CHUBBUCK — A Pocatello firefighter who lives in Chubbuck has been charged with misdemeanor injury to a child in the accidental shooting death of 5-year-old Noelle Aston Shawver, of Blackfoot, last July by another 5-year-old.
Rusty Lish will be arraigned in Bannock County Magistrate Court on the charge at 1:30 p.m. today.
The little girl was killed after being struck by a bullet discharged from a firearm held by another 5-year-old child on the afternoon of July 30, 2014, at Lish's home. Adults in the home at the time were in another room. The deceased girl's parents, Drew and Stacie (Udy) Shawver, of Blackfoot, were visiting the Lish residence on the 600 block of Canal Street in Chubbuck.
“It's wrong to have a firearm where a child could get ahold of it,” said Bannock County Prosecutor Steve Herzog. “We've been working on this case for a long time. Everyone knows what happened shouldn't have happened. It's been a really difficult case.”
Herzog said the message in this prosecution should be that gun safety is an essential issue when it comes to having children and firearms in a home.
A study by Everytown for Gun Safety released in June found that two children in the U.S. die almost every week from unintentional shootings. The study examined every publicly reported case of a child gun death from Dec. 15, 2012, through Dec. 14, 2013, and found 100 unintentional deaths in 35 states during that time period.
According to the group, the study found most of the deaths came from a child playing with a gun.
(2) comments
Tne NJ study of 200 accidental firearms child deaths in the Mid Atlantic Region found 189 were associated with current gang members or prior violent criminals who were the gun owners.
My guess is virtually all but a few of the deaths "Everytown" for gun safety is talking about are in the homes of criminals or gang members
In fact if you are not in a gang or a criminal, owning a gun seems to make the home 18% safer than the US mean. This is why same region-same demographic states with so called "safe storage laws" actually have MORE gun homicide and accidents than states that do not. Criminals don't care about and are unaffected by any gun laws
This case is an outlier. It is no different though than someone leaving knives out or car keys around. In normal situations it is safe.
The latest (Nov 2014) gallup indicates 63% of Americans know owning a gun makes their home safer from violence. That 63% is the likely US gun ownership.
Yet gun homicide, including unintentional and/or negligent gun homicide, is down 61% since 1992.
This incident was tragic and avoidable. But note that Everytown For Gun Safety is a rabid anti-gun organization that does not promote gun safety, only gun control. So the numbers they put out are false. CDC statistics show that fewer than 600 people of all ages die in accidental shootings so it is demonstrably false that 2 children a day die from accidental gun fire.
To learn about gun safety for children, see the websites of a real gun safety organization:
https://eddieeagle.nra.org/
http://www.nrainstructors.org/SearchCourse.aspx
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