Every child lost is a tragedy. There is so much innocence and unrealized potential lost that shouldn’t. Unfortunately, over the weekend, it happened in Minnesota (archived links).

Markee Jones, 12, is shot dead at his grandmother’s Minnesota house as a loaded gun was left out among children

By Alex Hammer For Dailymail.Com

A 12-year-old boy was fatally shot inside his grandmother’s home during a birthday celebration for his cousin – after playing with an unattended firearm brought by an unnamed guest, cops said.

Identified as Markee Jones, the child had been playing with the loaded handgun with an older sibling and cousin in St. Paul, Minnesota, Saturday – before it suddenly went off and left the preteen mortally wounded.

An unnamed 14-year-old male is currently in custody pending charges of manslaughter, cops said.

[…]

Relatives demanding justice maintain the incident was accidental. Family members also said someone they know is responsible for leaving the gun inside their home – and that it was done without their knowledge.

They are now demanding that person come forward, seemingly in the know about who they are. Cop said they are now interviewing others who witnessed the incident.

I don’t understand the rationale of charging a 14-year old with manslaughter after what was an accident, but it’s prudent to wait for the fog of reporting to clear. What’s known though is that the gun was brought to the home and left unattended and accessible to children.

Gun control group Newtown Action Alliance didn’t wait to pounce on the tragedy to call for more federal gun control.

On Saturday, 12-year-old Markee Jones was killed in an unintentional shooting in Minnesota.

Markee and a 14-year-old were playing with the gun when it went off.

Firearms MUST be safely secured when children are in the home.

Urge Senator Smith and Senator Klobuchar to cosponsor… pic.twitter.com/8negkGRFmH

— Newtown Action Alliance (@NewtownAction) August 6, 2023

What they intentionally left out in their call for a new federal law is that Minnesota already has a safe storage law. Credit to Twitter/X user 2aHistory for calling them out for it. 

609.666 NEGLIGENT STORAGE OF FIREARMS.

Subdivision 1. Definitions. For purposes of this section, the following words have the meanings given.

(a) “Firearm” means a device designed to be used as a weapon, from which is expelled a projectile by the force of any explosion or force of combustion.

(b) “Child” means a person under the age of 18 years.

(c) “Loaded” means the firearm has ammunition in the chamber or magazine, if the magazine is in the firearm, unless the firearm is incapable of being fired by a child who is likely to gain access to the firearm.

Subd. 2. Access to firearms. A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who negligently stores or leaves a loaded firearm in a location where the person knows, or reasonably should know, that a child is likely to gain access, unless reasonable action is taken to secure the firearm against access by the child.

Subd. 3. Limitations. Subdivision 2 does not apply to a child’s access to firearms that was obtained as a result of an unlawful entry.

There’s already a law. It didn’t work because it was broken.

But gun controllers build more laws on top of failures. Their goal isn’t “safety” by any measure; it’s control and subjugation. Why else would they lie by omission and not acknowledge that there was already a state law in place? 

For those who may not know this, Newtown Action Alliance Chairwoman Po Murray was one of the people who secretly colluded with the CDC to remove Defensive Gun Use statistics from the CDC website.

The story continues:

Another family member, speaking anonymously, told KSTP-TV how in recent weeks there had been heated discussion amongst members of the sprawling family about safety surrounding guns – particularly around the family’s many children.

The deceased’s uncle, Martez Hill, further revealed that Saturday had been his son’s birthday, and that several of the boys had been playing with the firearm unbeknownst to adults before it went off.

There’s something else that could have worked here besides safe storage laws, and that’s teaching children not to mess around with unattended guns. There was a new study on this topic and Cam covered it last month.

Gun controllers shamelessly exploit everything and repeatedly lie to push their agenda. However, for those of us in the Second Amendment community, this is an intersection that we care about. We want to keep our freedoms and don’t believe in unenforceable one-size-fits-all mandates because everyone’s personal situation and needs are different. We believe in firearms training, especially for children so they know what genuine gun safety is. It’s incumbent upon us to keep spreading knowledge and safety awareness while also calling out gun controllers on their unethical antics.