Thursday, February 13, 2014

Southern Beale's Tennessee Gun Report - First Week of February 2014

A woman, that police reported as the mother of a four-year-old boy that accidentally shot himself, leads officers into her apartment in Parkway Village Monday afternoon during an investigation at the scene.
A woman, that police reported as the mother of a four-year-old boy that accidentally shot himself, leads officers into her apartment in Parkway Village Monday afternoon during an investigation at the scene.

Southern Beale has the usual grisly roundup.

Three accidental shootings this week — two of them fatalities, for those of you keeping track. That’s not counting the usual rash of drug and gang-related gun violence (we get three or four shootings a day here in Nashville).


Local news reports

A 4-year-old boy shot and killed himself Monday afternoon while playing with a gun he found in his Parkway Village apartment, police said.
The incident happened about 1:30 p.m. in the 3900 block of Camelot Lane in the Camelot Manor apartments. Police believe the boy discovered the gun, began playing with it and then pulled the trigger. His mother was with him in the apartment at the time.
Late Monday night, police identified the boy as Joshua Johnson. No charges had been filed Monday.
Has anyone else begun to notice how many of these incidents we're seeing lately? The pro-gun crowd love to write these cases off based on the CDC stats which state that there are only about 600 accidental deaths a year. Yet, between Southern Beale and myself, we seem to be catching nearly that many, and ours is by no means an exhaustive and comprehensive accounting.
What could explain this? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that the revered CDC numbers are under-reported? Is it not possible that their 600 a year is just the tip of the iceberg and in reality there are far more than that?
What do you think? Please leave a comment.

5 comments:

  1. Mikeb, the only way those numbers could be off is if deaths are not being reported. But hospitals and police agencies and so forth report to the CDC and the FBI and other federal departments, and those reports add up to around 600 accidental deaths due to gunfire in a given year. That total is down from decades gone by. The same is true about homicides.

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    1. Oh, is that the ONLY way, Greg? If you say so.

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    2. If you insist that there's some vast pro-gun conspiracy in state and federal agencies to suppress the numbers, you then have to explain why you believe those same agencies would be effective at enforcing gun control.

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  2. I've noticed that even if a young child (4 year old in this case) does get his hands on a gun that he should not be able to; why is it so easy for such a young child to pull the trigger? I never hear that these guns had their safety on, or not, much less a trigger lock, or a gun safe. A gun safe could have saved this child's life.

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  3. Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult. Hold them accountable!

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