A woman was killed today by a single bullet accidentally
fired by her 4-year-old son.
Lebanon's national news agency reported the tragic death of
the mother but gave little details about the shooting, which is not considered
out of the ordinary in Lebanon, a country which has no effective gun control
laws & which has an estimated 2 million unregistered firearms in
circulation following a 15-year civil war which ended in 1990. Handgun
incidents here are common & sometimes often don't make the news.
The incident in the southern Lebanese town of Kafra came 2
days after a similar incident on Friday when an 11-year-old boy accidentally
shot an 8-year-old boy in another town in southern Lebanon, according to
Lebanon's national news agency, reports, according to Sky News Arabia.
In Lebanon there is no strict application of laws over handguns,
with no specific laws which punish those who own them illegally & only
token rules which could be applied to those who actually carry them.
Naturally those who do carry them are often protected from
prosecution by their political contacts or in some cases militia groups, which
operate outside of the law at any rate.
A new army chief who has taken office has not agreed to sign
off hundreds of gun permits for those who originally did have them - granted to
them by politicians as favors or for them to be used to protect them, or just
as accessories for the rich.
The preferred pistol by far is the Glock 19 which can be
bought on the black market here for around £3,000.Stray bullets often cause
deaths & injuries when shooting in the air during celebrations, funerals,
weddings & political gatherings, although political leaders have managed to
curtail the number of in air shootings recently, following a number of stray
bullets killing people watching rallies.
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