I disagree, it's the parents responsibility to decide if the kids are old enough to shoot, and to teach them safety. Does it really matter what color the gun is? A .22 is a .22, is a .22!
Good thought but who protect the kids from idiot parents ... Or is that just tough luck??
BURKESVILLE, Ky. — The next day Kristian, 5, shot and killed his 2-year-old sister with a gun marketed for children as “My First Rifle” in what the authorities said was an accident.
The death has convulsed this rural community of 1,800 in south-central Kentucky, where everyone seems to know the extended Sparks family, which is now riven by grief. But as mourners gathered for Caroline’s funeral on Saturday, there were equally strong emotions directed at the outside world, which has been quick to pass judgment on the parents and a way of life in which many see nothing unusual about introducing children to firearms while they are still in kindergarten.
“This town, there’s nothing like it. They pull together,” Anne Beall, a family friend, said as she left the Norris-New Funeral Home. Its online obituary showed Caroline as a smiling cherub in a flower-petal collar.
Ms. Beall, a 64-year-old retiree, said she had not heard anyone in town call the parents irresponsible for giving a gun to a 5-year-old or for leaving it unlocked. “Pointing fingers doesn’t really accomplish anything,” she said. “Terrible mistakes happen, and I think that’s what happened here.”
The authorities said the children’s mother, Stephanie Sparks, briefly stepped outside the family’s trailer home when Kristian shot his sister in the chest. Their father, Chris Sparks, shoes horses and works in a lumber mill.
The parents “are taking this really hard,” said a woman leaving the funeral who declined to give her name. A teenage girl said strangers from around the country had written scathing comments online blaming the parents, deepening the town’s pain and anger.
The shooting came after the recent failure in Washington of gun control legislation inspired by the shootings in Newtown, Conn., which exposed a bitter divide on guns. But Burkesville seemed to want no part of being a symbol in a national debate.
“I think it’s nobody else’s business but our town’s,” said a woman leaving a store, who like many people here declined to be interviewed. A woman who answered the phone at the office of John A. Phelps Jr., the chief executive of Cumberland County, whose seat is Burkesville, said, “No, I’m sorry — no more statements,” and hung up.
After the funeral service, two men advanced across North Main Street toward a single television crew present, from the German network RTL, and punched the cameraman, bloodying his face and knocking him down.
Two other men told a newspaper reporter, “If you had any sense, you’d get out of here. You’re next, buddy.”
The county coroner, Gary White, said Kristian’s gun, a .22-caliber single-shot Crickett rifle designed for children and sold in pink and blue, had been stored in a corner, and his parents did not realize it was loaded.
&ldquoown in Kentucky where we’re from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation,” Mr. White told The Associated Press. “You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything.”
After the shooting, the Crickett’s maker, Keystone Sporting Arms in Milton, Pa., deleted a Web page promoting it, but archived images show the company featured a “kids corner” with dozens of pictures of young children and their Cricketts at shooting ranges and out hunting.
The company, which specializes in children’s firearms, said that in 2008 it made 60,000 Cricketts and another model, the Chipmunk, and that it ranks as the country’s 10th largest manufacturer of long guns.
The shooting here, in a region of farms and timber mills, followed a spate of other gun accidents around the country involving young children.
They included a 4-year-old boy who accidentally killed the wife of a sheriff’s deputy at a cookout near Nashville, and a 6-year-old boy who was fatally shot with a .22-caliber rifle by a 4-year-old playmate in Toms River, N.J.
A spokesman for the Kentucky State Police said last week that it was too soon to determine if charges would be filed in the death of Caroline Sparks. Although some states have strict laws aimed at negligent gun storage, including criminal liability for adults, Kentucky’s laws are looser, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The state does not hold adults liable when a child gets hold of a firearm and causes an injury or death.
A few Burkesville residents expressed skepticism of the parents for having a loaded, unlocked gun in the house.
Curtis Spears, 59, a retired mechanic, said he introduced his three sons to hunting and shooting when they were about 8. “But they never touched a gun unless I was with them,” he said. He kept the firearms locked up. His grandson Ryan, who is 5, owns the same Crickett model that Kristian used. But it is equipped with a safety that can be unlocked only with a key kept by his father, Mr. Spears said.
April Anderson, a cashier, said that she, too, owned a gun at age 5. “We went deer hunting,” she said. “I had a .22. You have to teach them at an early age,” she noted, adding that she and her husband own more than 20 guns, but that they keep them secure. “Our guns are put up,” she said.
Her 11-year-old daughter, Taylor, said, “Since that little girl died, Dad got rid of all the guns in the house.”
Not quite, her mother corrected her. They removed at least one shotgun from their home, but not all. “You can’t put your children in a bubble,” Ms. Anderson said.
