In America, children have to be 16/17 year old to drive and teenagers have to get a license and take a test. You have to be 18 years old to vote and you have to fill out an application. In many states you have to be 21 years old to drink and often you have to show ID. However you evidently can buy your 5 year old child a rifle anytime.
David Mixner
In Kentucky, a five year old boy was presented a .22 caliber rife as a 'gift'! He then shot and killed his two year old sister. There is no way that this young boy who had no idea of the power of the rifle will ever recover from this tragedy. The parents of the young child has set this young boy's life upside down by giving him this rifle.
In Cumberland County, Ky, a mother stepped outside onto her porch for “no more than 3 minutes.” In those 3 minutes her 5-year-old son shot and killed her 2-year-old-daughter. How did this happen? The boy was given a .22-caliber rifle as a gift. The rifle was kept in the corner of a downstairs room in plain sight because the young boy was used to shooting it and had knowledge of guns. The coroner — who was interviewed by the Lexington Herald-Leader — said, "It's a little rifle for a kid. ... The little boy's used to shooting the little gun."
The mother was apparently unaware that the gun still had a shell inside. The coroner said the death would be declared accidental, that it was “Just one of those crazy accidents.”
This is real child abuse.
In America, children have to be 16/17 year old to drive and teenagers have to get a license and take a test. You have to be 18 years old to vote and you have to fill out an application. In many states you have to be 21 years old to drink and often you have to show ID. However you evidently can buy your 5 year old child a rifle anytime.
Evidently, there is a company that makes guns and related items just for young children which is what this young boy received as a gift from his parents!
Keystone Sporting Arms, based in Milton, Penn., produced 60,000 Crickett and Chipmunk rifles in 2008, according to its website. It also makes guns for adults, but most of its products are geared toward children.
The company’s slogan is “my first rifle” and its website has a “Kids Corner” section where pictures of young boys and girls are displayed, most of them showing the children at shooting ranges and on bird and deer hunts. The smaller rifles are sold with a mount to use at a shooting range.
“The goal of KSA is to instill gun safety in the minds of youth shooters and encourage them to gain the knowledge and respect that hunting and shooting activities require and deserve,” the website said.
No one at the company answered the phone Wednesday.
According to its website, Bill McNeal and his son Steve McNeal decided to make guns for young shooters in the mid-1990s and opened Keystone in 1996 with just four employees, producing 4,000 rifles that year. It now employs about 70 people.
As we say back home, 'this ain't right'.
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