A five year old given a .22 rifle as a present? Most kids didn’t even have a BB gun until eight or nine and .22 around twelve. What were the parents thinking?
I plan to give my boys .22s ...when they’re 15.
They weren't, of course.
When my daughter was a kid we had a neighbor with a girl her age and a son a couple of years younger. These numbnuts left lighters laying around with their smokes where the boy could reach them. Yeah, he got caught playing with them...as well as the pocket knife his half wit father left laying out.
Really pushed my button.
It sounds like these parents gave the kid a rifle and let him have his head with it with no supervision -- incredibly stupid.
RIP little angel.
In basic training, my platoon had a guy from Kentucky. He had coke bottle glasses, nearly blind as a bat. He was hitting the targets dead center at 300 meters with his M14. Must have had his first rifle when he was five.
He actually was 4 when he received it. Your point is well made and I agree with it. IMO five is also way to young to have a firearm whether in KY or anywhere else.
I don’t have a problem with teaching a child that age how to be responsible with a firearm. However, the parents in that house didn’t do that. It doesn’t matter whether the firearm was designed for young children, there is no reason a child should be in possession of the firearm anywhere but a gun range.
The answer is they were not thinking. I got my first BB gun at age 8 and my first .22 at age 13. And I had the good sense to never aim either gun at anyone, something banged into my little head by my parents.