Articles labeled: toddler playing with gun

We tend to agree that if you leave a loaded handgun where a young child can get it, that certainly constitutes “child neglect”.

[Tracey] DeCarr said she kept the handgun in her nightstand to protect herself and her son.

“He goes through my stuff all the time in the morning, like a normal child, and he found that,” DeCarr said. “He took it back to his room because he knew he was not supposed to be playing with that and that’s where it happened, in his bedroom.”

DeCarr insisted the gun was not loaded.

Volusia County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Brandon Haught said there was a bullet in the chamber and the toddler may have been trying to drop another bullet down the gun’s muzzle.

“It definitely could have been a whole lot worse,” Haught said. “This child was just playing with a gun, just pointing it in the wrong direction. It could have been a whole lot worse.”

Note to self: Do not hire Joshua White to babysit.

DECATUR, Ga. — Police have arrested a man after the boy he was watching apparently shot himself by accident.

Joshua White was baby-sitting his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son Monday and called 911 after the boy was wounded, DeKalb County police spokesman J.T. Ware said.

The boy was shot above the eye but is expected to survive, Ware said. Police believe the boy shot himself using White’s gun, Ware said.