Gun grabbed from mom’s purse by child fires in Sam’s Club
The Associated Press
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BOARDMAN, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio woman has been charged with child endangerment after her child grabbed her gun from her purse, causing it to fire in a Sam’s Club.
Amanda Karr, 31, was charged Wednesday, according to court records, WKBN-TV reported.
No one was shot, but two people reported leg pain after the shooting, according to a police report.
Police say they found bullet fragments and plastic fragments from what appeared to be a shopping cart.
Karr told police that she looked away for a brief period and the child retrieved her gun from a concealed compartment, disengaged the safety and pulled the trigger, according to a police report.
Karr did not have an attorney listed and is scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 3.
Indeed it is sad, and a great example of why anyone who carries off body in any type of bag still needs to keep it in a holster and more importantly keep 100% control of that bag.
I have mixed feelings on the charges. While I think it was an accident, there does need to be a level of accountability to owning and carrying a gun (e.g. it’s not being responsible leaving loaded guns out within easy access to young kids, so when it occurs there needs to be a level of accountability).
I’m curious as to what that will be for that State. A circumstance like this, I might equate it to a drunk driving charge where the driver loses their rights for a period of time, and has to go through safety/remediation classes in order to reinstitute their rights (graduated scale of punishment for multiple or egregious offenses). Just thinking out loud.
The ugly truth is they will HANG her and take away her peacefully protesting child. There’s NO LIMIT to what anti gunners will do. To the anti’s, there is no such thing as an accident, they call it negligence! But, when a drunk driving illegal crashes into my car, it’s an accident
How old was the child, did the child know better?
This is why I told my wife today I wouldn’t carry anywhere but on the body, especially with little ones around.
Single woman with a gun in a purse is probably a good thing (as long as the gun is reachable and purse stays on), even then I think on the body is better.
I’m glad no one was hurt, I’ve read stories of 2 year olds killing mom with her purse gun.
I’m going to throw this out for consideration. The movement to remove firearms from the citizens has been very successful at making a spectacle out of any incident involving a firearm. It does not matter if other objects cause more harm and death it is the firearm that gets the press. It is no accident that is the reality we live in. I would guess everyone of us reading this thread, who is a parent, at some point in raising our young we accidently allowed them to come into contact with a major danger. Looking back I would guess each of us could say I ‘should have’… Life in general and child raising in particular are full of dangers that can and sometimes do raise their ugly head when we drop our guard. While I absolutely agree that this incident should never happen, that everyone who owns a firearm should always be aware, the reality is we are all human and sometimes we just screw up. Should societies reaction be more for the above than , for example, a child grabbing a sharp object and running with it , falling on it, or accidently sticking another person?
How did a child (?) get the firearm out of the purse, out of a concealed compartment (which I concluded means it was built into the purse), and disengage the safety AND fire in so short a period that the actions were not noted.
Again, the child (?) (age?), must have been in the shopping cart…
This does provide an example of why I do not agree with ‘off body’ carry. No purse carry, no jacket pocket carry, just adds more variables that are not needed.
This could happen to anyone who is not in complete control of their firearm. It is impossible to know what a child might do at any given time. It is very sad, it was not that long ago I read about a grandmother who was shot by a child while driving. The child had also got a firearm from her purse and fired it. It will be cases like this that will be used by the anti-gun groups and it will add another number against us in the statistics gathered every year.
Accidents happen in all walks of life and as long as humans are involved nothing will ever be perfect. It just means we have to continue to try harder and work harder to lower the numbers. Thankfully no one was hurt and I am sure this mother learned a lesson long before she faced charges.
I definitely understand the charges. It goes without saying that the firearm should never have been in a position where her child could gain control of it. It put the child, the mother and shoppers in the vicinity in jeopardy of serious physical injury or death.
This is a terrible story, and that mom is going to be raked over the coals, no doubt about it. Thank goodness no one was hurt or killed.
As a male, I just strap my gun on my belt and off I go. I don’t carry a purse, because I cannot accessorize worth a crap. But I have thought about this issue and the problem faced by women wearing clothes that don’t lend themselves to concealed carry. Dresses don’t often have pockets, as my first wife frequently reminded me (not on this subject though). However…just because they don’t doesn’t mean they can’t.
I can imagine a semi-concealed ‘pocket’ that was actually cut through all the way (saw men’s pocket like this once) so a gun belted to the waist or even the upper thigh could be accessed fairly quickly. Heh, bet my mom could have made one, she was quite the seamstress back in the day, but I digress. Open carry is a possibility, but I fear this would cause more problems than it solved, and while some states might ignore ‘no gun’ signs, like my home state of GA, they do allow store management to ask you to leave. If you are carrying concealed, no issue as no one knows it’s there, but if it’s openly carried, so much for your shopping trip.
I’d really like to see sports wear manufacturers step up their game and introduce a line of nice dresses that allow access to concealed weapons.
Ladies, your thoughts? Maybe call or write your favorite sporting goods clothing manufacturer and request something like this? I bet they’d sell really well.
What? You don’t take a brown purse and put it with a red Hawaiian shirt with OD green pants and flip flops …
You can always be asked to leave, but the best is to avoid those nasty free fire zone signs they claim are ‘gun free zone’ signs or 'no firearms; signs
Yes you can teach your child all kinds of things so that they will be safe. They are nosey little critters & will find every thing they sesrch for. You try to keep them safe however when they’re out & about ypur control is gone. Teach them well.
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