An 8-year-old boy has died after accidentally shooting himself with a loaded gun left in a car while his mother was inside an Utah convenience store, police said.
The boy was alone in the car about 7:40 p.m. Monday in Lehi — a city about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City — when he shot himself in the head, Jeanteil Livingston with the Lehi City Police Department confirmed to CBS News. The incident occurred in a vehicle located in the parking lot of a Maverick gas station, police said.
The boy was taken to a local hospital in extremely critical condition. He was later airlifted to a hospital up north and died Tuesday morning, police said.
Nobody should rely on mechanical safeties, but guns without them are a dangerous consumer product, like selling cars without seatbelts because some folks are cheapskates or think they’re uncool.
Any other industry would have been fixed this ages ago after lawsuits.
Mechanical safeties where introduced to prevent accidental discharge when dropped. Glocks, and other modern handguns have other features to prevent this without manual intervention.