Father accidentally kills 7yo son at gun store..

[Dreamliner]

So sad and so careless. Guns don't "accidentally" go off and fire on their own, keep your d@#n fingers off the trigger (and of course mind all of the other safety rules).

[Excaliber]

I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy for the dad yet because I'm having a hard time coming up with a plausible event sequence for a pure accident from the details provided so far. Lots of people put guns in their center consoles. Very few shoot a family member while doing so.

The father's reported statement to investigators that he didn't think a round was still in the chamber makes me suspect a deliberate trigger pull, whether in horseplay or just an irresistible urge to dry fire in an unsafe circumstance.

If that turns out to be the case, it would take it out of the accident category and into criminally negligent homicide.

[Gameover]

This little boy didn't need to die and I feel the father should face some sort of charge ontop of the guilt he will feel for the rest of his life. "I thought it was empty" never think anything!

[gigag04]

it would take it out of the accident category and into criminally negligent homicide.

Yup.

[srothstein]

I feel the father should face some sort of charge ontop of the guilt he will feel for the rest of his life.

I disagree. The purpose of punishment is to correct unacceptable behavior. Nothing that could come from a charge would ever be more punishing than what the father will do to himself from now on. I honestly think this will be a self-correcting problem because I would be willing to bet the father will never pick up another gun in his life.

[Gameover]

So to my understanding you think this is acceptable behavior?

[Jumping Frog]

So to my understanding you think this is acceptable behavior?

He never said that. He said it was self-correcting behavior.

[VMI77]

The media does this all the time. They use the passive voice making the person sound like a disinterested third party while the gun becomes an animate object, "going off" and "firing" without any input from humans.

And it's not an accident. This language is used intentionally to convey the notion that guns are inherently dangerous by merely existing and could "go off" any time. The legacy media anti-gun campaign is omnipresent and unrelenting.

[TexasCajun]

Ugh! Completely sick to my stomach. I pray every day that my actions will not be the cause of harm to my family. And since 'faith without works is dead', I work every day to maintain a careful discipline where my firearms are concerned so that I don't have to cross that bridge. It really is the ultimate nightmare that I can't see ever being able to wake up from. My thoughts & prayers go out to the man & his family.

[RKirkwood]

This is sad, he and his family will have to live with this forever.

The wording doesn't give a clear picture of what happen and with the press we will never get a clear answer.

[jmra]

This is sad, he and his family will have to live with this forever.

The wording doesn't give a clear picture of what happen and with the press we will never get a clear answer.

What do we need to know? ND, dead kid.

[rm9792]

I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy for the dad yet because I'm having a hard time coming up with a plausible event sequence for a pure accident from the details provided so far. Lots of people put guns in their center consoles. Very few shoot a family member while doing so.

The father's reported statement to investigators that he didn't think a round was still in the chamber makes me suspect a deliberate trigger pull, whether in horseplay or just an irresistible urge to dry fire in an unsafe circumstance.

If that turns out to be the case, it would take it out of the accident category and into criminally negligent homicide.

Picture how you normally open a console. palm flat, fingers facing towards dash so your index can relaease the catch. Ok, now put a pistol in your hand, index finger on the trigger. you are likely palm down and fingers toward.....the passenger door so your thumb can release the catch. Guess who was in the passenger seat chaest about muzzle high? Also plausible is he was pointing naturally towards the passenger area with his right hand as his body was turned to open the console left handed. I can think of several scenarios where the idiot would have been pointing at his kid while attempting to store his pistol.

[Excaliber]

I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy for the dad yet because I'm having a hard time coming up with a plausible event sequence for a pure accident from the details provided so far. Lots of people put guns in their center consoles. Very few shoot a family member while doing so.

The father's reported statement to investigators that he didn't think a round was still in the chamber makes me suspect a deliberate trigger pull, whether in horseplay or just an irresistible urge to dry fire in an unsafe circumstance.

If that turns out to be the case, it would take it out of the accident category and into criminally negligent homicide.

Picture how you normally open a console. palm flat, fingers facing towards dash so your index can relaease the catch. Ok, now put a pistol in your hand, index finger on the trigger. you are likely palm down and fingers toward.....the passenger door so your thumb can release the catch. Guess who was in the passenger seat chaest about muzzle high? Also plausible is he was pointing naturally towards the passenger area with his right hand as his body was turned to open the console left handed. I can think of several scenarios where the idiot would have been pointing at his kid while attempting to store his pistol.

We don't have enough information to support or refute your position theories, but they're a good try at making some sense of the events and as credible as anything else we have at the moment.

I'm skeptical about the console latch being opened with the thumb because from the normally seated position you'd have to twist the wrist unnaturally to do that. When I open my console, my fingers are pointing at the dash. Even from outside my car, I still open the console this way. That doesn't make it the only way of course, and certainly some folks may do it differently.

Even putting aside multiple possible contortions around opening the console to explain how the gun came to be aimed at the child with a finger inside the trigger guard, all of which constitute gross negligence, help me out with an innocent way to explain how the trigger got depressed enough to either trigger a DA striker or hammer, or release the sear on an SA (we don't know what kind of gun was involved).

Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying - your theories are as good as any we have right now. What bothers me is that I can't come up with an event sequence that any responsible person with an IQ above room temperature would have engaged in to produce the tragic result. While I'm sure the father is grieving, I can't help thinking that whatever he did went well beyond a momentary lapse of safety awareness.
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There's also no information available on whether drugs or alcohol was involved. Either would go a long way toward making what happened easier to understand but still not accept.

[rm9792]

Were you picturing trying to open the console with a gun in your hand? There are no available fingers since they are wrapped around the grip, leaving the thumb as the only available finger. I can hold most of my guns with the thumb free, but only if my finger is on the trigger for leverage (very bad plan). I am in no way trying to excuse the guy, I have no sympathy for him at all, zero, nada, only for the kid. I was merely trying to think of ways this could have happened. I also wasnt claiming to know what happened, you are correct that we dont have near enough info and likely never will to figure it out. Need to know shot angle, where kid was sitting, hand positions, etc. My whole point was to open the thought processes of others who are stuck trying to even see if this is plausible.
Dont kill yourself trying to figure out stupid, cant be done.

[Excaliber]

New details have been released:

The child was in the rear seat of the vehicle and was buckling himself into his safety seat.

The father "placed a pistol on the console when the handgun went off."

Unless that handgun had much more innate initiative than any gun I've ever seen, there was a finger on the trigger when that happened.

I'll be interested to hear any theories on contorted console opening procedures that could put an accidental interpretation on this.

I'm calling an intentional trigger pull (thinking the gun was unloaded) for horseplay, scare or discipline. If this is the case, criminal charges are most certainly appropriate.

The forensics on the trajectory should tell the story. A gun on a console would have a flat trajectory at a fixed height. A gun in the hand would likely be higher and the trajectory would be somewhat downward.

Read the update here.
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