Three children, age 2, age 4, and age 15, were shot and injured in gun accidents today. 

The two year-old, of Spring Lake, North Carolina, was shot with a semi-automatic pistol as he was sitting in his mother’s car, while she was speaking with someone through the window.  Police have declined to say whether he accidentally shot himself or if someone else mishandled the gun.  The boy was struck in the upper leg and is in stable condition after surgery.

In Ocala, Florida, a four-year old boy found a Ruger handgun that had been zipped inside a pocket of a sweater that belonged to a friend who was visiting his mother.  The friend, an employee at a local prison, had taken off the sweater and had fallen asleep on the couch when the boy accessed the gun and shot himself in the hand.  She has been arrested and charged with culpable negligence. According to the arrest affidavit, “the middle and ring fingers on [the boy’s] right hand needed to be ‘surgically reconstructed.’”

And in Warner Robins, Georgia, the 15-year old was accidentally shot in the chest by another child.  Minimal details were reported other than that there were several people in the boy’s home when the accident occurred.

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