A bullet ricocheted off of a vending machine at a Merit Health clinic in Mississippi and hit a two-year-old child in the face yesterday. The gun discharged when the two-year-old’s mother dropped her purse, containing the gun, while trying to use a vending machine.
“Charges are not pending, it’s an accidental discharge,” said Officer Colendula Green with the Jackson Police Department.
That two-year-old is okay.
While Mississippi has an open-carry policy, weapons are prohibited on Merit Health campuses.
[My relief]
The fact that weapons are “prohibited on the Merit Health campuses” doesn’t solve this issue. Open-carry means that people will occasionally have guns in their purses and either forget to take those guns out, or drop their purse and shoot their child in the face. I am sure that the mother of this child was mortified and thankfully, it sounds like the child was not hurt badly, at all. Accidents will happen, but accidents with guns involved carry much higher rates of bullets hurting people.