Warning: Article has detailed accounts of the shooting
Breanna Gayle Devall Runions, 25, was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of Evangaline Gunter.
The child’s parents, Adam and Josie Gunter, told ABC affiliate WATE that Evangaline had been in temporary custody at a home in Rockwood, which Runions shared with girlfriend Christina Daniels and another child, a 7-year-old girl.
Before the shooting, Evangaline and the older girl were being punished that morning by Runions for not waking up the women and for eating Daniels’ food without permission, according to the warrant and a statement from Russell Johnson, district attorney general for Tennessee’s 9th Judicial District. Runions struck both girls with a sandal before forcing them to stand in different corners of the women’s bedroom, authorities said the older girl told them.
After the shooting, the women drove Evangaline to a nearby Walmart location to meet an ambulance, Roane County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Boduch told the Roane County News, and the vehicle transported the girl to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. Boduch could not immediately be reached by HuffPost.
Look, I’m one of the first to say Americans are dangerously obsessed with firearms, but this wasn’t a firearms issue - it was straight up murder. This wasn’t an attempt to teach with any sort of responsibility or following any safety at all. If anyone tried to teach my kids firearm safety by sticking the barrel in their chest they would be decked.
First rule - every firearm is loaded. Every. Fucking. Firearm. Is. Loaded.
Not a firearm issue? Wtf killed her?
No wonder we’ll never solve this issue. Idiots
This is like saying its a car issue because I tried to teach a 4 year old road safety by speeding at them and slamming on the brakes. Its not the car thats the issue.
That… is a car issue in the rest of the world, considering some idiot who thinks it’s okay to do that has access to, and probably the privilege of operating such a machine.
Yeah… that would be a lifetime driving ban, alongside any other ramifications.
Yes, person would be banned from driving.
But we wouldn’t be banning cars, looking at stricter licenses, or improved regulation. We don’t review after ever drunk driver kills someone because its not the car, or the access to cars that is the problem.
Yeah, except the US isn’t really doing any of those things. You can still own guns here in the Netherlands, you just have to be a member of a sporting organisation and be licensed and stuff. We don’t have school shootings here.
Given the psychological effect of owning a gun, or having access to one has on a person, I honestly feel like we’re in the same mental health territory as any behavioral antagonist, like leaving an addictive substance around an addict. You take a gun and put everything it means in a person’s hands - the power, the mythology, the kind of baggage it comes with in this country - and it’s gonna have some kind of effect.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve witnessed, and am aware of many cases where drivers of certain kinds of cars - big, fast, whatever - do stupid, reckless, dangerous, even murderous things because of the feeling of power and control their vehicle gives them. It’s the psychology of the damn things that makes people crazy.
We have a phrase for it, oddly enough: “it’s like leaving a loaded gun on the table”
I agree with your points, but I also think that if firearms were more regulated, this woman may not have even gotten a gun in the first place. We don’t know her history, but if she did something like this, I wouldn’t be shocked if she didn’t have the cleanest of records.
Exactly. It was murder and its pissing me off the news is making it about firearm safety gone wrong. And the poor kids sound like they were abused in this foster care setting… This girl was shot point blank in the chest. Hope there is some justice.This poor child.
Second rule, don’t point that shit at anything you don’t want to destroy.
In a civilised country this person would not have had access to a firearm, so it is most definitely a gun issue.