A four-year-old girl was fatally shot by her two-year-brother at a gas station after he found a gun in the car while her dad paid for fuel.
The children, who were not identified by police, were inside a car at the Eagle Save Mart in Chester, Pennsylvania, about 11am on Tuesday when the two-year-old found the gun.
While handling the legally-owned weapon, he accidentally shot his sister.
The children’s father and another guardian were reportedly inside the store paying at the time of the shooting. The father reportedly ran outside when he heard the gunshot and rushed his little girl to the Crozer-Chester Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Police said the gun was legally owned, but they are still trying to figure out how the boy came in possession of it.
This is a heartbreaking tragedy.
Deaths like this are entirely preventable.
It’s very simple, if your gun is not on your body lock it the fuck up.
I have in my house no less than four gun safes.
Two big Ft Knox in my basement gun room anchored to the slab.
A Cannon 14 gun in my bedroom closet anchored to the joists.
A biometric Liberty pistol box anchored to wall studs by the bed.
In each of my three cars I have a Liberty gun box on a steel cable through the driver’s seat frame.
If my CCW pistol is not on me (when I’m at work for example) it’s locked in that in the car and I have the key in my pocket.
I have two kids, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old.
I own guns to protect my family.
The worst thing I can imagine is one of my kids accidentally getting killed by one of my guns so I separate my children from my guns by a layer of steel sheet or plate and a Every and a key, combination, or fingerprint lock.
I can access any of my guns as fast as I can unlock my cellphone to make a call, but my kids cannot.
Readers of this blog know that you will be hard pressed to find someone more pro-gun than myself.
But that doesn’t mean I believe in abdicating responsibility. Quite the opposite. Because I am so pro-gun I am so pro-responsability.
If you own guns and have kids or have family with kids that come to visit, lock up your guns.
There are plenty of options out there for lock boxes and safes, pick one and use it.
Something strikes me as odd … As per PA law the 2-year-old have been secured in a child seat. How did he even get to the gun?
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Not to trivialize the tragedy by any means. It just seems there may have been more than one failure here.
I was an escape artist from my car seat as a child, even when we were driving.