LETTER: Do gun owners learn from tragic events?

As an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment, I was disturbed to read in the Review Journal last week about a careless shooting of a young child.

The article stated that a mother was sentenced to probation for the accidental shooting death of her 3-year-old son. The mother was with another woman and wanted to show her the gun was not loaded. The mother removed the safety, pointed the gun in front of her and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit her son in his head.

When a sane, law-abiding citizen legally owns a firearm for self-protection, the onus is on the individual to practice gun safety and understand how to use and maintain their firearm. Even a person who does not own a firearm would agree the mother did not practice safe handling of a firearm or understand how to inspect the gun to be sure there were no bullets in the gun.

My concern is not whether sentencing the mother to probation was too lenient for her careless handling of a loaded firearm; my concern is whether people who own firearms learned something from this tragic event.