Hunter Shoots Through Trailer Wall, Kills Toddler

JeanneSager — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:01:00 GMT

She was sitting in her grandparents' house, doing what toddlers do. The next second, a bullet tore through the wall in an otherwise quiet rural neighborhood. Charly Skala was gone.The hunter whose high-powered hunting rifle claimed the sixteen-month-old's life is sitting in jail.

Despite my politics and my strictly vegetarian diet, a childhood spent in rural America has made me fairly tolerant of guns. I grew up with people who hunted to survive. End of story. But the story I shared with readers of my local newspaper has been hitting the news across the globe, and the reaction has only highlighted the vast difference between the right to bear arms afforded the average American and the need to tote a high-powered weapon.

It's not fear-mongering to say this could have happened to any family in America. Skala's family was sitting inside their trailer when the bullet burst through the wall. They were gathered to watch a football game. It hardly gets more all American.This hunter - according to officials - was just four hundred feet from the home and pointing straight at it. The .300 magnum could easily shoot more than a mile if nothing got in the way. According to the upstate New York assistant district attorney, hunter Edward Taibi of Queens, brought an "elephant gun" to go deer hunting.

Now a little girl is dead, and a hunter (who police said is extremely remorseful) is awaiting a trial on manslaughter charges. Is this merely a case of a horrible accident to get past? Or is this evidence that some guns just don't belong in the hands of the general public?

Image: Sullivan County Democrat

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