I don't know what kind of toy pistol the child had, but no toy pistol can fire real ammo. If it somehow did fire, the whole pistol would likely explode, since a real gun is designed to contain the high pressure & temperature involved. A toy gun is not; most are made of plastic. Even if a toy gun was made of metal, (due to the expense involved in manufacture), it would not be heat treated to withstand the pressure.
this was 70 years.. the gun was metal not plastic. Regardless the point was it could of easily been tragic for either of them.
Without a firing pin & several other parts that are expensive to manufacture (and wouldn't be found in a toy gun), it could not have fired, so it could not have been tragic. Also, the bullet would have to fit perfectly & snugly in the chamber & be the exact caliber. You would have to have gun knowledge to understand why the gun could not have fired. Don't misunderstand; I'm not saying toy guns are OK; I think they are foolish.
lol I understand that Tony, but your missing the point. If it happened to you, wouldn't you have been taken back by the fact that a 3 year old could even pull the trigger hard enough for it to make the bang sound? Not a great feeling . By the way, the bullet fit perfectly.
And the idea that I child could find the ammo and load the weapon. If you left an unloaded gun around and the kid found the ammo....
I'm always telling people to be responsible gun owners & I sometimes hear responses like, "My child isn't strong enough to pull the trigger." They are underestimating their kids & not thinking about the fact that while they're not home, kids will have plenty of time to figure out how to get more leverage & pull a trigger. They're also underestimating their kids' ability to find hidden things (like guns). When I was a child, I always found everything my parents hid in the house & also played with everything they told me not to touch. Telling a child not to touch something makes it more attractive.
That's not true for everyone, though. Of course, I combined my ability to hide something with the fact my son and nephew didn't even know I had a gun. Had we lived in the Country where shooting didn't require going to a gun range, I would have gone the other way and had the talk with my son since he was amenable to reason. When people say things about times being different today, as far as kids go, it annoys me a little because things don't have to be different with your kid. Overall, it might be true that kids are raised differently today, but that's a choice and it doesn't have to be true for your kid. As a child, I didn't always follow the gun rules to the letter, but I knew what they were, and I knew that there were things that I absolutely couldn't do, and I was so far removed from shooting up a school that the very idea of it wouldn't have ever occurred to me. When I said, maybe in another thread, that I didn't know where my dad kept his handgun, I knew better than to look for it. In fact, although my parents' bedroom (like the house itself) was unlocked, I don't think I was in their bedroom more than once when they weren't there, and, even then, I rarely entered their bedroom. I was never hit as a child, but being found in my parent's bedroom when they weren't there would not have been a comfortable experience. I think I was only there once when they weren't home. That was when Dad called to tell me that I could get $10 for something out of their dresser drawer, and I did take that as permission to snoop a bit, but I certainly wouldn't have taken his handgun had I found it.
A friend of mine used to say that the moment a parent said my kid would never... was just when the kid started thinking of doing it. When my kids were little we did not keep ammo in the house. Didn't feel the need till we got the farm and this world turned upside down.
There's no point in having a gun if you don't have any ammo, and there's little point in having kids if you don't have any influence over them.
Many parents think their kids would never disobey them. They're usually mistaken - sometimes with tragic results. Kids don't always do what's right that's why they're called kids. My sister almost learned this the hard way. She was one of those "My kids would never.....My kids are too smart to....etc." (Her son was 16 at the time.) When she bought a gun, I told her to get a quick-access lockbox. She kept the gun on top of a tall dresser & said "I told him not to touch it; he knows better." I said, "Can you say the same for his friends who visit him?" She said, "My kid doesn't have any stupid friends; he's very picky about who he's friends with." A few weeks later, her son told me about his friend's visit while his mom was at work. While he was in the bathroom, his friend found the gun & as a joke, pointed it at him when he came out of the bathroom. Of couse the gun was loaded. Luckily, he didn't pull the trigger. I told his mom what happened. She bought a lockbox the next day.
Other peoples' experiences differ. It is not inevitable that your child will become a mass shooter, and parents have something to do with that. Your firearm is not a protection for you if it's locked away where you can't get to it readily. In that case, it would be better not to have a firearm unless you enjoy hunting or going to the gun range. You're trying to rephrase by suggesting that it means being careless with your weapons or your children, but that's not the case. Throughout the history of weaponry, children have been raised to be responsible and respectful of firearms. Some will not, but parents have a lot to do with that. If you know that your kid can't be trusted around a weapon, or if you're in a position where having a weapon would be more dangerous than not, then you shouldn't have one. My nephew had RAD, so there's no way that I would have a loaded weapon anywhere in the house where he could find or gain access to it, but I knew the child, and took responsibility. In his case, I didn't have a lot of influence over who he was, at his core, because he didn't come to live with us until he was twelve. If you're not familiar with reactive attachment disorder, most serial killers had RAD as children, although not all children who suffer from RAD grow up to become serial killers. Even in the presence of RAD, parenting has a lot to do with it, and our nephew grew up to become a responsible adult. Whatever your situation, it's kind of silly to have a firearm in order to keep you safe from a home invasion if it's locked away in a gun case, or if you'd have to run to the gun store to buy ammunition. Not everyone should have a weapon, and children compound the potential problems, but whether your child becomes a school shooter or not is not a mere flip of the coin. You might own a firearm because you hunt or like going to the gun range, and you're not at all concerned about home protection. In that case, sure, lock your gun up and be completely safe. I don't have a problem with that. In fact, I don't care what you do. Rent a storage space for your firearm if that makes you feel that you are safe from your child. Nevertheless, it's possible to raise children who aren't going to shoot up their school, and that might involve not sending them away to school. Today, there are far fewer families with firearms than there were a generation or two ago, and far more of those who do keep their firearms locked away somewhere, yet there are far more children involved in gun crimes than there were a generation or two ago. Why is that? Figure that out and you will have arrived at the root of the problem, and it has a lot to do with parenting. If you're more afraid of your child or your child's friends than you are of a home invasion, then you probably shouldn't have a weapon, or you should keep it locked up securely. That would make sense, but then you shouldn't go to sleep each night assured that your firearm is going to keep you safe from a home invasion. Most people who own a firearm aren't truly afraid that someone is going to break into their home at night to do them harm, so if it seems reasonable for them to believe that the biggest danger is from their own child, then perhaps they should have done a better job of raising their child, but, that being the case, they shouldn't have an accessible firearm unless they plan on using it against their child.
Never trust your kids' friends. Even if your kids are trustworthy, their friends may have been raised with toy guns.
"Your firearm is not a protection for you if it's locked away where you can't get to it readily." ^^^^ That may have been true 60 years ago, but not now. I get to mine in 3 seconds. Or, quick access to a rifle or shotgun:
I was raised with toy guns, and my children had toy guns. I'm not seeing how that makes us less trustworthy so if someone will explain...???