Gun ownership is not free in America, and too often children pay the price.

In 2005, 173 children and teens were killed accidentally by gunfire. Another 3,000 suffered accidental gunshot wounds, but survived.

Gracie Elizabeth Rhodes will be one of those counted who tragically lost her young life in 2008.

In the Asheville Citizen-Times:

A man was apparently cleaning his .22 caliber rifle Thursday when it accidentally fired and killed his 15-month-old daughter sitting nearby, investigators said Friday.

Rutherford County sheriff’s deputies responded to a residence on Rock Road at 1:30 p.m. and found the man with his daughter who had suffered a single gunshot wound to the stomach, Chief Deputy Jeff Bunchanan said.

The girl, Gracie Elizabeth Rhodes, was taken to Rutherford Hospital, where she died during surgery.

“Basically, it’s been indicated that he was cleaning a .22 rifle and it accidentally discharged,� said Buchanan.

The girl was apparently sitting nearby in a high chair, Buchanan said. Her father, Jonathan Rhodes, rushed her to a neighbor’s home to get help and they called 911, he said.

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Was the gun kept in the home for self-protection?

If so, it was used to shoot a 12-year-old girl instead.

From WBIR NBC-10 (Knoxville):

An 11-year-old boy has been charged with aggravated assault after shooting a 12-year-old girl in the head Wednesday, Police Chief Ted Boyd said.

The victim was in critical condition Wednesday night at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, where Boyd said doctors should know more about her condition within the next 24 hours.

The hospital could not comment further on her condition.

The boy had access to his parents’ gun at their home on Mable Drive in the Lake Forest Estates subdivision. The victim was a neighborhood friend.

Boyd said police may adjust the charges, depending on the girl’s condition. He said police are also consulting with the district attorney about possible charges against the parents who owned the gun.

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Today’s Salt Lake Tribune hopes that “advocates for reasonable gun laws will carry the day.”

We’ll see:

There’s a gunfight shaping up in the Utah Legislature. Gun advocates who want Utah to continue to arm the nation versus government bureaucrats and gun-control advocates who see the dangers in Utah’s permissive concealed-carry permitting system.

Utah permits are the Tootsie Pops of concealed-carry permits: easily obtained, inexpensive, long-lasting and unhealthy, for Utahns and the nation as a whole. More than a third of Utah’s 100,000-plus permits are in the hands of non-residents, who bypass more-stringent requirements in their home states. That doesn’t seem fair.

The opening shots were fired last week at a meeting of the Legislature’s Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice interim committee.

Lt. Douglas Anderson, manager of the state Bureau of Criminal Identification, said his agency, with just three firearms investigators, has a difficult time regulating out-of-state instructors. In fact, they don’t, relying instead on what Anderson termed a “tattle-tale” system. That’s why, if we can’t assure that non-residents are adequately trained, those applicants should have to come to Utah to obtain a Utah permit.

Dee Rowland, board chairwoman for the Gun Violence Prevention Center, argued that the five-year duration of Utah permits is too long for non-resident permit holders. While technology allows daily criminal background checks on resident permit holders, crimes committed by non-residents that would require forfeiture of a permit can’t be detected until they seek a renewal.

Rowland is right. A lot can happen in five years. Non-resident permit holders should be subjected to more-frequent reviews. Richard Townsend, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Public Safety, suggested that the state stop issuing non-resident permits, enabling resident applicants to be served faster and more efficiently. That’s the best idea yet.

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A discussion about folks who want to carry guns out in the open, in Utah and elsewhere.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

My 20-month-old nephew loves Elmo and Dora. He also has started making explosion and gunfire noises. 

I get the inevitability of little boys’ fascination for guns. 

What I can’t figure out are the men and sometimes women who don’t grow out of the gun-crazy stage of childhood, who need to have a handgun on their hips at all times, who need their neighbors to notice. 

Ten of them stormed the West Valley City Council meeting last week to back up Travis Deveraux, a 36-year-old credit card company worker who was detained by police last December while exercising with his Smith & Wesson. 

“I don’t blame them for being a little bit extra careful,” Deveraux said. 

“But there’s a line they crossed between being a little bit careful and a little bit too careful.” 

I thought there was no such thing as “too careful” - especially with a gun. But the OpenCarry crowd’s literal interpretation of the “right to bear arms” and self-appointment as our “well-regulated militia” undercuts careful law enforcement, membership in a civil society and even reason. 

It’s in the Constitution, their thinking goes. They are “peaceably going about their business while armed,” standing on the watchtower, the last line of defense against government tyranny and crazed criminals. We should thank them. 

I understand the thrill of firing a Glock (I’ve done it), the euphoria of hitting the center of a target (and that too), generations of family deer-hunting weekends and the legitimate self-preservation instincts of Utah’s elected concealed weapon carriers. 

But the OpenCarry movement is a mystery to me. What kind of psychology - overcompensation, paranoia, antisocial personality - is behind that thinking? 

…

“Second Amendment questions aside,” says Springwood, a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, “the real debate seems to me a cultural and social one: Do we want a society in which it is an unconscious emblem of everyday life that folks move about with ‘portable killing machines’ strapped to their bodies?“ 

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Late Model race car driver Owen Miller has reportedly recovered from a serious, self-inflicted shotgun blast to his left foot, and is expected to race today (rescheduled from a rain-out yesterday) at 2pm in the Valpak 150 in Boston.

From the Danville Register & Bee:

… The Emporia native was working on his car on March 15 along side his brother-in-law, trying to get ready for South Boston’s May 24 opener, when they decided to take a break and go shoot at some clay pigeons.

Trapshooting was nothing new for Miller, who grew up hunting and considers himself a safe handler of firearms. And the 200 acres that surround his home were as perfect a place as any to do it.

But then it happened, and Miller is still not sure how.

Miller remembers that his shotgun was resting at his side and pointing toward the ground. But whether he brushed up against something, jarring or accidentally squeezing the trigger remains unknown. All that was certain was the bang and the pain, as the shotgun discharged into the outside of Miller’s left foot by the ankle — giving new meaning to the term lead foot — as pellets of birdshot filled the appendage.

Miller was still standing after the blast, but when his brother-in-law asked if he was OK, the reality of what happened hit him harder than the shot he had just taken.

“I said, ‘No, I just shot myself in the foot,’� Miller recalled. “I laid down on the ground and tried to get my wits about me rather than passing out.�

At the hospital, the doctors could only do so much.

They cleaned and trimmed what flesh they could. But the shot had ruined the bones where it hit, turning some to dust and scattering shards of others. And when they were done, Miller was left with a three-inch wide, rectangular hole on the side of his foot that he could see light through. He was also left with 16 of the birdshot pellets left in his foot — remnants that the doctors couldn’t get to without doing more ligament and tissue damage than it was worth.

“At first everybody was really concerned. They couldn’t believe it happened,� Miller said. “I was really overwhelmed and very appreciative of how much they cared.

“But after they figured out I was actually going to be able to walk again, that’s when the jokes started to come.�

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