Toddler Shoots Dad And Makes Me Believe Even More In Gun Control

Welp! A toddler accidentally shot his father in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Arkansas.

According to RawStory.com:

According to Public Information Officer Drew Latch, police responded to a call in the Arkansas Walmart parking lot at 11:04 a.m. on Saturday. When officers arrived, they found a man, identified as Monty Wheeler, who had been shot in the back.

Upon further investigation, officers determined that the man had actually been shot by his child, age unknown, who attempted to enter his father’s truck by scaling up the driver’s side. The child accidentally grabbed hold of an unsecured and loaded shotgun, which discharged and struck his father in the back.

Obviously, this incident is the fault of the incomprehensibly idiotic dad who left a loaded shotgun, in a car, in reach of his toddler and not, in essence, the fault of the actual gun or the kid. Why the hell are you taking a gun to Wal-Mart, anyway? More importantly WHY ARE YOU DRIVING AROUND WITH A LOADED SHOTGUN WITH YOUR KID IN THE CAR?  I mean, yes, blah blah blah gun safety, responsible gun ownership, etc, etc. This dude Monty Wheeler is evidently not a paragon of good judgement or exemplary gun ownership in any way. But I’m still betting he wouldn’t have ended up shot in the back if he didn’t actually own a gun.

I get the “right to bear arms” in principle, I really do. And I think people should be able to own guns. But I also think those people should keep their damn guns locked up at all times unless the gun is actively needed to shoot a deer or a duck or whatever the hell it was bought to shoot things with. The father in this story is lucky that he wasn’t killed or injured more seriously. Yeah, it was an accident (One of a few similar “accidents we’ve written about in the past few months, might I add…see the gun in a kindergartener’s backpack and the four-year-old who accidentally killed his father) and yeah, the whole “Wal-Mart parking lot” aspect makes it kinda funny, but the truth of the matter is that this would never have happened if there wasn’t a gun present.

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