Reports: Father accidentally shoots, kills 10-month-old son in front of family

[trailmonkee]

Source: us news

A 10-month-old boy was shot and killed by his father Thursday in an apparent accident at a Nashville, Tenn., hotel, local media reported.

Two police detectives from the Hermitage Precinct were close to the hotel when the call went out and made it to the scene within about three minutes but were unable to resuscitate the child, NBC affiliate WSMV-TV Channel 4 reported.
The child's mother Jacquelin Bass, 28, and the couple's other sons, aged 3 and 2, were in the room when the gun went off, the station said.

The baby was shot once in the chest as his father, Larry Bass, 30, handled the semi-automatic handgun, the Nashville Tennessean reported.

Read more: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/15/17323505-reports-father-accidentally-shoots-kills-10-month-old-son-in-front-of-family?lite

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The Sad thing is, This poor Father was either taught or told that he was keeping his family safer by having that gun around.... what a fucked up lesson to learn.

[AndyA]

1. Obviously, the 10 month old child should have had a gun to protect himself

Another terribly sad, tragic story. Another life lost because of a gun.

Another example of a family devastated by the false belief that having a gun makes you safer.

Very sad, hope this family finds the strength to move forward, but so often something like this destroys the family, another wonderful benefit of our "come and get 'em" gun obsessed society.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

2. They brought danger onto themselves....

....on the off chance someone would bring danger onto them.

Sad.

[Katashi_itto]

3. Trying to decide if I should be sympathetic or is this simply Darwinism at work.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

11. Sad AND Darwinism at work.

Why would someone be fiddling with a gun while it was pointed at their family?

[Myrina]

13. My thought exactly.

Messing with your gun in a space as small as a hotel room, with CHILDREN nearby?

[Katashi_itto]

15. Agree with both of you

[ChairmanAgnostic]

18. dit toe.

[DotGone]

21. His Precious needed some lovin

[mike dub]

25. Sad story, and Darwinism in its cruelest form

I've generally understood Darwinism to be: father in hotel is fiddling with gun and accidentally fatally shoots *himself. (Darwin Award)

But this is Darwinism with a cruel twist: a child of the father's "line" (as they used to say) was accidentally killed by him / will not have the opportunity to pass on the family line.

[juajen]

36. Perhaps the child was not "of his line"? Just sayin'.

Something is wrong with this story.

[TheCowsCameHome]

4. Come on gun humpers,

let's hear it for packing heat everywhere.

[spicegal]

5. Well I guess freedom means the freedom to be stupid by thinking that keeping a loaded

weapon around you're family will keep them safer. Another sad statistic supporting the argument that keeping guns in your household will significantly increase the likelihood that someone you love will be killed or injured, not the bad guy.

[motocicleta2]

6. How terrible. nt

[Bosso 63]

7. A child is dead and two young children and their parents will never be the same.

ever.

[Archae]

8. Sounds like the usual...

"Hold m'beer!"

Only the baby got the short end of the stick.
This Larry Bass is obviously a total idiot.

[raidert05]

9. There is no accident here...

He pointed the gun in the direction of a human being whether He intended to fire the weapon or not....he shouldn't have....people should have to go through gun safety courses and be vetted through live fire training before they can own a firearm.

[Myrina]

14. If one needs a class to learn not to mess with a weapon with children nearby,

especially in as small a space as hotel rooms tend to be, one should probably not be considered smart enough to own a gun in the first place.

[raidert05]

16. You are 100% correct

But it sure would help if he is prosecuted to show proof he was competent in the handling of a weapon.

[politicaljunkie41910]

47. I saw an episode of Judge Judy the other day where a young girl had gotten a job

as a security guard and needed to take a one day gun safety class. She was sueing the owner of the "gun safety school" because they kept canceling her class and she lost the job. The girl was like 19 yrs old and a flake herself. My thought was please tell me what state these people are from so I can make sure that I never visit there. You've got armed security guards with one day of gun safety training when they've never ever handled a gun before. I'm certain it is a Red State, but I need to know which one for my safety.

[samsingh]

34. i don't think any number of gun safety courses are going to stop tragedies like this

when there are lots of guns, there will be lots of gun accidents

[L0oniX]

39. Double action semi autos and safeties are there for a reason. Keeping one in the chamber?

If you are then you better have a double action. You can neglect a safety but you can't change a double action semi automatic to something else ...unlike a revolver with the trigger pulled back.

[Blandocyte]

10. Horrible tragedy

That whole family's lives changed in one split second. Prayers to all of them. I can't imagine the depth of the grief and trauma they must be feeling.

IMO, our gun culture tries to make it seem as if guns are almost toys. That helps sell more guns. "Shooting sports are safe and fun, etc." We hear it over and over until some gun owners lose the feeling of danger around a firearm and maybe start thinking of it not as a dangerous weapon so much as merely a loud toy.

When we lose that feeling of danger and get too comfortable with anything dangerous, we'll neglect to follow safety rules. With guns, we'll forget "Never point a gun at anything you don't want to shoot" and that "all guns are loaded until you see that they are not." The consequences are unspeakably tragic when these simple rules are not followed.

[LeftinOH]

12. "...the gun went off". Whenever it's an accident, it's always

the gun's fault for "going off". So, guns DO kill people.

[KansDem]

19. I wonder why a husband and father...

...would be waving a loaded gun around in a hotel room with his wife and children present.

I just don't understand it.

[Hoyt]

20. Sounds like abuse, and is not uncommon.

[bobclark86]

22. Except for rare occasions...

and I mean in cases of mechanical failure (look for "Remington Under Fire" by CNBC a few years ago about dirty, gummed-up Remington 700 bolt-action rifles firing when the bolt is moved for unloading), guns NEVER just "go off."

This is unfortunately a simple case of "user error" like putting a knife in your plugged-in toaster. Some asshole pulled the trigger. Now his child is dead.

Seems the order of the day should be remove kids, prosecute, incarcerate, give counseling so he doesn't shoot up firefighters 20 years from now.

[primavera]

24. Sure, today he's "some asshole"

Yesterday, he was one of your buds, a fellow gun enthusiast whose 2nd amendment rights could not be infringed, remember?

[bobclark86]

26. Yup, one of my buds...

who waves their guns in front of their children. Because I associate with those people all the time. Yup... You'd have us believe I shot the child by proxy.

Actually, I don't hang out with gun owners, except my sister who votes Socialist and works direct care at the Arc; and my mom, who's a Democrat and works for the county Office for the Aging. My sister likes muzzle-loader rifles and mom has a bolt-action .22 for the coyotes attacking her neighbor's Chihuahuas.

I don't support dumb gun laws like complete confiscation (You ever lose your remote? That's how big some handguns are... short of tearing up everyone's floorboard, you aren't going to get them all.) and New York's "You can own a 10-round, but you can only put 7 in it" bullcrap. I also think an AWB is pretty pointless (Just get a wood stock for your Mini-14 and you're fine), but I understand the argument for it and I won't stand in the way. However, I'm fully on board with universal background checks and strict training for pistol permits (I have to prove I can drive a car before I go anywhere, and I had to take a live-fire class to get a hunting license, why not a handgun?).

But no, I own a gun, so I must be on this fucktard's side. The world is black and white.

[primavera]

30. The gun lobby isn't some penniless, insignificant fringe element...

... despite their best efforts to place themselves outside the mainstream of public opinion. Rather, the gun lobby dominates American politics because gun rights advocates (collectively - obviously not every individual gun owner) give generously to organizations like the NRA; they make guns a single issue voting priority and threaten candidates who advocate for gun control and support candidates who oppose it; they resist efforts to require background checks, to close gun show loopholes; they fight tooth and nail against any effort to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines, and other military-style firearms; they oppose mandatory gun safety education for gun owners, trigger locks, and any other safety devices; they oppose licensing or registration of privately-owned guns; they reject limits on how many guns a person may have or regulations governing their transfer; and they fail to stand up and publicly dissociate themselves from the demented ravings of the NRA when it presumes to speak for them. Clearly, the gun rights community is, at least overall, in general, a political force working their asses off to ensure that anyone and everyone can get as many guns as they want with little or no restrictions or requirements.

True, gun rights advocates are not the direct, proximate cause of any given individual picking up a gun and shooting their son with it. But make no mistake: they are the "but for" cause in fact, without whose zealous, militant efforts to keep guns widely and freely available to any and all, the US would have sensible gun control laws like every other developed nation on earth and incidents such as this one would be rare, freak occurrences, as they are in every other developed nation on earth, instead of being the daily norm.

[Paladin]

32. Well Put. (nt)

[bobclark86]

37. Yeah, they aren't exactly hurting right now...

I saw a post on a "pro-gun" forum I look at (since the '08 election, I just go there because I think they're stupid and I'm looking for a quick laugh) whining how the NRA ONLY spent something like $50 million on lobbying last year. The post was complete with graph showing this tiny little sliver of current spending up against a HUGE bar of Mayor Bloomberg's entire fortune.

I was never alive during the days when the NRA focused on their core mission — training marksmen after the Civil War to avoid the embarrassment like that of Union troops early on in that conflict. Many of the smarter old hunters I know turned in their cards after President Obama got the nomination, not because they liked him (they all hated him, actually), but because they couldn't stand the politicization of the group and the rampant racism of many followers.

One point you brought up about the "rare, freak occurrences": Relatively-speaking, they are already a freak occurrence and are down from historic highs (more than 3,200 were killed in 1931... and our population has grown 155 percent since then). I could point out that in 2007, 603 of 123,000 accidental deaths involved a negligent firearm discharge — and 989 were killed by falling out of chairs and beds 709 drowned in swimming pools — but that honestly is a deflection from what we're talking about, and I'd risk being labeled "an enabling apologist" or something like that. (All figures from the National Safety Council's 2011 Injury Report)

Your point — and I fully agree — is 603 deaths are too many from people being stupid with items which are designed to kill things (whether it be a deer, a person or a piece of paper). It apparently takes a rocket surgeon to figure out someone needs to take responsibility for being a dipshit. That's why I like training classes (again, historically the NRA's forte, but it's gotten lost in the mix by the dipshits they keep electing to the board). If stricter licensing requirements could help weed out some of these morons, I would be in favor.

One last point: Go ahead and point to the "but for" forces of the world — I again agree with you about the rabid "HANDS OFF MA' GUNZ, GRR!!" groups. Just please don't automatically lump me in with them — which was the impression I got from your first post. Was it Kikkergard or Dick Van Patten who said "When you label me, you negate me?"

(Fortunately, I have thick skin to go with my thick ass, heh)

[primavera]

42. One of my perennial philosophical debates with myself

Is how far to carry personal responsibility from the "but for" cause in fact perspective. In law school, the classic example they give to illustrate the point is the physician who refuses to provide a pregnant woman with a requested abortion, the woman gives birth to the child who then grows up to be a serial killer. Had the physician performed the requested abortion, the child would never have grown up to become a serial killer and his victims would still be alive, yet the physician is clearly very distantly removed from the actions of the killer, so it's absurd to blame him. The contrasting case is the kid who throws a lighted fire cracker into a crowd of people. The first person catches it and throws it to the next person, who then throws it to someone else, who throws it again, and so on, until it finally blows up in somebody's face and blinds the last person to catch it. Although the kid didn't actually throw the firework at the specific person who was blinded - somebody else did that - the kid is still ultimately responsible because, had he not thrown the firecracker in the first place, no one would have been blinded.

How does this sort of thing apply in real life? If you support the NRA, do you share some responsibility for their lobbying activities? Clearly I think so, but even I'm not sure where I draw the dividing line. If you purchase a gun, you're putting money into the hands of a company that will likely spend a fair amount of money on lobbying for things that you may not approve of. Do you bear any responsibility for that? I don't know. I mean, I can tell you that I won't support Verizon with my custom because I know that they will spend the money I give them supporting Teabaggers and they will allow law enforcement to tap my phone without warrant or probable cause, so I don't feel like I can support them in good conscience. Does the same reasoning apply to supporting gun manufacturers? Honestly, I don't know, you can keep yourself awake at nights trying to sort this one out.

[bobclark86]

45. That's why I used to like Ruger...

Back in the day when the founder told the New York Times "No honest man needs more than 10 rounds." After that (which pre-dated the first AWB), there was a major boycott on Ruger products until after the old man died in the mid-2000s.

That boycott is when I bought my Ruger. Old Bill Ruger Sr. had some very progressive ideas. Since the old man died, though, they introduced their first over-10 round rifle magazines for the public and started offering ARs (which I'm sure will make the old man roll over in his grave -- he was a walnut and steel kind of guy).

Also having been boycotted was Smith and Wesson, when they signed an agreement with the Clinton administration (and built locks into their revolvers).

Sure, they now give some money to the NRA, much like how the owner of Poland Spring gave money to defeat the big soda ban in NYC. But you're right — it's a tough line to draw.

[loudsue]

23. Good point. Guns DO kill people.

The NRA should have been the victim of that shooting.

[samsingh]

35. guns kills people and people use guns to kill people

[KurtNYC]

44. It loaded itself, un-did its safety, aimed and fired itself

The gun was probably jealous of the attention the baby was receiving.

[primavera]

17. Yet another law-abiding member of the well regulated militia...

... whose right to keep and bear arms gun advocates will kill to protect.

[Iliyah]

27. Guns - macho

macho - guns. Gun ownership now out weighs hunting, i.e. protection. NRA protection from the guverment, ding ding ding, profits.s

Sad, just sad. The NRA will blame it on video games and luberals.

[SunSeeker]

28. So sad...and so predictable.

You are 42 times more likely to be the victim of your own gun than using it on that mythical intruder.

[Judi Lynn]

29. Similar story from December:Father fatally shoots son outside Pennsylvania gun store

Father fatally shoots son outside Pennsylvania gun store

(Reuters) - A seven-year-old boy was shot to death by his father on Saturday in the parking lot of a gun store in western Pennsylvania in an apparent accident, state police told Reuters.

Craig Allen Loughrey was shot in the chest by a handgun his father, Joseph V. Loughrey, 44, was holding as they were getting into the family vehicle at Twig's Reloading Den in Mercer, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, a Pennsylvania State Police spokesman said.

The boy died at the scene of the shooting, which happened at 10:50 a.m. His father was questioned by investigators, but police said the evidence pointed to an accident.

The two were from nearby Fredonia, Pa., police said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/09/us-usa-pennsylvania-shooting-idUSBRE8B800S20121209

(Short article, no more at link.)

[cadaverdog]

43. And these tragedies are only the ones that make the news

Imagine the numbers of "close calls" that are never reported because they "dodged a bullet."
And please, let's not call these "accidents."
Years ago when I was looking at purchasing a motor cycle I stopped into a dealer on a Monday morning, and I was struck by the number of new bikes outside the service door that had various damages to them. When I mentioned this to the salesman, he said,

"Yeah, they pick up their new bikes on Friday and wipe out over the weekend. They just don't realize they need to learn to ride safely. The lucky ones show up here on Monday morning."

I didn't ask him about the "unlucky" ones.

[Thinkingabout]

31. The hype of NRA yelling more guns, people have said to me you gotta get a gun and

They have very rarely said I need proper instruction to have the gun in my possession. I don't think accidents like this is going to end soon and gun manufacturers are pushing in order to
sell more guns. We are becoming an armed society, untrained and with false sense of security which will result in more deaths. This same loaded gun could have gotten in the hands of the older children.

[allan01]

33. re::ND bills could make abortion rules strictest in US

Don't jump on me. This post is just my opinion, which I am entitled to. Thanks.

[L0oniX]

38. Never point or sweep a weapon at or over a person ...loaded or unloaded. Always assume it's loaded.

This guy is stupid and or thought he was better than the other "trained" gun owners who follow the rules. Guns are to be locked away when ever there are children and or young adults in the home or dwelling. No excuse for this idiot!

[DesertRat]

40. horrifying story

[ManiacJoe]

41. Gun safety rules...

http://www.itstactical.com/warcom/firearms/colonel-jeff-cooper-carry-conditions-and-firearm-safety/

Violate one of them and you will scare folks.
Violate two or more and someone will probably get shot.

[harmonicon]

46. Imagine how much worse it would have been if he weren't a responsible gun owner... or...

hmmm... doesn't add up, does it?