The GUNS- KILLING FIELDS -TRAGEDY STRIKES
Al Jacobson is a webmeister, photographer, writer, political junkie, and consumer advocate in the Tampa Bay area. Nothing is sacred to him on a myriad of subjects. He is from NY and occasionally speaks English, preferring Brooklyn based meta-phonetic syllabication known as “plain street talk”.
He has been thrown out of restaurants for his blog comments on their cuisine, like saying "Steak and Shake must have hired Dr. Kevorkian to train chefs to kill their meat” bounced from political rallies because he asked the “wrong questions” like "how much money did you receive from your PAC group to kill this bill”, and generally manages to stir the pot.
His high school English teacher, enamored by Shakespeare once commented to his parents, "He should try learning a foreign language like English... but in a foreign country". He retorted, “Shakespeare doth not a genius make, for he spake in terms reminiscent of a flake". She threw him out of the class…twice. So he learned to write on his own having two fingers on each hand noticeably shorter due to use. The most he got out of typing class was a lot of dates, skills nil.
SHOOTING SPORTS
He is also a shooter, both with camera and firearm, former competitive shooter and a range officer for the shooting sports, a good portion of his life starting at seventeen. He has been actively involved in the custom gun business, 2nd amendment rights and the shooting sports.
He and Bob Cogan of Accurate Plating and Weaponry, an Alabama based Custom Gunsmithing and Refinishing facility have been friends for over thirty years and don’t always agree on all things but what they do agree on is gun safety, love of firearms, 2nd amendment freedom of ownership, the shooting sports, love of country and family. Period.
Gun safety is the key here, innocent children, injured or killed by ignorance, negligence, thoughtlessness and stupidity. Justice, one errant nut slips through the safety net and a seventeen year old is dead. A case that shocked the nation and just another example of getting away with it… it’s been a big decade for those beating the system. From baby killers to stalkers and cyber bullies.
It will not stop if there is no consequence, brought swiftly and non-reversible. And if you find the parents neglectful, thirty days in jail should straighten things out. Put the kid in the cell next to them and after thirty days, some resolution will be in hand.
It’s also been a tough few years with all the shootings that have taken place and the counterbalanced consequence of rhetoric put out by the usual NRA fear mongering public relations department; I call it the Dr. Goebbelization of Shooting Sports, tell a lie, tell it often, tell it loud.
Black helicopters, firearms confiscation, civil liberties restrictions and a host of other plain outright lies. It’s sad when politics take over the sporting industry. It’s all about the bribes and the majority of our Congress has been bought, sold , paid for and they all fear the NRA.
Good for business as people with a large spine of paranoia believe the BS and run out and buy guns and thats the bad part. These are people with few, or no skills nor training. Yes, a few gun collectors think they need forty weapons for castle keep. If you listen to some, soon they will need a golf bag to hold all their home defense gear. A shotgun, a sniper rifle, an AR or M-16, an AK-47 Kalashnikov and 2000 rounds of ammo to suit the specific tactical
Don’t blame the guns. But we will eventually have to do something about who can pull the trigger. Good honest folks don’t fall for some of the rhetoric out there.
I hope no one ever gets the phone call from school that there was a shooting and your child was injured or worse, it’s a game changer. But if we all agree to better legislation and take the politics out, with the right to bear arms not infringed upon… that would be a giant step.
DON’T BLAME THE GUN, ITS THE DUMB PARENTS.
TWO SISTERS ONE IS DEAD
• Saylor Martine, of Oklahoma, fifteen, died after she was shot in the head while toying with a firearm. She was with her sister. The culprit, according to the police, a semi-auto owned by her parents. It was purchased by Mom for her own protection. So the story goes, she and her sister had been handling the gun when they placed it down on a counter, where it discharged.
Fifty years in this game and I haven’t seen one go off by itself except in a fire. Bob agrees with me, I’m not buying that it went off by itself. they don’t do that. I’m sure there is enough grief to go around, and the Sheriff was very hesitant about doing anything about it. Charging a minor, charging the parent, bad publicity for the town, An accident defined means no one is charged, especially the only one who knows the truth. The sister or possibly the mother, but a child is dead and someone was negligent and it’s called an accident.
8 YEAR OLD SHOOTS SELF AT GUN SHOW
• A family man goes to a gun show in his small New England town of Westfield, MA with his son and a camera. It was co-sponsored by the local traffic ticketing Sheriff who had a financial consideration in the show.
With an instructor watching, uncertified, recently recruited, 14 year old, the 8-year-old boy at the gun fair aimed an Uzi submachine gun at a pumpkin and pulled the trigger as his dad reached for a camera.
It was his first time shooting a fully automatic gun, and the recoil (muzzle rise) of the weapon was too much for him and literally shot his head off with Dad filming.
Now gun safety experts — and some gun enthusiasts at the club where the shooting happened — are wondering why such a young child was allowed to fire a weapon used in war. Local, state and federal authorities are also investigating whether everyone involved had proper licenses or if anyone committed a criminal act.
More on this story and the conclusion: http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/14/massachusetts.gun.show.verdict/index.html
MORE TRAGEDY - AND ALL AVOIDABLE
• In Kentucky, a five year old, just given a rifle, a sort of rite of passage in some families, left out in the open in a corner of the room, loaded and he proceeded to shoot his sister who was four.
• 3-year-old Jad Speights, accidentally shot and killed himself last month with his uncle’s handgun, which he found in a backpack.
• Jarvis Jackson (1) was accidentally shot and killed by a boy (4) last month after their baby sitter brought a handgun to the house for personal protection and then fell asleep after leaving the gun loaded and unsecured on the kitchen table.
• 4-year-old Cody Ryan Hall, who accidentally shot and killed himself in April with a family-owned handgun he found in an unlocked gun case.
• A six-year-old Toms River New Jersey boy accidentally shot by Brandon Holt, 4-year-old neighbor on Monday night, has died. Police said Holt was shot in the head by his friend after the younger boy went into his home on McCormick Avenue and somehow got his hands on a .22-caliber rifle. the boy found the rifle under a bed. Police said the 4-year-old then went outside and accidentally shot the 6-year-old, who was sitting in a quad nearby.
The boy’s father, Anthony Senatore, was arrested and charged. Five counts of second-degree child endangerment one count of third-degree child endangerment. Each second-degree count could potentially bring 5 to 10 years in prison, which means that if Senatore is convicted, he could theoretically face up to 50 years in prison.
• Texas: Johnson County Austin McCord, “forgot he had a loaded magazine in the AK-47” when he pulled the trigger, shooting the girl in the stomach, on her 13th birthday, in a gun-cleaning accident must not watch much news.
• I guess the Dallas man who rushed his bloody grandson to the hospital pays more attention. He is fortunate as his 4-year-old grandson, who was visiting his home Wednesday, found a loaded handgun beneath a pillow. The little boy shot himself in the shoulder — but he’ll recover.
DON’T BLAME THE GUN
It’s a social issue, the Guns are not the problems, as the expression goes, it’s the idiot behind the wheel, the finger on the trigger, and gross neglect. Weapons don’t have brains, children don't know consequence, and neither do some of the parents. They don’t “go off” of their own accord.
Responsible people do not “forget”. In the days before the NRA went total political there were stringent classes and training as their forefront to hunting and the shooting sports. And we pounded safety, we pounded it in classes and at the range. That’s why I joined and became an R.O and worked in the industry. Not the same group of people today.
A large local (almost regional) match. And I got the (honor) job of scoring a runner with who basically was the odds on favorite, the club champ. And I caught a lot of flack when I DQ’ed the local “A” shooter in a large match when he did an over the horizon reload and slammed the slide forward. His friends were appalled. I got called names. I almost felt threatened.
Being a real champ, he shook my hand and thanked me, he knew he had done a wrong. He was a class act. He said, “ Boy, imagine had I done that in a National Competition”. You can get lazy. The Competitive IPSC and other groups, the real competitors heartily endorsed and enforced gun safety.
THE BASICS NEVER CHANGE - SIMPLE RULES AND THE LAW
• Always expect that there is a live round in a weapon.
• Never allow a weapon, loaded or otherwise, to be pointed at another person.
• They don’t keep a loaded gun under the bed, or beneath a pillow, or in a drawer or any other place that a child is physically capable of touching it.
• Some states have laws about gun storage, a few really severe. But they are not often enforced. It is illegal to keep a gun where a child may have access to it, unless it is disabled with a trigger lock or locked in a secure box or environment.
• Children die in accidental shootings because inattentive parents leave their guns lying around, with ammunition chambered, in unsecured places where untrained shooters can access them.
* Only 27 states and Washington, D.C. have child access prevention laws on the books, and those laws vary. widely in scope and strength. It should be made universal, standardized, enforced, period.
When it comes to gun safety, ignorance is negligence, and negligence is too often fatal.