Assault rifle goes off, Ore. child killed
Source: Associated Press
Assault rifle goes off, Ore. child killed
| June 28, 2013 | Updated: June 28, 2013 3:35pm
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) A 5-year-old girl has been killed and a woman wounded in Grants Pass after an assault rifle went off and shot them in an upstairs room of an apartment, police said.
A 30-year-old transient who was visiting the apartment was to be arraigned Friday on charges of manslaughter, assault and illegal possession of a machine gun, Chief Deputy District Attorney Lisa Turner said. The manslaughter charge alleges the killing was reckless, not intentional.
Police said Jon Andrew Meyer Jr. was arrested Thursday night without incident at the scene.
Turner said she could not divulge the make and model of the rifle, who owned it, or whether it was manufactured as a fully automatic weapon or modified later.
Police said Meyer was in a downstairs room of the apartment when the rifle went off there, and the girl and the woman were upstairs in the same apartment. The woman was not related to the girl, whose mother was also in the apartment, but not shot, Turner said.
A neighbor, Chris Mehl, told The Grants Pass Daily Courier (http://bit.ly/11Sry9a ) that he heard a gunshot, then a rapid firing.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Assault-rifle-goes-off-Ore-child-killed-4634613.php
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)arriving in one...two...
ileus
(15,396 posts)It's yet to be determined...
NFA or not that is the question...
ManiacJoe
(10,136 posts)Oregon is a class 3 state.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Brickbat
(19,339 posts)Suich
(10,642 posts)Shrike47
(6,913 posts)Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)What a stupid, senseless tragedy...
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Almost as bas as reading "a car rolled downhill" in a vehicular involuntary manslaughter case.
Pterodactyl
(1,687 posts)WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)Must have been the wind or something.
adieu
(1,009 posts)One shot might be reckless or accidental. But one shot, then rapid firing is beyond reckless, especially indoors into the second floor.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)I thought people killed people?
Rebellious Republican
(5,029 posts)marshall
(6,665 posts)More than once there was a chance to say the man used the gun to kill, but the article never quite makes that connection. It is very strange writing.
msongs
(67,496 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)while championing the second amendment which is more important than thousands of innocent lives.
VA_Jill
(10,045 posts)....are we to infer, then, that the rifle went off by itself? In which case, guns DO kill people!
samsingh
(17,604 posts)plantwomyn
(876 posts)traveling with an assault weapon? Or was the weapon just laying around the apartment for everyone to play with? WHEN will we do something about these freaking things laying around everywhere?
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Chris Mehl from the link above:
When he left his house, he said, he saw the girl on the sidewalk. It appeared she'd been struck in the head, and he tried to stop the blood, he said.
There was no immediate explanation for how the girl got from the apartment to the sidewalk.
Guess we'll never know what happened, other than the most obvious facts. A girl is dead who was 'not in the wrong place at the wrong time, but in the right place at the right time.'
Just with the wrong people and there was nothing she could do about it since she was a child. RIP, little girl.
B Stieg
(2,410 posts)But then this "assault rifle went off and shot them."
I'm sorry, but I continue to believe that these weapons are simply too dangerous to be owned by ANY civilian.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)One way to make an "Automatic" weapon is to file down the trigger sear on a Semi-automatic. The Sear is designed to prevent a double pull of the trigger (the second "Pull" is due to the shooter's reaction to the recoil of the weapon). With that sear filed down, the weapon turns "Automatic" but it is impossible to STOP the weapon till it runs out of ammunition. It is an illegal AND worse unsafe way to make an automatic weapon by filing down the sear.
I mention the above, for he is charged with having an Automatic Weapon, then the make model and type data is withheld. I suspect a SKS with its trigger sear filed off, The SKS is a semi-automatic only weapon, with one of the worse safety ever put on a rifle. I can see this guy loading the SKS and it went off, firing all all of the rounds for the sear had been filed down. When Police investigated they examined the weapon and found the trigger seared filed off and brought the charges they did.
The SKS was NOT banned under the Assault Weapon ban (unless it had a bayonet) for it did not come with a detachable magazine (you can buy after market detachable magazines for it), nor a folding stock (but you can buy such folding stocks after market), nor a pistol grip (the after market stocks often come with pistol grips). Bayonets are harder to find, for the SKS was designed when the Soviet Union had adopted a policy of bayonets always on the Rifle. For Importation into the US, those Bayonet were removed and scraped (They were Aluminium so had some value). The Bayonet can only be used on the SKS thus has little after market value for most buyers, who just want to shoot it, not use it in actual combat.
Just a comment what I think is the "Automatic" Weapon involved and if it was a SKS with its Trigger sear file down, you did not have one round but anywhere from 10-50 rounds being fired till the weapon jammed OR it ran out of ammunition.
ileus
(15,396 posts)Demit
(11,238 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,662 posts)Lugal Zaggesi
(366 posts)and ~11,000 gun homicides.
http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/
Meh - that's just the price we pay for a bunch of 18th century guys - with no sense of how much "arms" technology would improve in three centuries - writing a rock-solid Constitution that can't be changed, ever. Can't be helped.
Oh well.
On a brighter note, one modern-day Hero has saved us from lawn darts - a Scourge that might otherwise have killed dozens of our Citizens and injured hundreds every year:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31176/how-one-dad-got-lawn-darts-banned
Thank God 18th century short-sightedness hasn't condemned our country to enduring the Danger of Lawn Darts:
[center][/center]
Judi Lynn
(160,662 posts)before people started taking exception to their usefulness. They had no one to rile up the easily confused to rage against the do-gooders who might want to ban these things.
How sad for the victims the clown who started producing these things couldn't think of any non-lethal yard games, instead.
samsingh
(17,604 posts)kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)gun safety class.
And that gun needs a spanking.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)I guess their glass is half full