WI - Child dies while playing with gun

[FWiedner]

Child dies while playing with gun

By Jessica Bock

TOMAHAWK - Micayla Ellis' mother took the suggested precautions with a gun in her home - she locked it up, hid the key and put the ammunition in different locations - but it still wasn't enough to stave off her children's curiosity.
While off from classes at Tomahawk Elementary School last Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 11-year-old Micayla ended up with a small-caliber handgun. It accidentally went off, and she was admitted into Saint Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield in critical condition from a single gunshot wound to the head. The young girl died the next day.

Family and friends buried Micayla on Monday, and authorities used preliminary findings from an autopsy to determine that her death was accidental. Her older brother was in the same room when the gun went off.

"It was just a tragic accident," Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Koth said Monday. "The kids had some time on their hands. With the curiosity they had, they were able to locate all of the components."
In 2002, about 800 children ages 14 and younger were treated in hospital emergency rooms for accidental gun-related injuries, according to Safe Kids Worldwide, a network of organizations that distributes gun locks to prevent accidental childhood injury. In 2001, 72 children died from those injuries.Ê
The Lincoln County Sheriff's Department and the Tomahawk Police Department have free gun locks available to parents.
Nearly two-thirds of parents who own firearms and have school-age children believe they keep their firearms safely away from their children. But one study found that when a gun was in the home, 75 percent to 80 percent of first- and second-graders knew where it was kept.
Few children under age 8 can distinguish between real and toy guns. Children as young as 3 are strong enough to pull the trigger of many handguns, Safe Kids Worldwide said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has determined that the most effective way to prevent gun-related deaths and injuries to children and adolescents is to remove guns from their homes and communities.

http://www.wisinfo.com/journal/spjlocal/321246355075514.shtml

*FW Note:

A terrible tragedy.

It's never a bad idea to practice safe storage techniques, but as the article demonstrates, that one measure doesn't always work.

The article resorts to the mantra of "the only sure way to protect children is to get rid of guns".

I'd like to suggest that "there is more than one way to skin a cat".

Safe storage, safe handling, and EDUCATION in combination would have saved this child's life.

Removing or hiding obvious danger is never the best solution.  Teaching the ignorant (not just children) a proper method of facing and handling the situation is a much more effective path to ensuring their survival.

 

[willysjeep134]

I had a very liberal anthropology professor last semester at college. She was telling a story one time about an amazon basin tribe that had tribal rules against government currency. In an attempt to keep their culture pure these people banned the use of government money in their tribe. This caused problems for my professor. She was doing some live-in research at the time. I guess many other people had been doing similar things. I think, in fact the tribe had a small tourist-trade type business despite the ban on money. They traded for everything.

The guidebook my professor had, and this was in the early 70's, said to bring things like candy and soap to trade with them. Being an anthropologist, she had a better idea. She brought with a gross or two of single edged razor blades. She would trade the razor blades for food, information, or as good will gifts. She was appalled, however, when some of the older tribe members immediately handed their razor blades to their children to play with. They all knew darn well what a razor blade was and how sharp it was. She, fearing for the children's safety, tried to take them away. The tribe members protested. Sure enough, these 4-5 year old amazonian children didn't cut themselves with the razor blades.

The moral she came up with was that these amazonian children were held to a higher standard than our own in America. She figured that they were treated as adults at a much earlier age, and were coddled by sociotey much less, so they were more responsible than an American kid might be in a similar situation.