Keeping guns out of children’s hands

Charging the mother of a 3-year-old boy with child neglect after he fatally shot himself in his family’s Rock Hill home is a sad but necessary part of the process of making people accountable for the irresponsible handling of their guns.

Investigators with the Rock Hill Police Department say that in November Patricia Carter, 29, left a loaded 9mm pistol on the bed where her 3-year-old son, Sa’Vion, was lying. The child managed to get hold of the gun and fatally shoot himself in the head.

Carter turned herself into authorities last week. She was released on $15,000 bond.

This is a tragic story on several levels. The family, especially Carter herself, must be suffering enormously – to the extent that some might say charging her with criminal neglect merely compounds their grief.

But society has a responsibility as well in this situation. Its laws and how they are applied must reflect concern for the welfare of children and reinforce the need for parents and other adults who care for them to act responsibly and not unnecessarily endanger them.

That applies not only to guns in the home but also to prescription drugs, hazardous chemicals, aggressive dogs and an infinite number of other hazards. If people neglect the children in their care, they need to be held responsible.

But while children are subject to many potential dangers, guns are both especially common and especially lethal objects. Gun owners need to ensure that their firearms are safely locked away and inaccessible to young children.

Carter’s alleged handling of a loaded pistol was the opposite of responsible. To have left the gun on the bed with a 3-year-old child was unthinkable.

Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for more gun safety measures, estimates that two children a week die because of gun violence, in many cases because of accidental shootings such as the one that claimed the life of Sa’Vion Carter. That’s more than 600 children a year, and may well underestimate the number of victims because many cases aren’t officially recorded as gun deaths.

In October, in Rock Hill, police charged the great-aunt of a 2-year-old boy with unlawful carrying of a gun after the child was able to get the gun while in the woman’s car, accidentally shooting the child’s grandmother. Thankfully, the grandmother survived, but the results could have been far more tragic.

Preventing such incidents should be the first priority. If you own a gun or intend to own one, you need to know the basics of gun safety.

Safes and gun boxes are good places to store guns. Some boxes can be programmed to sound an alarm when a child tries to open it.

But less expensive locking devices, such as cable locks and trigger guard locks, are effective at rendering guns inoperable and keeping children from discharging them. In fact, local police will provide a rudimentary gun lock free of charge to anyone who asks for one.

But if owners are careless and children gain access to loaded guns in the home, those responsible must be held accountable. Society demands legal action when children are hurt because they are not properly restrained in a moving vehicle, if they are left unsupervised at a swimming pool or if they are left in a closed car on a hot day.

The same standard should apply to anyone who allows a child access to a gun.

This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Keeping guns out of children’s hands."