Shooting hits hard, highlights importance of gun safety

News that a local high school student was shot today during the school's lunch break by a five-year-old playing with a handgun in a yard hit hard.

Some things just shouldn't happen. Especially not in small towns in Idaho, and this is one of them.

If initial reports are accurate, the kid was just walking to lunch, minding his own business and most likely joking around with his friends and thinking about how he didn't want to go to math class this afternoon, when all of a sudden, a 9 mm round burst though his back and out his front and interrupted his day.

Think about what that must be like for a second. One second you're standing on a street corner waiting to cross, the next you're bleeding with a piece of lead lounged inside you.

Or imagine what it must like to be one of the other students with him at the time. You're laughing, telling your buddy a joke and the next thing you know, your buddy's been shot. And you get to go to bed not only worried about your friend, but knowing that it could have very easily been you.

Police have initially declared this an accident, which Merriam-Webster defines as an "unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance."

A lot of accidents can be avoided. This accident should have been.

Five-year-olds have no reason to be playing with loaded handguns in their back yard. Guns should be kept somewhere safe, locked away from children. Ammo should be stored in the same way. With gun locks, gun safes and security boxes so readily available today, there's no reason a child should ever have access to a gun, much less a loaded one, without parental supervision or permission.

If people decide to keep guns and children under the same roof, they must also accept the responsibility that comes with having those guns and protecting their children and others from those guns.

People who fail to do so should be held accountable for whatever damage their weapons cause.

The student who took the bullet today isn't the only victim in this situation. The child who shot him will have to live with the fallout of the half second it took to pull the trigger for the rest of his life.

Police will find the answers as to what led to a five-year-old standing in a yard, holding a loaded handgun and pointing it at an innocent pedestrian as they continue their investigation, but whatever the reasons or whose ever handgun it was, it's safe to say this accident could have been avoided all together with better gun control and safety measures.