Toddler with a Gun

Robert Bell, a security guard, went to visit his mother's house in South Baltimore. He took with him his girl friend and her two boys, aged three and six. He also took along his .357-magnum pistol. He placed it in his mother's dining room cabinet.

The boys found it and took it outside in the streets to play. They had apparently been squabbling earlier with some neighborhood children. One of the boys waved it in a girl's face and said, "I'm going to shoot you, and I'm not going to miss." Then the three-year-old grasped the gun in both hands and pointed it at another child on the street, Jeffery Krauch, 6. The three-year-old's brother cocked the pistol. The three-year-old fired it into Jeffery's chest. Jeffery stood for an instant, then fell, blood pouring from his wound. He was almost immediately dead.

Somehow, no one will be charged even with negligence. Bell had a permit for the pistol, so a strict gun-control law might not have mattered much. The question is beyond legality and illegality. There are simply too many guns in American closets and cabinets, waiting to go off.

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