"We've grown up around firearms. We know the safety and we practice it." Yet the 11-year old girl lies in a coma, the bullet removed from her brain on Friday, with a poor prognosis. Maddy Montanye was shot in the head on Thursday by her father, Jesse. Jesse's .22 caliber pistol had jammed, and he was trying to get it unjammed while sitting in the living room across from his daughter. That's when the weapon discharged and the bullet penetrated Maddy's head. Several other family members where in the home at the time, but were not injured. For reasons that are not yet clear, it took 45 minutes to airlift Maddy to the Hennepin County Medical Center. The hospital is about a 55 minute drive from the home. That will have to be investigated. Surgeons removed the bullet and have removed part of her skull in order to relieve pressure on her brain. She is in critical condition. In the state of Minnesota, in a typical year, about 700 or so people will end up with a bullet somewhere in their body. Gun proponents will tell you that some of these are criminals shot by law abiding gun owners who were defending their homes from armed invaders. But the truth is, almost none of them are. Indeed, about half of those injured are shot in a similar manner to the little fifth grader up in Pine County; They are shot and wounded or killed because of the accidental discharge of a firearm. So in order to preserve our ability to kill someone who enters our home, who we believe, perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly, to not belong there and whose presence we believe requires their immediate death, we have adopted a system in which about 0.007% of our population is shot yearly for no good reason. The total murder rate in Minnesota for this time period is roughly 0.0022%, and that includes ALL murders, a tiny portion of which are related to home invasions. If you are a man over the age of 20 you are more likely to be one of the gun owners; You can have your toy and not suffer the consequences. Most of the people who are shot by accident are children between the ages of 10 and 19. (Some of the injuries are hunting accidents, of course.) Of course, you may consider the accidental shooting of your child to be a problem. A problem, perhaps, you should have thought of before you purchased the gun to begin with. The available reports do not indicate if the pistol was registered or if any incidents like this one have happened in this home previously. The gun had been malfunctioning, [Uncle] Jason Montanye said.... "We've grown up around firearms," he said. "We know the safety and we practice it."
Should we ban cars too? Accidents kill over 30,000 people, every year. How about prescription drugs? They leave hundreds of thousands dead. Or commercial airlines? Never know when you might go down in a fireball. Why not ban factories, while we're at it? Industrial accidents kill thousands. Mining accidents are another big killer. So forget about coal, iron, aluminum, gold, silver. ....
That would depend on whether you regard personal firearms to be as important to you and your way of life as automobiles, availability of prescription drugs, airplanes, factories and mines. Jesse Montanye made his choice.
Is personal safety important? Do you value commuting to work more than protecting your own life? Is life not the fundamental reason to engage in all those other dubious activities which run a far higher risk of death than the guns we use to protect ourselves with? Besides, gun ownership is guaranteed by the Constitution. So the point is moot. Unfortunate as it is, shit happens.
tinkerbell, did you write this article? just curious if there was a source or whether you were the original author.
False equivalency. When was the last time you or someone you know made use of a car, airliner, prescriptions drugs, or anything coming out of a mine or factory? Compare that the to the last time you or anyone you know had to use a personal firearm in one manner or another for personal safety? Aside from feeling cool all over.
Why bother with health or fire insurance, then? When was the last time your house burned down? See how dumb that argument is? A gun is very much similar to an insurance policy on your health or home. In the rare event something bad happens, your ass is covered.