There are times when the gun nut crowd just opens itself up to mockery; the “Open Carry Texas” chowderheads who demonstrated their manly prowess by strutting through a Chipotle’s restaurant and are now trying to intimidate the federal government by fingering their weapons and trying to look tough; the guy who strolled around outside a presidential event with an assault rifle strapped to him and bragged of his intention to “spank some Obama.” Those guys are funny, if dangerous and pathetic.
There’s nothing funny about a 6-year old killing his grandfather with a loaded AK-47.
Gun fanatic Juan Manuel Martinez of Homestead, Florida thought it was perfectly all right to throw a barbeque for the family in the back yard, and leave his loaded AK-47 around for the kids to play with. According to the story, Martinez brought it out for his father to ogle. When they were finished admiring its clean lines and sexy curves, Gramps laid it down on a nearby table — loaded, ready to fire, and unattended. One of Martinez’s nephews, apparently bored with his Tickle Me Elmo and seeing no difference between his plush toy and his uncle’s own toys, took hold of it. He wrapped his chubby little finger around the trigger, the gun went off, and Gramps was surprised to find a fist-sized hole in his chest. The surprise didn’t last long, as he died soon afterwards.
Martinez admitted he wasn’t doing the best job of parenting at the barbeque. He told police that, well yeah, he had been pounding down beers, smoking bud and snorting coke during family fun time. Because that’s what you do when you have kids in the backyard — smoke, snort, drink and play with assault rifles. But Martinez says the tragedy couldn’t have been avoided, that it was the Fickle Finger of Fate reaching down and poking a hole through his dad.
The family is not trying to point the finger at anybody. This is a tragic event that occurred. We can’t say it was my fault, it was my nephew’s fault, it was my father’s fault. It’s just a tragic event that occurred. If there was anything I could do to bring him back, God help me I would.
Martinez was rightfully clear about his nephew, all six years of him, not being to blame:
It’s not his fault. He didn’t know what he was doing. He’s just a little boy. I love him. He’s my family. I love all my family.
He explains what happens:
We heard the gun shot go off. My father was struck in the chest before he was airlifted to the hospital, and they told us that he passed. I should’ve never brought the firearm out.
Ya think, Juan?
Here’s what Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta had to say about the situation.
If you are a gun owner, you need to know that you are responsible for that gun. You’re responsible on how to handle that gun and of the safety of the people around you.
That’s an understatement. Martinez had no business having that weapon — any weapon — anywhere near a six-year old, or anyone else. He had no business leaving it loaded and unsecured. It’s arguable he had no business having it in the first place, but Texas says it’s perfectly fine for upstanding citizens like Juan, the coke-snorting, beer-swilling gun fetishist to own pretty much anything that isn’t a howitzer, so technically he can’t be faulted for that one. His father had no business putting the thing on the table and turning away from it. Hell, sensible people don’t leave the grill fork around for the kids to grab and skewer one another with. If there were other adults around, they were just as negligent in allowing the assault rifle to lay there unattended, even for a second. Juan is right about one thing: it isn’t his nephew’s fault.
It’s his fault. It’s his father’s fault. It’s the fault of every single adult around there who stood by, slamming down Bud Lights and letting a six-year old grab a lethal weapon. Meteor strikes are nobody’s fault. Tornadoes. Sudden maulings by wild animals. Those are legitimately acts of fate, or of God if you will. But someone being shot because you left a deadly firearm laying around, loaded and ready to go? That’s your fault.
This goes beyond negligence. In social terms, it’s insanity. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think just what damage that rifle bullet, which can travel over 3,000 meters, could have done to a neighbor, or a neighbor’s kid, had it not struck the grandfather first. And don’t forget: the AK-47 is a semi-automatic, not a single shot rifle. (Had it been converted to full auto? The news articles don’t say. Apparently it can be done with nothing more than a twist tie.) Even considering the issues surrounding a six-year old being able to cause an assault rifle to spray half a dozen bullets, the possibilities are nightmarish.
This is yet another in the huge and continuously growing pile of evidence that shows just why these kinds of weapons should be illegal for ordinary citizens to own. Yes, indeedy, said citizens ought to be responsible enough to handle them safely. But they aren’t, and they aren’t gonna be. You might as well argue that you should be allowed to operate a Formula One racer or an Abrams tank on the freeway — well, gee, if you’re responsible and have a bit of training in safety procedures, you certainly wouldn’t be a hazard, no sirree. And if you do manage to plow that racer into a storefront at 140 miles an hour, or crush fifteen cars in the K-Mart parking lot with that tank, well, the people killed and maimed by your actions ought to understand, because you were just exercising your rights and got a little overenthusiastic. It would be nobody’s fault, really.
So here we all sit, reading this story and shaking our heads at the latest tragedy. Martinez is at home after posting bond on charges of “culpable negligence of a firearm with easy access to a minor,” and presumably trying to persuade himself that he isn’t responsible for his father’s death. The six-year old, who is reportedly traumatized and receiving grief counseling, is going to live his entire life knowing that he killed his grandfather. Everyone else in the family, whether they witnessed the old man’s chest being blown apart or not, will spend the rest of their lives dealing with the trauma, the anger, and the grief.
And how do the gun fetishists feel about it all? Let me quote the wisdom of Samuel Wurzelbacher, who recently addressed the issue with another father grieving over the death of a loved one via a gun:
In conclusion, I cannot begin to imagine the pain you are going through…. However, any feelings you have toward my rights being taken away from me, lose those.
Yeah. Grieving about the loss of a child or a father? That’s great, we can’t imagine it, you go on and have a big old sad. But if you’re thinking about restricting the rights of people to own weapons of mass destruction — lose that. The gun fetishists don’t wanna hear it.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the Martinez family, and even more for that horribly traumatized, permanently scarred young boy. I can even summon up some sympathy for Juan Martinez, knowing that he will carry the responsibility for the death of his father — acknowledged or not — around with him for the rest of his life.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for the gun rights brigade who see every accidental shooting or maniacal killing spree as a reason to close ranks and scream at the world about their rights coming under attack. For those guys: your self-entitled outrage and anger about sensible people wanting to restrict the ability of Americans to own assault rifles? Lose that.
Edited by: WG
