RTE 9 O'Clock News - 27 June 2005

Rovi

Anyone see this item last night?-
Call for a ban on the sale of pellet guns

Here's a text report, also from RTE-

Boy shot with air gun in Belfast

27 June 2005 22:31

A two-year-old boy was shot in the head with an air gun in Belfast yesterday evening.

The child was wounded in the forehead with a pellet as he played outside his home in McDonald Street in the west of the city shortly before 8pm.

He was admitted to hospital but has since been discharged.

Police have appealed for information about the person who fired the shot.

The kid was shot with 'some type of a child's pellet gun,' according to his mother.


While it's great that the child's injuries weren't more serious and understanding his mother's 'ban them' reaction, would it be insensitive to suggest that the existing laws on assault be brought to bear here?
I know this was in Belfast and they have different licensing arrangements for pellet guns, but there must be something on the books for sanctioning the parents of these 'armed 5 year olds', or the people selling them the guns.


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Sparks

Saw it on the BBC for a few minutes, and I know the airsoft people are worried about it. No, there aren't any licensing arrangements for these kind of firearms up North or in the UK or most of europe, they're legally toys. South of the border, they're firearms, of course, but in Belfast there's nothing legally wrong with giving one to a 5-year-old. Doesn't make it a good idea, mind...

And no, it's not insensitive to say that the existing laws on assault should be brought to bear, assuming that this wasn't just a childhood accident (and I won't say "more severe" accident, because frankly you see more serious injuries from kids play-fighting with sticks like we used to do when I was that age). I'd say that the parents of the kid who had the pellet gun are due a visit from the PSNI and a very severe talking-to, mind you, if not a civil suit from the parents of the injured child. But a general law to ban pellet guns? What good would that do?

Citizen_Erased

Air Pistol? Some childs toy?
Last time I checked air pistol werent distributed to 5 year olds. That seems off that it was described like that when really some child gun is maybe an airsoft gun. But that is still roughly 14. Was the child shot by another child? If so then the child had the gun illegaly or improperly and the state or the law is not to blame in anyway.

Sparks

Depends on what kind of air pistol CE - ISSF air pistols would be far more powerful than airsoft pistols, for example (1 joule for airsoft versus 7 joules for ISSF), but then there'd be even more powerful air pistols out there outside the ISSF stuff as well. But airsoft guns are often used as toys for kids - and it's not necessarily another 5-year-old kid who pulled the trigger, it could equally have been an older child playing william tell, or, more disturbingly, deliberately trying to shoot the younger child, as happened in Edinburgh recently when someone tried to copycat the shooting and killing of a two-year-old in Glasgow only shortly before then.

But airsoft guns still don't need a licence up North, if Mommy and Daddy buy one for little Johnny and let him go run about with it, it's perfectly legal. It's incredibly bad parenting, but that's a seperate thing, legally speaking...

Citizen_Erased

But it says an air rifle. The media really arent very great with this sort of thing. What exactly was shot. An air gun , an air pistol , air soft , steel bb?
Where it says air rifle was used , that is definately not something to be described as a childs toy. What that will cause is that airsoft guns will be thought to be capable of doing what that air rifle did and cause serious problems. More bad publicity really.

ps :1 joule would be an incredibly expensive airsoft gun. The ones bought in shops are usually between .3-.5 joules .

Sparks

Citizen_Erased wrote:

But it says an air rifle. The media really arent very great with this sort of thing. What exactly was shot. An air gun , an air pistol , air soft , steel bb?

I don't think they'd even know there was a difference to be honest. They're not exactly trained in this sort of thing and it's somewhat hard to learn about in an hour, which is far more time than the journalists usually have to research a story.

ps :1 joule would be an incredibly expensive airsoft gun. The ones bought in shops are usually between .3-.5 joules .

Yeah, and 7 joules would be fairly high for an ISSF airgun as well, but that's the usual limit imposed by german law (the UK say 12 foot pounds for a rifle - about 14-15 joules - and 6 foot-pounds for a pistol - just over 8 joules).

Dvs

Hello All,
this story of the child shot with the air gun in the north was covered in the Irish mirror today,it said the gun was bought in a toy shop for five quid,so I don't think it was a proper airsoft, much less a ISSF air pistol.

Lets hope a child does not throw a toy car at another child tommorow,
or "child hit with fast moving car" may be the headline, if the investigative reporting is on a par, with the coverage of this story. :rolleyes:

Or they may propose a ban on all motor cars, before they discover that it was a dinky car that did the damage.

Dvs.

rancheros

Don't mean to sound cruel or in-sensitive but should the parents not take some of the responsibility for this, Where did the gun come from, what was a kid doing with one?

Citizen_Erased

Yeah , I think it all really falls on the parents unless , as it seems to sound , it was a normal toy gun (not airsoft) that malfunctioned. You can get a .3 joule airsoft gun for that much but it dosent seem capable of doing that kind of damage to the young boy unless it was absolutely point blank.

Was he not shot by some older boys ? What age where they?