January 28, 2015 6:13 AM

"I'm sorry, Mom. I shot Corbin."

She had just put her 9-month-old down for a nap, turned on cartoons for the older kids and was headed for the dishwasher when she heard a strange “pop” come from the bedroom of the Missouri home. Alexis Wiederholt, 26, said that as she rushed to investigate the noise, her 5-year-old son appeared and said something that didn’t make any sense to her in the moment…. “I’m sorry, Mom. I shot Corbin.”…. Weiderholt ran past to the pack-and-play where Corbin, her always-smiling youngest, should have been resting peacefully…. “I walked in and there was my baby, lying there, bleeding,” the young mother told NBC News, her voice cracking as she described the Monday morning scene.

It’s not a stretch to believe that this story is what our collective love of guns has gotten us. If the story of a small child accidentally shooting and killing another child isn’t particularly unusual anymore isn’t an indictment of those who believe the 2nd Amendment is sacrosanct, inviolable, and bestowed up ‘Merica by God, I don’t know what would be. Yes, this story is a horrible, tragic accident, the sort of thing no parent should ever have to experience and no child should ever have to carry with them throughout their life. To gun nuts, though, it’s just the cost of freedom, the price we must pay in order that The Brotherhood of the Tiny Penis can carrying their AK-47s into their local Walmart. As long as it happens to someone else’s child…well, where’s the fire, eh?

“Boys will be boys.”

What I’m not getting from this story is the sense that anyone- in this case William Porter, the children’s grandfather- will be held accountable. Even the mother is defaulting to the “boys will be boys” argument. One of her children was able to get into his grandfather’s gun cabinet, find a pistol, point it at his younger brother, and then pull the trigger- and NO ONE is demanding accountability? How can this be? Are we so wedded to our love of guns, to the idea of the infallibility of fire arms, that we accept the death of children as the cost of “freedom?” Are the lives of our children really worth so little? Do we really value “gun rights” so thoroughly and completely that we’re willing to accept the tragic shooting death of a children as the cost of freedom. Was Corbin Wiederholt just another child unfortunate enough to be “freedomed to death?”

How is it that there are those who would fight abortion with every fiber of their being even as they unquestioningly accept the idea of children dying from accidental (and preventable) shootings? Why are so many so unalterably opposed to abortion, which is on the decline, but so acquiescent to children dying from gun violence, which is on the rise. Are we REALLY so callous and inhuman that we value “gun rights” over the rights of a child to survive?

As if I need to answer that.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 28, 2015 6:13 AM.

Fair and balanced...when it fits their narrative was the previous entry in this blog.

Sometimes it's difficult to believe this is the 21st century and not the 16th is the next entry in this blog.

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