Two brothers in Oakland were arguing over a shotgun on Tuesday night, and the gun went off killing one of the brothers. It's another needless and senseless death.
Guns are not harmless toys that boys (or men) fight over. It's way past time to take gun control issues seriously.
From the SFGate:
A struggle over a shotgun between two brothers ended tragically in North Oakland on Tuesday evening when the gun went off and one of them was killed, police said.
The shooting happened on the 900 block of Aileen Street about 7:20 p.m. and the surviving brother was taken into custody.
Police didn't immediately release the names of the two men.
The brothers were arguing about a shotgun and, during a struggle for the weapon, one was shot and killed, police said. The circumstances leading to the shooting remain under investigation.
Mark Morford has written an editorial on gun violence in America over at sfgate. It's excellent, so please go and read it. The concluding three paragraphs are reproduced here:
Look, I am far from naïve. I’ve been writing about gun-related issues off and on for 15 years, and aside from banning guns completely – which, despite the howls of libertarians and extremists, won’t happen anytime soon thanks to cowardly politicians and the thuggery of the NRA – there is only one lasting solution: change the message completely.
Do you think it’s possible? To excise the gun fetishism from Hollywood and the news media, to explode America’s bogus cowboy mythology, to shout down the gun apologists, the NRA goons and those who talk about “responsible” gun ownership, to point out how relying on a gun actually makes you less of a man, not more? Is it possible to re-frame and reclaim authentic masculinity for a new generation of men, a definition in which doesn’t include sexism, violence against women, or guns as the ultimate solution to any problem?
Because the alternative – more shootings, more fear, countless thousands more dead, more unimaginable pain and nearly all of it at the hands of men – is as predictable as it is inevitable.
Update on the sfgate story from Terre in the comments:
Eugene Chew, 37, and Johnny Chew, 40, were outside when they got into an argument, and the younger brother went inside, retrieved a shotgun and came back out, police said.
The brothers began struggling over the weapon and it went off, striking Eugene Chew in the neck, police said. He died at Highland Hospital in Oakland.
Johnny Chew was arrested on suspicion of murder.