Children With Access To Guns

Children With Access To Guns

I sometimes get asked, "What's wrong with laws requiring guns to be kept locked up when children are home alone?" I agree that it is looking for trouble to leave a gun somewhere that child can get access to it--but there are circumstances like this one below that the situation could have been far worse if this ten year old wasn't able to defend himself and his little sister. From July 17, 2009 WAFB channel 9:

PORT ALLEN, LA (WAFB) - A ten-year-old boy left home alone with his sister used his mother's gun to shoot an intruder in the face, police said.

Late Tuesday, West Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's deputies received a call to a Port Allen apartment complex after several shots rang out from inside one of the apartments. "You are out here trying to work and for someone to come and do that and invade your home is very hard," the children's mother said. She asked to not be identified.

Deputies say Dean Favron and Roderick Porter knocked several times on the apartment door. The two young children, a ten-year-old boy and eight-year-old girl, stood on the other side, terrified. "He told his sister to be quiet and seconds later, they started kicking on the door and finally kicked the door in," said Sheriff Mike Cazes. The two children ran to their mother's bedroom closet.

In a panic, the ten-year-old grabbed his mother's gun for protection. "He did what I told him to do. I never told him to get the gun, but thank God he did," she said. Once the two suspects opened the door, threatening the kids, deputies say the boy fired a bullet into the lip of Roderick Porter. The two men were taken to the hospital by a third suspect, who is a 15-year-old juvenile. Once they got to the hospital, they were later arrested. "It's just hard. I don't understand why they would do that. I know they have little brothers and sisters and they wouldn't want anyone to break into their house," said the mother.

Yes, such incidents are relatively rare--just like accidental shootings by kids are relatively rare. But they are common enough that the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog has a label for it: minor defender--and we have 17 examples that we have collected.