11-Year-Old Amish Boy Killed While Chipmunk Hunting
A sad story out of northwest PA. An 11-year-old Amish boy was lethally shot on Saturday while hunting for chipmunks. From the Erie Times-News:
MEADVILLE — Three young members of a Crawford County Amish community were hunting chipmunks over the weekend when a shot fired from a .22-caliber rifle struck an 11-year-old boy in the head, causing his death, according to the Pennsylvania State Police.
The shooting was reported shortly before noon Saturday on Atlantic Road in East Fallowfield Township, south of Conneaut Lake and southwest of Meadville.
According to state police in Meadville, members of the Amish community told troopers three juveniles were hunting chipmunks, with two of them carrying BB guns.
One of the juveniles fired a round from a .22-caliber rifle at a chipmunk, missing the animal, and a second round was then fired.
Immediately after the second shot, one of the juveniles saw the 11-year-old boy motionless on the ground and sought assistance from a man who was working in a field, state police reported.
The boy was flown by medical helicopter to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh at UPMC, where he died Sunday, according to troopers.
The police report ruled the shooting as accidental. Crawford County is the same county in which the Rebekah Byler murder happened earlier this year (but this is not the same community).
Amish Children & Gun Accidents
As a rural people, the Amish are going to be more exposed to these types of accidents. In 2019 I wrote this post listing firearms accidents involving Amish children in the previous decade. I was able to find at least a dozen (strictly using public online sources).
In some of those cases, the accidents resulted from clearly careless handling of firearms. It seems this sad incident is another example of that.
Hunting is a widespread pastime, if that’s the right word for it, in Amish communities. Amish children, especially farm children, are around guns more than their suburban counterparts by far, and possibly more so than non-Amish rural children.
What do Amish children get as far as safety training? That’s a broad question and probably varies by family and even a community’s attitudes to firearms.
And I’m not here to paint “the Amish” as being unsafe with guns. Without a doubt, responsible Amish fathers teach their sons (and sometimes daughters) weapon safety. We get into tricky ground when we say “the Amish” do things this way or that. If you must generalize about ways “the Amish” do things, it’s more feasible to do so (though not without pitfalls) on a community or affiliation-wide basis.
That said, I think it’s fair to say there is a higher comfort level with Amish children being around and using guns. Above, you can see a typical photo from inside a young Amish person’s room, with a hunting rifle and trophy antlers on the wall.
The three involved in this incident are described as “juveniles”, which would mean 17 years old or younger. It’s possible all three were of similar age to the victim, or young teens at most.
When I was a young teen, I had a BB gun, which I was allowed to use with friends of my age, unsupervised. But a lethal firearm, even a weaker one, would have been another story.
That’s not apples to apples, as I grew up in suburbia. But I still wonder how much safety training the average Amish child gets before he’s allowed to hunt with a real gun.
Putting all that aside, I am truly sorry for this family and their loss. When these things happen in the “English” world, it typically spurs a focus on preventing the same thing happening again. I hope that might be a “good” to come out of this story and young boy’s life.
Gun safety
Do the Amish take a hunter education course? Not sure if it applies to chipmunks, but a lot of Amish hunt big game. Just curious!
Safety
In most states in order to get a hunting license one has to show the certification of completion of a hunter safety course. The Ohio one I took was 2 6 hour clases over a weekend. The course included things besides safety but also included archery safety, both traditional bow and crossbow.
PS Deer are not “big game.”
Gun Safety
This is very tragic and my prayers go out to the family and community affected by this. I must say that as a gun owner myself I would never let children so young be around firearms without proper adult supervision. It sounds like these children were not taught proper gun safety. Always remember to not only be aware of your target, also be aware of what is behind your target. Always point your gun in a safe direction and don’t put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
Supervision
child who has been involved with weapons since childhood tends to be more responsible in their use, but to do so he must always be under the watchful eye and supervision of an adult. Leaving a child alone with a weapon is irresponsible, since I know they will tell me that our parents and grandparents hunted alone at that age, let’s say that psychological maturity was greater and they could understand the consequences of irresponsible use, today we have thirty year olds who do not take charge of their lives and we want them to assume responsibilities with respect to others.