THE DEADLY PEA-RIFLE. A Lurking Terror.

Free Lance, Volume IX, Issue 454, 13 March 1909, Page 6

THE DEADLY PEA-RIFLE. A Lurking Terror.

ONE more juvenile victim is added to the long tally slam by that most terrible of toys, the pearifle, withm the past few years. Percy Yon Keisenberg, a lad of sixteen years, was camping-out at Ngaio (otherwise Crofton) with his brother and two other boys on Sunday last, when the fatality occurred. It was an accident, of course, These things always are. But that does not lessen the anguish of the bereaved relatives. The frequency of these accidents the pea-rifle, however, brings into -high relief the dangerous character of this murderous weapon, mis-called a toy. • • • The four boys, it seems, went out on Sunday morning to do some shooting. They fired three shots. It is fortunate nobody happened to be in the line of fire. After firing the throe shots they returned to their camp, and the pea-rifle was laid down by the fire. Then Arthur Yon Keisenberg, forget ting that he had himself re-loaded the weapon, picked it up to clean it. In trying to do this, and being unfamiliar with the use of the gun, the trigger, which was right back, went off, andtho bullet entered the neck of Percy, sever ing the windpipe. It was a hopeless case, but the little sufferer lingered on until Monday evening, when h° died in the Hospital. These aie the salient ciicumstanoes of the case, which, in all its essential features, strongly resembles a dozen others which could be named. It appears, too, that a police constable several days previously had seen the boys with the gun, and had warned them not to use it. Now, the safety of the community urgently demands that this pea-iifle nuisance must be put down. Mere children and half-grown youth? ought not to be allowed to carry about these dangerous fiTe-a.rms, let alone a.tfcempt to use them. Yet, Uttle boys seem to handle theFi with impunity, here in Wellington.. • • • Cases have been reported to us where .nervous women have been kept in a state of terror by the knowledge that youngsters in their neighbourhood are playing about with a pearifle. They don't know the moment their little children may get in the way of a flying bullet. One hears every now and then of hair-breadth escapes through the reckless discharge of these pea-rifles, at stray cats, at a bird perched on the limb of a tree, or at a

bottle stuck on a fence. It is not only an unmitigated nuisance, but a constant danger to life and limb. • « * • At all hazaids the use of these weapons by childien must be forbidden. They have no more right to be used in city or suburbs than ordinary firearms The police ought to be instructed to impound any pea-rifles they may see in the hands of children. Far too many valuable lives have been lost already through laxity in this respect It is. high time the pea-rifle were put in its proper category, and its use hedged round with exactly the same restiictions that are prescribed for fire-arms. We understand that the law forbids the sale of pea-rifles to persons under the age of sixteen years, but one reputable dealer informs us that youngsters to whom he has refused to sell have airily told him they could easily buy elsewhere.