Toddler, 2, dies after shooting himself while left alone in a Walmart parking lot as his parents shopped for fireworks

Every gun owner thinks they're a responsible gun owner.

Loaded gun in a car door pocket? I don't think these people considered themselves responsible gun owners.
- No, I think they did. That's the problem.
- They probably considered themselves responsible parents as well.
- The point is what people claim to be and what people are, are different things.
- It's terrifyingly common where i live, though people who do it think it's common sense self-protection.
Here's a story for you. I've only really held a gun once, at a camp riflery range (very small calibers). I still end up doing a fair amount of gun research for understanding gun debates / safety practices, research for fiction where characters have to talk about guns, etc.

I have had to correct other Reddit users that are gun owners, about the workings of basic single-action revolvers, in a very deep/long thread. I briefly doubted myself and checked my own sources, and yes, I was correct and the gun owner was persisting off the idea I was wrong. I'm sure there's some responsible owners out there, but the fact there are so many bull-headed idiots about their guns, who still say they're responsible, should scare anyone.

The specific topic, if you're interested, was on the situation where an old-style revolver is loaded and cocked by an inexperienced user, who then wants to safely decock/unload the gun without firing it (at that point, the cylinder is locked so basic approaches won't work). Feel free to look it up - the approach needed there is pretty damn stupid.
- I don't handle guns, I just like westerns and play too many video games:
  
  Don't you have to hold the hammer while you pull the trigger to decock it? The trigger unlocks it, but because you're holding the hammer it doesn't strike the shell?
  
  So in order to safely disarm you have to pull the trigger, which sure sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
- I had a girlfriends father insist on taking the whole family to the gun range as a "fun day out thing". Not my thing, but why say no to new experience? Besides her dad had always openly carried so it was clearly something HE was into, so being invited to family time with him felt like a kindness
  
  But oh joy, was I thankful that a gun instructor was there, literally everything her dad said was corrected. From hand placement, to how to load to how to stand. The guy nearly kicked dad off the range at one point for having a loaded gun facing his kid.
  
  Thankfully I never had to suffer his company since we broke up later, but it was a very eye opening experince. Being INTO guns definitely does not correlate with safe usage.
These people also left their 2 year old in the car by himself while they shopped.

These people are fucking morons, gun or no gun.
- Agreed. There are plenty of morons among the gun owners who consider themselves responsible gun owners.
I wonder what percentage actually are.
- Whatever it is, it's probably at least 25% less than the NRA claim.
Sure, sure, but not every gun owner leaves their gun loaded and unsecured in a car with their unsupervised young child.
- And yet these ones did. And considered themselves responsible the entire time.
I'm not. Safety ALWAYS OFF now fuck off I've got shit to do.
The gun hatting equivalent of both sides 😂🤣🤣🤣

82M owners. The numbers aren't in your favor.
- Assuming you mean the US:
  
  The highest number of gun violence deaths of any developed country 😂🤣🤣🤣
  
  The highest number of children killed as well 😂🤣🤣🤣
  
  The number one killer of children being guns 😂🤣🤣🤣
  
  Yeah, the numbers are definitely NOT in our favor 🤦
- They very deliberately said "think they are", not "are".
- Dangerous idiots are in abundant supply.

It’s unclear if the parents – identified by family as Sam Odums and Laileighauna Parks – will face charges in the incident.

The owner absolutely should be charged. Clearly the gun was unsecured.

Also, it was over 90°F in Douglas, GA. You don't leave a fucking toddler in your car with that kind of heat.

Even if the AC was left on, I'd have never left my kid in the car alone at 2. So many ways that can go wrong.
- You don't leave your phone out in the car.. your fuckin kid?
Guns kept in a car usually aren't required to be locked up if the car itself is locked. There's not much point having a gun in the car if you have to ask the carjacker to wait nicely while you fetch your gun from its locked container.
- Fuck is wrong with you.
- Guns kept in a car usually aren’t required to be locked up if the car itself is locked.
  
  This varies widely from state to state, with different requirements for loaded vs unloaded, concealed carry permits, and accessibility requirements.
  
  There’s not much point having a gun in the car if you have to ask the carjacker to wait nicely while you fetch your gun from its locked container.
  
  So use a quick-access safe mounted in the vehicle or get a concealed carry license and keep it secured in a holster with you. No excuse for leaving it accessible to a child.
- You shouldnt be allowed to guns at all, especially not unsecured in a car. If your toddler then shoots itself with the gun you definitely should face charges.
- Even when unattended? I wouldn't do that even if it was legal. It's a great way to get your car broken into to steal the gun.
  
  And I wouldn't leave a gun unattended around a two-year-old in any case.
- Guns kept in a car usually aren't required to be locked up if the car itself is locked.
  
  Common sense requires it if there is a chance you'll be leaving a toddler alone with it.
- I get your point, but the only person in the car was a 2 year old. Surely you don't expect the 2 year old to stop a car jacker with the gun, so it should be locked while no one is operating the vehicle, at least?

that sentence got more American with every word

Maybe the kid killed himself so he wouldn't have to slowly die of heat stroke because his idiot parents left him alone in a car (edit: WITH A LOADED GUN WHAT THE FUCK) in a Walmart parking lot.

It’s too easy to make a baby. It’s really a problem.

"You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog. You need a license to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father. " - Keanu Reeves as Tod Higgins, Parenthood (1989).
- beautifully put, Keanu
Apparently it easy to take them out too
- I hear taking candy from them is easy too. I’m too scared to try though.
Plus, now we're not allowed to abort them even if we know we don't have the mental, emotional, or financial capacity to take care of them, and it looks like they are trying to make contraceptives illegal again, so I have a feeling we'll be seeing more and more stories like this.
- Yeah it hurts the future generations the most. More adults that need therapy, but don’t get it and hurt others.
Unfortunately, we need lots-a them
- No, the fuck, we do not
- Why exactly? There is enough people on the planet.

Every word of that sentence made it worse. Flip those patents straight to heck

Forkin’ A

For everyone focusing on the toddler alone in a hot car part. This was a fireworks stand. So they were probably 10 to 20 feet away. We can hope they opened the windows, which would make it roughly the same temp as where they were. So let's refocus on the gun please.

The question of whether we need to be armed to be capable of defending ourselves against tyrannical governments coming for our lives should have come after the question of whether we are capable of defending ourselves against ourselves.

The question of whether we need to be armed to be capable of defending ourselves against tyrannical governments coming for our lives

Also that wasn’t what the second amendment was about. It was about not wanting a standing army because it gave the federal government too much power, and James Madison believed state militias would be sufficient to defend the nation.
- And that's why, to this day, Congress has to pass the NDAA every year. It's not just the military budget, it's also the law making the military exist. We don't technically have a standing army.

Im sorry, what?

Also what? The grandmother started a gofundme to pay for the funeral costs, so ‘the parents can grieve’?
- Idiots or not they still grieve.

I hate every single part about this headline.

Imagine walking back to your car to get your kid and seeing the scene in Pulp Fiction...yikes

Leaving an unsecured and loaded weapon in a car with an unsupervised toddler? Sorry for the kid, but the parents fully deserve to see this.
- "Holy shit! The consequences of my actions?! That's unpossible!"

The ONLY ONLY ONLY LITERALLY ONLY way to have Prevented this was if the Toddler killed the Gun before the Gun was able to be used to Kill the Toddler! There's LITERALLY NO OTHER WAY this could have been prevented! Either that or make it Illegal for BLACK PEOPLE to have a Gun!

-Not Racist Republicans!

The only one who can stop a bad toddler with a gun, is a good toddler with a gun

~Republicans, probably
- Baby with a gun -- TomSka
If only there were 2 guns in the car. This could have been prevented.

As an advocate of the 2nd amendment who thinks gun regulations need to be more strict assessing theental health of anyone purchasing a gun, I find it very hard to believe parents who leave a child in a hot car with a loaded gun to both go into a store to shop could pass any test of their fucking mental stability. This had to be premeditated whether they can prove it legally. Someone else in the thread said it was 90F when this happened so when you add it all up, a toddler was left out if their carseat, with a loaded gun, in either a running vehicle the kid could've kicked into gear accidently or in a vehicle that wasn't running on a fucking 90 degree day. Way too many cognizant decisions were made to not charge them with 1st degree murder.

As a non-American, it's crazy to me that there (apparently) aren't any safe storage laws enforced. Would it really infringe people's gun rights to require that all firearms may only be in a safe, in your hands, or on your person (in a holster, sling, etc.)?
- About half of US states have safe storage laws. You can probably guess which ones. Surprisingly, both Texas and Florida are both on this list, though, so credit where it's due.
  
  The enforcement of those laws is another story, though. And to be fair, enforcement can be difficult. You can always charge them with a safe storage violation after an incident happens and police/EMS/etc enter the home legally, but otherwise, nobody is coming into your home to ensure that you're locking up your guns properly. It's illegal without a warrant, and surprise safety checks aren't something you can issue a warrant for.

So much WTF. Leaving a toddler alone in the car in the middle of Summer with an unsecured loaded firearm in car.

I feel bad for the kid. The only silver lining here is that the parents are keeping their stupidity out of the gene pool.

Sorry for the kid, but 2A is more important than that. /s

Our children are the price of freedom.

Sadly, that's one little soldier who left too early.

I don't leave my carry gun around my adult GF or untrained friends.....everything else is locked up. WTF

Not a gun owner myself, so curious, is your carry gun not always locked up when not on your person?
- I live alone, so it only is if I am not around.
  
  If I leave and the GF(untrained for the time being) is home, or if there is family or kids present, it is either on my person and safed, or locked up in a biometric safe.

FrEeDoM

I have a serious question here that I always get when I read news like this. As someone not from the US but having experience with guns through my military training, how is it that toddlers can even pull the trigger of a weapon?

When we had the training for the pistol it was difficult to pull the trigger. IIRC it was even stated that this was by design so that you can't pull the trigger by accident.

Are there no regulations for such a thing in the US or are toddlers that strong to do it anyway?

In addition to what people are saying about trigger pull weight there are an unfortunate number of people that think reducing trigger pull weight to pointlessly low numbers is cool. If you’re a competition shooter it might be worth it to a point, but anyone leaving a handgun unsecured and accessible in a vehicle isn’t a person who takes firearms seriously.
There are a ton of different kinds of pistols, and all have varying types of trigger weight. If you trained in a EU military, you probably trained with something like a Beretta 92 or CZ 75, both of which have a double action/single action ("DA/SA") design, where the long DA is a safety feature. After the first shot, the gun will be in SA mode, with a much lighter weight for easier follow-up shots. One can also put a DA/SA gun into SA mode by chambering a round and cocking the hammer. Most consider this to be an unsafe way to carry a pistol without a further manual safety (both the Beretta and CZ have one for carrying in this manner).

Glock is the most common pistol make in the US, and they use a striker fired design. A striker fired pistol is typically equipped with a medium-weight trigger - lighter than a DA pull, but not as light as a SA.

Because the toddler shot himself in the chest, he was also likely using his thumbs, rather than index finger on the trigger. I think a toddler would easily have the strength to pull a striker trigger, and definitely a SA.
- Granted, this is now almost a decade now but I was trained with the HK P8 which, according to what I can find, has a trigger weight of 24N (SA) and 55N (DA)
  
  This would be 2.4kg force or 5.6kg force needed for pulling the trigger.
  
  But as you said, it would make sense that even this is easily overcome depending on how you pull the trigger and the thumbs would be stronger doing that, especially with both hands.
There are mods that reduce the trigger pull. I had a friend with a 22 that brought a kit online to help him in shooting competitions.
- i have an additional question if you or anyone else have the time for an answer, because i don't know much about guns - how can a toddler have any chance of releasing the gun safety? (and the bonus rhetorical question of how it can be called a safety if a toddler without knowledge of what a gun is can release it; i thought we figured that stuff out ages ago according to my ability to open child safe bottles)
- I have seen that while doing a bit of research that the strength needed can be lower for shooting competition which also makes sense but there you have a trained person in a controlled environment for a very specific purpose.
Highspeed man-children making it a hair-trigger so they can fight off an assault squad of gangsters.

Parents of the year going to take gun heat while they were just lining up ways to kill the kid.

'Murica.

It's a state by state thing but, yeah there are states like NY has safe storage laws, transporting loaded firearms laws amoung many many more but NY is one of the more strict states for gun regulation. Idk what the GA laws are like but generally the deep south is very unregulated.

I feel like even if there was no gun, this toddler would have died from being left alone in a car in the summer time.

I guess what they needed was a good guy with a gun, eh?

The parent(s) did the crime, the toddler did the time. Don't let the parent(s) own firearms anymore and be done with it. Prison time isn't going to do anyone any good; the parents had more than enough taken away from them already.

What a sad and unsurprisingly common story this is.

nope, lock them both up. the child was 2 years old and these wet brained morons A. left a 2 year old child in the car, alone, and B. left an unsecured gun in the car. so the kid cleary also wasnt in a car seat or they leave their guns laying in the back seat.

and surprise, surprise they've set up a gofundme. scum.
- and surprise, surprise they've set up a gofundme. scum.
  
  Well that feels pretty gross. I get needing a lawyer but damn.
  
  My empathy for them is fading quickly.
It does the rest of society good by not having to deal with these morons anymore.