Smart Parenting

I live in a wonderful city – Rochester, NY. No really, it’s very nice but we have a few big problems. The first is always snow, but the second is our high crime rate in portions of the inner city. When you make a wrong turn in our city… well let’s just say you’ll know it real quick. 

So I was driving home from work the other day and heard a news report and thought I must have hallucinated some of it. Apparently a two year old child was playing alone in a vacant lot at 11:25 p.m. Monday when the parents heard what sounded like a firecracker – only to see their two year old with a gunshot wound.

Now, maybe it’s just me but a few questions come to mind when you hear this story:

1. Why is a 2–year old up at 11:25 p.m.?

2. Why is a 2–year old playing in a vacant lot?

3. Why is a 2–year old allowed to roam unsupervised?

4. Why in god’s name would anyone mistake a gunshot (40 ft away) with a firecracker?

5. Who would shoot a 2–year old?

And after reading the report about the arrest…

6. What jury in their right mind would believe that the man accidentally shot the child because he ‘was wiping the gun down’? Now if I had a gun, I _probably_ wouldn’t wipe it down while it was say… pointed at a child.