Police investigating the cellphone of an Indiana man arrested for trying to sell a gun to an undercover officer found a disturbing video Friday of a baby playing with a .40 caliber handgun. Two videos discovered on 19-year-old Michael Barnes' cellphone showed a 1-year-old boy tinkering with the handgun as Barnes tells the child to say "pow," according to a statement from the Evansville Police Department.
Authorities didn't say if the gun was loaded. In the video, the infant can also be seen placing the muzzle of the weapon in his mouth. "At no point does Barnes try to stop the child from playing with the gun," police said.
Barnes was wanted for armed robbery when he attempted to sell a handgun to an undercover officer. He was arrested and charged with resisting law enforcement with a weapon, carrying a handgun without a permit and carrying a handgun without a permit within 500 feet of a school, according to Evansville police. Once investigators found the video of the child playing with the gun, Barnes was charged with child neglect, criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon and allowing a child to possess a firearm, police said.
The baby's mother, Toni Wilson, 22, faces the same charges after police determined she was present while the videos were being recorded. When questioned, she claimed the gun was a pellet gun, police said.
The couple's 1-month-old twins were removed from the home and are in emergency care, along with the 1-year-old in the video. Barnes is the father of the twins, but not the older baby boy, police said.
would you prefer it to be loaded.....The article doesn't say if the gun was loaded, so why should I really care?
The article doesn't say if the gun was loaded, so why should I really care?
You're aware first rule of gun safety is that you treat it as if its unloaded right? No matter what?
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Stupid liberal gun grabbers.
/sarcasm
Yes I do, but considering the number of things that happen on a daily basis in the news, an article about a baby playing with a possibly completely harmless unloaded gun, is non existent on my meter of caring.You're aware first rule of gun safety is that you treat it as if its loaded right? No matter what?
EDIT - Unloaded guns are safer than loaded guns obviously.
Dam straight. How else you think the 2008 financial collapse could have happened?Hey, when training your kid to be a thug, you gotta start early.
Yes they should. Guns have no place near children.
I'm not really sure what the crime is here. Are the parents idiots? Definitely. Are they criminals? No.
Sure they do. An unloaded handgun is about as dangerous as a Tyco truck.
This is true.
Until the same kid finds the same gun when mom and dad aren't home. Is anyone 100% sure the gun is going to be empty then?
Something I'd think about.
Pretty ridiculous. Parent shouldn't get into trouble for this.
I didn't know we were now jailing people for innocuous acts because of the extreme improbability that they are going to leave loaded guns lying around for their kids to play with in the future after presumably not teaching them anything about the danger of weapons when they are old enough to do something other than shit in a diaper.
Something you should think about.