Toddler shoots herself with a wii gun

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http://www.destructoid.com/kid-shoots-h ... 6222.phtml

She thought it was a Wii remote.

And bad parenting again finds a scapegoat.

I'm sorry. Ever seen a Wii? The "gun" they offer looks nothing like a normal firearm and is WHITE.

"The child died at a hospital."

Tragic and lame excuse for stupidity.

Yeah, because toddlers are adult, responsible people who would never play around with unidentified, weird objects they find lying around the house without supervision.

I am sure it is against the law whether it could be mistaken for a Wii controller or not, to leave a loaded ready gun within reach of a toddler. Well I might say that this could even be due to slack laws, don't blame Nintendo, blame pro-gun groups, I am sure Sarah Palin doesn't hae enough people hounding her.

^ I'm sure there will be some people dumb enough to blame this ordeal on Nintendo and video games rather than the real problem.

This is sad.

If the mother and step father are trying to blame anyone other than themselves, they are mistaken. Is that what all this, "it looked like a wii remote" is about? Trying to shift the blame?

I feel bad for them, in a way, because parents often do stupid things and most of us get to live happilly past the heart attack you feel when you discover just how stupid you were; for them, there is no relief that nothing bad happened. They have to live with the guilt forever.

Really, really stupid.

And heartbreakingly sad.

The story makes no sense. How could the mother have known that her child thought it was a Wii remote? The only way would be if the girl said to her mother while holding the gun that she thought it was a wii remote... and in that case the mother would surely have realised that the girls was sadly muddled up with her terminology.

I do feel sorry for the parents if it was an accident, but they shouldn't be making stuff up.

Many years ago, back in the 20th century (and in some underdeveloped nations even today, I'll wager), families living in rural areas frequently kept things in their front yards called WELLS. Wells, like guns, were useful things in that, when you had need of them they could keep you alive. Unfortunately, left unattended and unsecured, a well could easily be an agent of death for an unmindful child, playing without proper supervision or disobediently ignoring parental admonishments to stay away.

Though these sorts of accidents were not an uncommon occurrence - in spite of families' best efforts to keep their wells covered and teach their children well-respect, from time to time, one would find newspaper reports of children falling into wells and being killed.

Oddly, as far as I have ever heard or read, no one ever blamed the well for sneaking up and swallowing their children, or suggested passing anti-well legislation to prevent their neighbors from having wells (not even those with plumbing who could easily have seen wells as dangerous and unnecessary). And while some may have blamed the dead childrens' parents for being neglectful and irresponsible, if they did, they did so privately out of respect for the grief of the heartbroken families, whom one hopefully assumes would never have intentionally thrown their beloved offspring to their deaths.

Isn't it amazing how people all those years ago believed themselves intelligent enough not to superstitiously blame an inanimate object for a completely accidental tragedy?

I hear that on occasion angry adults actually threw each other to their deaths in wells, too - still, I find no legislation nor suggestion of legislation that ever required adults to register their wells, or keep them empty of all water, except when in use. Puzzling how those primitive peoples have been able to trust the freedoms of their neighbors in order to maintain their own liberties. They must have been illiterate savages, or insane.

Wells are horrible, child-eating demons that ought to be outlawed for the betterment of society. Anyone who keeps one ought to be locked up for their obvious homicidal tendencies and their wells destroyed.

Really good point, and a little humor in it to boot.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... ntrol.html

After about 8 drinks, I could have made the same mistake myself.

The stepdad is fully responsible.

Blame pro-gun groups? My entire family (extended family included) supports the 2nd Amendment. In fact, one of my dad's obsessions is guns, and he makes his own ammunition. When I was three, I found a gun under a bed at my grandmother's house. I didn't even touch it. Why not? Because my parents had taken the time to educate me about how guns were not something to be played with, and that it was very dangerous for me to handle.

Why blame pro-gun groups for something her parents failed to do? It's not the NRA's responsibility to teach the children whose parents own guns about gun safety, it's the parents' responsibility.

That's very sad.

I agree. There are plenty of responsible gun owners out there, such as my family. Both my dad and my uncles (one of whom is a tactical firearms instructor) keep their guns unloaded, trigger-locked, and out of sight when not in use. If anyone is truly to blame, it is the parents for not being responsible - NOT the NRA, and most certainly not Nintendo... although how anyone can mistake a real gun fora Wiimote is beyond me. Then again, the kid was a toddler.

Parenting fail. Not to be offensive, but it doesn't surprise me that they live in a trailer. The parents should be found legally accountable.

Why do you bring that up? A lot of bad parents live in mansions, too. Just look: