Kalamazoo Teen Kills Friend Playing With Gun, Then Commits Suicide

Few things frustrate me more than negligent discharge deaths.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a idiot who blasts himself in the head taking a “selfie,” a parent who allows a child to acquire an unsecured gun, or someone who shot another person or themselves while attempting to clean an “unloaded” gun that clearly wasn’t.

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The most infuriating cases (for me at least) are those instances where the people involved are old enough to know better, but still act recklessly, playing with a firearm. That’s precisely what happened Monday night in an alley in Kalamazoo, MI.

In this instance two families were ripped apart, as the teen who was playing with the gun and killed his friend then turned the gun on himself.

A “distraught” teenager in southwestern Michigan killed himself after fatally shooting another teen while playing with a gun, police said Tuesday.

The two shootings occurred Monday night in an alley in Kalamazoo. Police said a witness reported no argument or altercation between the 17-year-olds, who knew each other.

“Once the first person was shot and died at the scene, the shooter became distraught, according to the witness, and then took his own life. The evidence found at the scene confirms this,” Capt. Victor Ledbetter said in a written statement.

The victims were identified as Marsavious Frazier and Daqarion Hunter. Hunter graduated from Loy Norrix High School in June, while Frazier was a student at Phoenix High School. Counselors were available Tuesday, the first day of school, to talk to students and staff who knew the victims.

Police didn’t publicly disclose which victim was accidentally shot. But Jonathan Frazier said police told him that his son shot Hunter.

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The news report said that the handgun recovered at the scene “wasn’t stolen, but wasn’t properly registered.” I’m not all that familiar with Michigan gun laws, but that suggests that there was a private sale of the firearm at some point where the required Permit To Purchase A Pistol signed by both parties was not submitted to local law enforcement.

Whether the handgun was the property of one of the two 17-year-olds, a friend, or a family member has not been disclosed.

What is clear is that at some point in the chain of possession the handgun in question was not properly secured and it came into the possession of two young men who didn’t have the good sense or training to follow the four simple rules of gun safety.

It could simply be that Frazier and Hunter are—were—uneducable mouth-breathing morons who simply could not understand that pointing a firearm at another person is a recipe for disaster, but I find that highly unlikely.

gunsite rules

The four rules of gun safety popularized by Col. Jeff Cooper and used at Gunsite Academy for the past 40 years have been copied and echoed by generations of shooters, for the very simple reason that they work.

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I have to wonder if Frazier and Hunter and other people who have been injured or killed while handling a firearm may still be alive and unperforated today if gun safety seminars were held starting in elementary school and echoed every year until children graduate.

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