Police chief encourages gun safety after accidental shooting involving child
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The 3-year-old child who accidentally shot theirself with their father’s gun in Baker on Tuesday is thankfully alive and recovering in the hospital. Baker Police Chief Carl Dunn says these types of incidents are avoidable and cannot continue.
“The father put the gun down on the entertainment system and I’m not sure if he knew the child could reach it or find it. But the father went outside to assist the mother with something they were doing outside and next you know they heard a pop,” said Chief Dunn.
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He says parents, especially these days, need to be extra careful with their guns whenever kids are in the home.
“When you think about it, so many things are happening these days that so many people can get distracted, for just a minute sometimes, and you got these freak accidents that will occur,” Chief Dunn added.
The chief is practically begging folks who do own a gun and have kids to take him up on his offer for free gun locks. He says he’ll even deliver it to your home for you personally.
“As an instructor and as somebody who’s in the industry, every single time we have to hear one of these stories...it burns us to our core because it’s so unnecessary and so preventable,” said general manager of FRC Firearms, John Hanchey.
Hanchey firearms says during COVID the country saw a massive spike in first time gun owners. Many of them, he says, had no idea how to manage them safely around the house.
“We hand out free cable locks, we give free children’s firearms safety classes here at FRC, we actually during the height of COVID were giving away gratis to our firearm safety classes to brand new gun owners,” Hanchey continued.
Hanchey says you should be able to access your gun quickly in an emergency while at the same time making it almost impossible for your child to find.
“If you have children, you know that toddlers will find it. They like to snoop around and find stuff. If it’s loaded and not locked up somewhere, if it’s not secured somewhere, it’s a problem. Because they will eventually find it and these kinds of incidents will continue to happen,” Hanchey explained.
Both Chief Dunn and John Hanchey say it’s also a good idea to know if any of your child’s friends may have guns in their homes. But they say it starts with the parents being responsible with their guns.
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