DETROIT (AP) — Police say a young girl has fatally shot herself in Detroit after finding a handgun under her grandmother’s pillow.
Detroit police Sgt. Michael Woody says in an email that police responded around midnight Tuesday to a home on the city’s northwest side and the girl was taken by medics to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Police say the girl was 4 years old. Broadcasters, citing family members at the scene, report the girl was 5.
According to the initial investigation, police say the girl found the gun in an upstairs bedroom and shot herself while the grandmother was downstairs. Police say two other young children, ages 1 and 3, also were upstairs at the time. They weren’t injured.
The shooting is under investigation.
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Another easily avoidable tragedy. Another irresponsible gun owner. Child protective services should be all over this for the sake of the other two babies in that home. Makes me sad and angry.
Gunmakers own the patents that would have rendered this gun locked in the hand of a child. Like the automakers before them that owned the patents to safer steering columns, dashboards, air bags and seat belts that would have saved thousands of lives, the gunmakers too have a duty to maximize shareholder returns on investments.
But it is Congress’ duty to act in the public interest to compel gunmakers to make less dangerous products. So it is Congress that is the primary irresponsible party for the death of this little child. Her grandmother is accountable for her death alone, but an NRA-owned Congress is responsible for the deaths of this child and the many other children who kill themselves, playmates and others with firearms that should be locked by personalized technology.
I’m sure that grandma is heartbroken, but she still needs to go to jail.
Guns don’t make us safer.
Any responsible parent will store their weapons in a gun safe, which are readily availible in the same places where guns are sold. I know many think we should make gun manufacturures integrate devices like fingerprint scanners into their products, but that technology is currently too imperfect for such an application and will do nothing about the millions and milliions of firearms with no such technology already in circulation.