title:  Hypocrisy In Georgia: Teen Charged In Accidental Shooting Death, While Parents Largely Go Unprosecuted
text: A 17-year-old teenager is dead today after his 16-year-old friend accidentally shot him in the face with an unsecured gun. Now the teen who shot him is facing dire consequences.According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution a group of boys were playing with a loaded gun inside an apartment complex when the shooting occurred. Relatives of the boys, who ranged from ages 13 to 17, told reporters that they were all friends or cousins.The 16-year-old was apparently holding the gun just after midnight when it discharged and struck the older boy in the face. After the shooting the  suspect  ran home and told his family that he shot someone. The family members drove him back to the scene where he was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter.In 2014, News 21 found that 28,000 children and teens are killed each year in the United States by firearms. To put this into perspective, that means that for every soldier who was killed in Afghanistan (over eleven years) at least thirteen kids were killed in America.Teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 made up over two-thirds of all youth gun deaths in America.The News21 findings are compiled in the most complete database to date from records obtained from 49 state health departments and FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports.Many of the children who are killed each year die in an  unintentional  shooting. Often times these  accidents  happen because they or another child get their hands on an unsecured weapon and it discharges. As a matter of fact, American children are SIXTEEN times more likely to be killed in an accidental shooting than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.Although the kid in this case was charged with a crime, negligent parents rarely are. Twenty-seven states (Georgia included) and the District of Columbia have child access prevention (CAP) laws; these laws hold parents responsible when their children access a gun and someone is hurt   but enforcement is almost nonexistent. According to the Shreveport Times police often feel guilty charging parents who are grieving the loss of a child.Slate reported:Even in states where these laws exist, they re both inconsistent standards and penalties for culpability vary widely from state to state and inconsistently applied, with prosecutors often choosing not to pursue cases against negligent parents out of sympathy, perhaps, or a sense that these cases are hard to win. And that s understandable: These shootings are tragedies, after all, and why compound a family s misery by sending a grieving parent to jail? But CAP laws are only effective as a deterrent if they re vigorously enforced.So parents get away with their negligence, but a scared 16-year-old kid is charged with a crime. As a mother, this appalls me. I would fully expect to be charged with a crime if my son picked up my gun and hurt himself or someone else. As adults we are responsible for keeping our little humans as safe as we can and if we do something that was so neglectful that someone dies as a result, we should be charged.To give us a pass, but prosecute a child is mind-boggling. Meanwhile, this shooting and this shooting and this shooting  all go unprosecuted in the same state.Featured image via Freakout Nation