PLAYING WITH FIRE ARMS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2165, 19 February 1891, Page 4

PLAYING WITH FIRE ARMS.

The London Daily News of November 26, in commenting upon a shooting accident at Holloway, questions whether playing with firearms ought not to be regarded as a form of down right lunacy. It says :—“ A lad of 17, while playing with a revolver, has shot his father, dead, and ho now

stands charged with manslaughter. One of these cases is almost exactly like another. The practical joker takes up a revolver, or gun, and playfully points, it at, some person near him—by preference his dearest friend. The friend shows signs of alarm, and begs him to put it down, but this only serves to heighten the joke to the unhappy creature holding the weapon. Being quite certain it is not loaded, he points it with only ,more deliberate aim, and when it explodes he stands transfixed with horror at the untoward way in which Providence sometimes takes a joke. All this happened, with some slight differences, m the case in, question. It was one of the differences that the wretched youth actually knew that, the weapon was loaded, only be was convinced that there was no cartridge in the chamber immediately under the hammer. His father was in great terror when the weapon was pointed at him, and took up the tongs to ‘ smash it,’ The son made a quick movement to avoid him, and in another moment the poor man lay weltering in his blood with a death wound. The misery of it is that, in spite of this and a thousand 'other warnings of the same nature, the same thing will be done again and again, till some men cease to be a little more unreflecting than the brutes.”