Another day, another dead kid

Las Vegas Review-Journal: A teenage girl was shot and killed inside a home in south Las Vegas Tuesday afternoon, according to Las Vegas police.

Officers responded to a report of an accidental shooting at a house in the 1600 block of Little Crow Avenue, near Spencer Street and Pebble Road, at 3:25 p.m. A teen was transported to the hospital and died about 30 minutes later, according to a source close to the investigation.

Initial reports said that one 13-year-old shot another 13-year-old, according to a Las Vegas police spokesperson. Police were initially investigating the shooting as accidental, but as of Tuesday night, it was unclear if that was still the case.

“At this time we do not know if the injury was accidental or on purpose. That’s still under investigation,” said Las Vegas homicide Sgt. Annette Darr.

Darr said that three juveniles were inside the home at the time of the shooting, and it was not clear if any adults were at home when the shooting occurred.

Neighbors said that the street is always full of children playing, but that this has been a tragic reminder to them about the safety of their own children.

“It makes me worry about whether I let even the people I know have my kids,” said neighbor Kelly Lincoln.

I can hear all the people who think our weak-assed gun laws are just fine — “You can’t blame guns, you have to blame the parents who blah, blah, blah, wank, wank, wank…” How do I know they’ll say this? Because it’s what they say every goddam time, like a broken record.

And it does nothing. This happens every day in America, because their advice about gun safety accomplishes nothing and saves no lives. They know this sort of thing is going to happen again and they’re fine with that. We know that because their broken-record mantra tells us so. They want to do absolutely nothing. They seem to believe that the daily death toll is a fine trade-off for the weakest gun laws in the developed world. A person is shot and killed in America once every 17 minutes, a child once every three hours and 15 minutes. It rolls on like clockwork, because of a handful of nutjob cowards too afraid to face the world any other way than heavily armed. The gun laws they cherish, which heavily favor criminals and irresponsible gun owners, must never, ever be changed. They are taboo.

Nothing must ever change, because piles and piles of dead children are supposedly the best we can do. I know what you’re going to say, so keep it to yourself. What you’re really saying is that this is fine and we shouldn’t even think about preventing the next one. It’s a shitty argument and I’m just not interested. The status quo is not fine nor is it the best we can do.