Fatal Rossville accidental shooting far from the first

ROSSVILLE, Ga. (WDEF)- Tragedy struck a Catoosa County neighborhood on Wednesday.

The Catoosa County Sheriff’s Office says that a 14 year old is dead after being shot by a 12 year old.

Investigators believe they were playing with a firearm leading to the shooting.

We are still working to learn how the children in this week’s incident obtained the firearm.

Unfortunately, this incident is far from the only one.

According to a CDC study released in December, over 12-hundred children under the age of 17 have died due to injuries sustained from unintentional use of a firearm.

A third of those deaths involved children from 11 to 15 years old, the age range involved in this week’s incident.

In most cases according to this study, nearly three-fourths of all of these incidents involved unlocked and loaded weapons.

It is worth noting that Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama do not have what’s called a Child Access Prevention, or CAP Law.

A CAP Law imposes criminal penalties on adults who leave unsecured firearms near unsupervised minors.

North Carolina does have a CAP law.

If someone knowingly or should have known about a loaded firearm around a minor, they could be convicted of a class I misdemeanor there.

The other states in our area do have laws pertaining to recklessly handling firearms that ultimately are used in a crime, but not for this specific situation.

Authorities have a few key tips to prevent this situation from happening to you.

They encourage guardians who own a firearm to secure the firearm in a safe, and make sure the gun is not loaded with ammunition separated from the gun.

Also they say to make sure your children understand that a gun is not a toy.