Phoenix boy, 14, shoots armed intruder while watching three younger siblings

Depends on if the slug was intentionally fired at the human target or just a bad shot. You can't expect a kid that young to be as accurate a shot as a pro.

 

You can't expect many adults in that situation to be accurate. Too many things going on in the body under a high-stress situation to make an accurate shot possible.

 

Is teaching your children to shoot intruders really a hallmark of responsible parenting (or responsible gun ownership, for that matter)?

 

well if the alternative is they'll get shot what do you think.

 

I remember when that area was just farmland. How times have changed in Phoenix.

 

I'm glad the kid and his siblings are okay. But yeah, there has got to be more to the story. And I really hope this doesn't encourage more parents to make their weapons easily accessible to their kids.

 

You have to weigh the odds of your children facing a violent home invasion versus accidentally shooting each other while playing with daddy's gun.

Unless you're living in Kabul, I would argue that the latter is far more likely.

(And this doesn't even begin to consider the argument that children injecting a weapon into a violent home invasion makes themselves more likely to be killed than if they had complied).

 

i guess since whatever you calculate the odds as, they actually did face an armed intruder they're probably glad he's their father and not you. but i guess you and the criminal's lawyer will argue he didn't fire a shot.

 

Yeah, me too.

 

14 isn't that young. i had learned to shoot a gun by that age, probably a few years earlier.

 

Little Jimmy was doing hits for mob bosses at 14

 

Hell most my friends back home were going gopher hunting well before that age. Mind you, that's out in the country, not in suburbia.