Thanks to family’s recklessness and disregard for proper gun safety, a 5-year-old boy shot his 6-year-old brother 

A 5-year-old boy shot and critically injured his 6-year-old brother at their home in east Harris County, deputies said Monday.

Children should never have access to firearms. They lack the maturity and experience to handle them. This means that parents who own guns need to be extra, extra vigilant in storing their weapons.

Relatives say the young brothers loved to play cops and robbers.

I don’t have a problem with children playing games. I do have a problem with a society that encourages kids to view firearms as playthings.

“He may have picked up the wrong weapon thinking that it was a toy,” said Thomas Gray, an uncle. “But this weapon was not a toy and it was a real gun and he actually pointed it at my other nephew and fired it.”

Here’s a million dollar question: why was a loaded gun lying around a household with children?

The shooting was reported around 10:30 a.m. Monday in the 16800 block of Faring Road.

The little boy named Hayden was taken by ambulance to Memorial Hermann Hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach.

“He was transported and immediately taken into surgery,” said Deputy Thomas Gilliland with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. “What I can tell you is he’s critical but stable and was conscious as he went into surgery.”

I dearly hope he recovers swiftly. No one, especially a child, should be forced to pay the price for the recklessness of others.

Deputies said the children were playing with an unsecured gun in a front bedroom when it went off. Their mother and two younger sisters, ages 2 and 3, were home at the time, but there were no other injuries.

There was a toy gun on the family’s front lawn.

The uncle said the real guns are usually kept in a safe place.

“We have a safe in here,” Gray said. “So I have no idea if it was in the safe or we were walking around with it and set it down somewhere. I have no idea.”

That last sentence is ridiculous. The loaded gun clearly was NOT in the safe, since it was used by a 5-year-old. Guns don’t just end up on coffee tables on their own. For that, you need an adult with a disregard for the safety of others.

Unfortunately, this is the third shooting involving children in the Houston area since last Friday. On Sunday morning, a 4-year-old boy found a loaded gun in the home and shot himself. He died shortly thereafter.

More than a dozen police and emergency vehicles crowded the small street after a call of a shooting involving a child.

Harris County Sheriff’s Office Homicide Detectives say that it appears that a 4-year-old boy got his hands on a loaded gun in the home and somehow shot himself.

The boy was not breathing when EMS crews arrived and they could not revive him.

Family members later identified the young victim as Codrick McCall Jr.

For hours, Codrick’s parents were kept outside the house in the back of separate constable’s vehicles.

Neither of them were at the scene at the time of the incident but at least three other people were at the scene Sunday morning. Two of them were brought outside the house with brown paper bags covering their hands until they could be tested to make sure they did not have gunshot residue on them.

Investigators would not comment on where the gun may have come from or if anyone else was with the boy when he found the gun.

The grief of a mother losing a child is inexplicable, but that grief extends when the child is lost in the care of another.

Now there are multiple families devastated by the combination of a 4-year-old boy and a loaded gun.

Pink Townsend lives a few doors down, “Me and my wife we was just coming from the store. We did not know what was going on,” he said, but like everyone in this small neighborhood they assumed the worst.

It would be worse than they imagined, “It is a tragedy is what happened,” Townsend said.

Within minutes of the incident the streets and sidewalks filled with neighbors and family of the victim, including his mother and father.

The house is occupied by a long-time friend of the young victim’s mother where the boy was left overnight while his mother celebrated her birthday.

The poor parents. My heart aches for them and the rest of their family.

Those sympathies are extended to the family of a 3-year-old boy who shot and killed himself last Friday:

It happened just after 12:30 p.m. in the 7400 block of Betanna, according to the Harris County Precinct 5 Constable’s Office.

The child was rushed to Memorial Hermann Hospital by Life Flight, but doctors couldn’t save him.

Investigators say the boy found the gun in a purse up on a shelf.

“I’m thinking how horrible it is for a child that young to have access to a gun,” said Sonora Storm, a neighbor. “You don’t want to blame the parents, by any means, but if I had a 3 year old child in the house, there wouldn’t be a gun.”

There’s no word on whether any charges will be filed in the case.

CPS said it’s investigating the case, though an official has not yet spoken to the family. Estella Olguin with CPS said they’re aware that a 1-year-old and 7-year-old also live in the home.

This is a heartrending tragedy. One that is compounded by the fact that the parents do bear some responsibility. They chose to keep a deadly and loaded weapon in their home in an unsecured location. That’s not being a responsible gun owner.

* * * *

I bet he thinks he’s a responsible gun owner

Police spotted the man, who they recognized from previous encounters, walking about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday near Lamphere High School in Madison Heights.

Officers called administrators when the man approached school property, and they locked down the school for nearly an hour.

Police said they received “about a million calls” about the man, who lives near the school and was carrying a rifle and holstered pistol.

“We had a citizen exercise his right to open carry, and he chose to exercise that right near the high school,” said Officer Carey Spangler.

“We’ve dealt with this individual in the past,” Spangler added. “We know of him to exercise his right to open carry.”

Police did not identify the man, who was not arrested, charged, or injured in the encounter – which he recorded on video and posted online.

“While out on an open carry walk, I was followed by the Madison Heights police department,” said the man, who calls himself Nunya Beeswax online. “They followed me from a distance, which was troubling, because they could clearly see that no laws were being broken. After initially declining to speak with the police, I decided to approach them and ask why they were essentially stalking a law abiding citizen. I did not appreciate the fact that one of these trigger happy morons placed his hand on his pistol when he approached me.”

The man approaches officers and asks why they’re following him, and he tells police he won’t answer any of their questions.

He asks one of the officers to remove his hand from his holstered weapon and demands to know whether the officer will shoot him.

“I’m talking now,” the man says, interrupting one of the officers. “That shiny little badge he has on his chest doesn’t give him any more rights than I have. Actually, you all work for me and the taxpayers, right?”

“You come over here with your hand on your gun, that’s reason for me to think that you feel ill will towards me,” the man continues. “If I were to do the same thing, you’d probably pull your gun out and point it at me, am I right? I’m talking to you, tough guy.”

The man continues taunting the police as other officers arrive and get out of their cruisers, asking if they saved anyone recently or just wrote tickets.

An officer tells him he is on school property, and that administrators want him to leave, but the man asks whether or not the school is funded by taxpayers.

The man continues arguing with police, who finally leave as the gun owner walks away from the school muttering complaints.

This guy is not a responsible gun owner. He should not be allowed to own any firearms.