The death of any child is a tragedy. Further, it’s also an opportunity for anti-gun whackjobs to use the tragedy to advance a gun control narrative. I hate having to see it that way, but as we’ve already seen, they don’t necessarily wait for the facts to roll in.

Earlier this week, a mother who lost her two-year-old child was sentenced to prison. The child apparently found his mother’s gun in her purse, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

That’s the very short version. The longer version, however, is more disturbing.

Crystal meth addict Melissa Adamson, 33, was too high to realise what was going on while her two-year-old son Lokhi Bloom was playing with her loaded .380 Ruger.

She was jailed for 24 years on Monday over the negligence death of the little boy at their Colorado Springs home in October last year.

After the tragedy, Adamson told cops she’d loaded her pistol following a “threatening visit” from a drug dealer called Beast, reports the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Apparently, the boy thought it was a water pistol and put it in his mouth to get a drink of water. Considering the mother’s state and negligence, the kid may have just been really thirsty and thought this was a way to alleviate it.

Now, here are a few quick takeaways.

First, Adamson, as a drug addict, was not eligible to lawfully own a firearm. That’s federal law, yet she had the gun none the less.

Second, we all know that we shouldn’t leave guns lying around where small children can get their hands on them. Especially at that age. Two-years-old is an age when kids are incredibly curious and will get into anything and everything. You need to take care to make sure they don’t get into anything they shouldn’t.

Yes, that includes guns. It only takes an instant to pull a trigger, after all.

However, one of the biggest takeaways to me is how important it is that we impart on our children how to properly handle a firearm by insisting on that behavior even with toy guns. Young Lokhi Bloom likely had squirted water in his mouth before, which is why he saw a pistol and immediately thought to get a drink that way. Had he not been allowed to do that because it’s not a safe firearm practice, he likely wouldn’t have when he had a real gun in his hand.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Adamson would have done such a thing. Drug addicts are rarely responsible parents, after all.

But Adamson isn’t the only parent out there. It only takes one lapse in judgment for you to find yourself in a similar situation, theoretically. If you lay the groundwork, though, you’re less likely to face the same outcome as she did. After all, if the kids don’t think of putting a gun in their mouth, it’s not going to find its way there on its own.

Toy guns aren’t as deadly as real ones, but imagine all the heartache we could avoid if we started teaching kids to treat them as such.