A 15-year-old boy, a loaded and illegal handgun and ‘play time’. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
On Monday, May 17, 2021, 6-year-old Jadaine Miller was killed while his 15-year-old relative played with an illegal handgun.
When the handgun ‘went off‘ a single bullet caught the boy in the neck, mortally wounding him.
Jadaine Miller was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital in Savanna-la-Mar, the capitol of Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica.
The teenager fled the scene.
According to the Jamaica Observer, the 15-year-old will surrender himself to the police, accompanied by Henry McCurdy, his lawyer.
According to the Jamaica Gleaner, the teen is charged with the murder of six-year-old Jadaine Miller.
Without going into detail, McCurdy said that he plans to dispute the charge of murder against his client, intimating that he should have been charged with manslaughter.
While speaking with The Gleaner, the father broke down, saying he was struggling to come to grips with his son’s death.
I can’t even imagine this father’s heartbreak.
Nor can I imagine what prompts a 15-year-old to ‘play’ with a loaded handgun.
Another family destroyed by stupidity and loaded firearms.
It doesn’t have to be like this. It really doesn’t. We treat every other social problem with education.
The lone exception is firearms, despite the fact studies prove that when young people are trained in the proper handling and use of firearms, the mystique, magic and thrill of firearms goes away. What remains is a healthy respect for a device that can, like in this sad case from Jamaica, end a child’s life in the blink of an eye.
Bring back firearm safety training to schools. Applying education to this problem is decades overdue.
Much like the training needed for an even more lethal weapon – ‘ a motor vehicle.’ that kills more in a day than firearms do in a year. When we were young there were loaded firearms leaning or hanging near the main door in almost every and children were taught what they were. There were literally ‘no accidental discharges.’
We were taught the difference between ‘real’ and ‘play.’ Now training is sneered at and suppressed by the leftists who cannot stand the thought that a person may be able to defend themselves from a large segment of ‘their voters.’