up. We wish that she could take it all back but Thank God that he will be okay

mamalo wrote:

I happen to know that this is not a mother that has not educated her children on gun safety, but made a terrible mistake. She will pay for the lack of better judgement, but who are we to judge her. We all know that just a lapse of better judgement and these terrible accidents take place. This mother doesn't use drugs or leave her children unsuperivised but thought that this gun was out of reach and should of had it locked up. We wish that she could take it all back but Thank God that he will be okay

I do not believe for one second that this mother properly educated her children on firearms.
Every child in my family was taught the four rules of gun handling, and was taken out and shown what a firearm will do.
We all treated them with respect and still do to this day.
And honestly, if you have a firearm for home protection, it will do you no good if it is locked up when you need it.

This was a 3 year old child people. Does a 3 year old truly have the capacity to know the CONSEQUENCES of what a gun will do whether he was educated or not?

june wrote:

This was a 3 year old child people. Does a 3 year old truly have the capacity to know the CONSEQUENCES of what a gun will do whether he was educated or not?

They understand the concept of pain.

You really are selling them short if you don't think they understand that guns cause pain when a proper demonstration is given.

For example, show them the gun, then shoot a watermelon with it.

The watermelon will violently explode assuming you are using soft point or hollow point ammo.

You then tell the child that it will do it to them if they misuse the gun. But it won't happen if they listen to everything you tell them to do, and also so long as they don't touch it when you aren't around.

It really is all about education. Now, to head off the next annoyingly illogical argument that always seems to be thrown at me when I discuss this with people who disagree with me, I do not believe children from newborn to about 2 will benefit at all from education, as I don't believe at that point they yet have that sort of reasoning capability.