CA: Boy killed by "pellet gun"

[seamusTX]

Los Angeles, yesterday, a 14-year-old by was reportedly killed by accident with a pellet gun.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... oting.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-p ... ?track=rss" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

[NOS]

That is so sad. It's so hard when there is a child involved like this.
I lost a very good friend of mine in middle school, when one of our friends shot him in the chest with an "unloaded" 12 ga. It was an accident, but the boy who shot him was deeply effected by the trauma of shooting his friend. I know how the people involved feel right now. I'll send as many prayers their way as I can.

That being said, I can only imagine what the anti-gun community is going to do with this. I can hear the "ALL GUNS including Air/BB guns should be banned" speeches already. This happened in California, as strict as their gun laws are, I can't believe they still allow the shooting of pellet guns inside the city limits.

[seamusTX]

I very much doubt shooting any kind of gun is legal in L.A.

- Jim

[WildBill]

I very much doubt shooting any kind of gun is legal in L.A. - Jim

Many of the larger cities in California have laws against shooting pellet guns within city limits.
1. I am suprised that the chest shot was fatal. The pellet must have hit his heart or a major blood vessel.
2. Pellet guns are not toys.

[seamusTX]

I am suprised that the chest shot was fatal.

I don't know what happened in this case and probably never will, but ...

There are some rare heart defects that make people susceptible to sudden death from a blow to the chest. That can be from a fist, a baseball, or a tackle in football. Maybe this was one of those cases.

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/902504-overview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

[WildBill]

I am suprised that the chest shot was fatal.

I don't know what happened in this case and probably never will, but ...

There are some rare heart defects that make people susceptible to sudden death from a blow to the chest. That can be from a fist, a baseball, or a tackle in football. Maybe this was one of those cases. - Jim

With such a small mass of a pellet the kinetic energy is minimal. I can't fathom that was a cause. Without the autopsy results, we will never know.

[seamusTX]

I don't know what a news story derived from a police report means by "pellet gun," but some air rifles can take a deer. They easily match the muzzle energy of a .22.

It still boils down to "all guns are loaded."

- Jim

[WildBill]

I don't know what a news story derived from a police report means by "pellet gun," but some air rifles can take a deer. They easily match the muzzle energy of a .22. It still boils down to "all guns are loaded." - Jim

I have an air rifle [pellet gun] that rivals the ballistics of a .22LR. The power is amazing. My point was just about the kinetic energy causing the heart to stop, rather than the penetration. That is why I think the pellet must have perforated the heart or a major blood vessel.

The lessons learned are for that the same safety rules apply for firearms and airguns.

[seamusTX]

I don't know; and despite the glut of information on the internets, we probably never will.

- Jim

[The Annoyed Man]

During my very first day on duty in the ER, I got there a few minutes earlier than my shift was to start. Everybody on the graveyard shift was in Trauma 1, working on a 12 year old boy. He and his cousin had been playing around with an old .22 rifle they found in his dad's closet. They stupidly had a tug o' war over it, and the victim had the muzzle end of the rifle. He gave it a jerk toward himself, and as the muzzle touched his xiphoid process, the rifle discharged point blank. The bullet holed his descending aorta, and it was over in seconds. They had cracked his chest on arrival, cross-clamped the aorta and were doing open heart massage with massive transfusions to try and revive him, but it was a no-go.

A few months ago, I saw an online video of someone killing a feral hog with a head shot from about 20 or 30 yards away with a new model of Gamo air rifle. If it will do that to a feral hog, it can penetrate a 14 yr old human torso deeply enough to hole an aorta, or a temporal bone deeply enough to scramble some brains.