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therealdeal, if the 14yo girl had hit the other girl with a baseball bat, or stabbed her with a kitchen knife, would you bring up poor knowledge of history?
The fact is, the potential harm from pointing a firearm at a person and pulling the trigger should be just as obvious as the potential harm from clubbing or stabbing a person.
Would I hold a 14yo to the same legal standard as an 18yo? Probably not. But I wouldn't call what happened a true accident, either.
Ironically, I think that hiding guns from kids may actually be a reason why some kids treat guns like toys. They don't internalize the reality of the weapons the way they would if they were used to seeing the damage guns do to game, targets, etc.
Society's efforts to protect everybody from themselves just makes people that much more likely to harm themselves when they aren't under "proper supervision."
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