Beating the Drum...

8-year-old in critical condition after shooting at Washington school

BREMERTON, Wash. – Police say an 8-year-old girl critically wounded by a gunshot at her elementary school near Seattle apparently was shot accidentally.

Bremerton, Wash., police Lt. Peter Fisher says a gun brought to the school Wednesday discharged while still in a third-grade boy's backpack. Fisher says the bullet hit the nearby girl.

Is it just me, or are we seeing a rash of these "kid brings a gun to school/day care/etc." stories? This one's got it all - a young child with a gun, a critically injured classmate, the classic wringing of hands over WA not having mandatory trigger locks/safe storage/etc. laws... Again, we see more magical thinking: if only we had one more law, this negligent parent would not be negligent! One more law will turn irresponsible parents into responsible ones! One more law will make people who don't us a lick of common sense start thinking!

Let's face facts here: You've got a kid getting access to a loaded firearm who has absolutely concept of the dangers of the gun. The parents have most likely not had any sort of meaningful discussion about firearm safety; they haven't taught their child the four rules; they're certainly not supervising them to any extent (I check my kids' backpacks every morning, and the Mrs. checks them every afternoon).

Mandating that all firearms have trigger locks to stop the 1-in-a-million time that some kid gets ahold of dad's gun isn't going to solve the problem. All it's going to do is toss yet another roadblock to the law abiding gun owner - try getting a trigger lock off a gun when someone's pounding down your door at three in the morning. Meanwhile, the folks that should have this sort of thing crammed down their throats - the irresponsible, the criminal, etc. - will be completely unfazed by the legal requirement of a trigger lock.

It just seems too convenient that a raft of these stories should be coming out at the same time - especially with a ready, canned response from the Brady Campaign...

That is all.

Another dispatch from...

(image courtesy of Robb Allen)