Saw this bit in Twitter:
Slate has a blog post titled: Child shootings: How to report on unintentional child shooting deaths. On its surface, it just a guideline for journos on how to write about accidental “unintentional” child shootings. Then you realize that the who-when-where-what-why-how should be already basic knowledge to anybody working the news. It is this next set of instructions that are the eye opener.
We have come a long way on reducing the firearms accidental deaths, specially in the children demographic, but we also know that shit will happen and there is no 100% safety in this world.
But these people, the same people that would rather set a school on fire rather than allow the Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program be taught to kids, want to make any accidental death a cause to strip rights. Then again, if there were not kid’s corpses, they would not know what to write about.
And somewhat related, Bitter gives us a preview of future journalists in action.
Danse Macabre, once again.
While I disagree with the gun grabbing propagandists, all shootings labeled accidental or unintentional are negligent.
not all. Some (very few) are accidental as in a faulty or old firearm.
True, some are actual accidents, but they’re the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, it is some sort of negligence on the part of the owner when someone is unintentionally struck by a firearm.
That said, as the blog post alluded to, the solution is to educate kids about what to do around guns. Too many of the anti-gunners want to effectively bury their heads in the sand and pretend guns don’t exist, and simply hope that kids won’t ever be exposed to them … and that’s just stupid.
There are more guns in the US than there are cars. We teach kids not to run out into the middle of the street because being hit by a car would injure them. Teaching a kid about safety around guns is the same idea.
In the world of EMS, some departments are moving away from calling a car wreck an “accident” and instead referring to it as a “crash” for the same reason … that most of the time, the driver screwed up somehow. The “accident” could have been prevented.
I see nothing wrong with calling one of these unfortunate incidents either an “unintentional” or “negligent” discharge. Gun owners absolutely should be careful with their firearms. And we, the gun community, need to push for Eddie Eagle to be taught in as many schools as possible.
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mdak06 — Yup, that’s why my ex-wife and I decided it was easier to “gun-proof” (and “drown-proof, etc.) our child than to try and “kid-proof” the entire world.