Guns : Not a campaign issue

Makayla Booher was born prematurely on Feb. 17, 2004, at world famous Riley Hospital for Children, Indianapolis at 26 weeks and six days -- far short of the normal 40 weeks of gestation. She weighed 1 pound, 14 ounces and was just 14 inches long.

"Makayla beat all the odds stuck in front of her," said her mother Michelle Vensko,34. "She wasn't supposed to walk, or ever roll over. But Makayla was walking and talking. She was outdoing any 4-year-old you've met."

Makayla underwent 15 surgeries, the last one a year ago. The blue-eyed blonde remained small for her age but was otherwise developing well.

Whilst her mother was at Wal Mart yesterday morning buying her some fancy pink pyjamas her 5 year old brother had pulled a chair up to a bookcase in the downstairs living room of their east side Massachusetts Avenue apartment , Indianapolis and taken his father's semi-automatic handgun from the top of a six foot high bookshelf. There was no magazine in the pistol, but a round was in the chamber.

The gun belonged to Makayla's father Mike Booher , a 24 year old security guard, and her mother's ex partner. The 5-year-old took the gun upstairs to play, and there pointed the gun at his sister and pulled the trigger," the police said later . They were called at 10.03 am and arrived to find 4-year-old Makayla on the floor of an upstairs bedroom with a fatal gunshot wound to the head," . James Booher, and the children's 15-year old step-sister and an aunt were at home at the time, but they were in another room.

News reports described this as an "accident".

“My friends, gun owners are not extremists. You’re the core of modern America,” claimed Senator John McCain at the conference of several hundred members of the National Rifle Association in Washington on September 20th last year “The Second Amendment (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”) is unique in the world and at the core of our constitutional freedoms.”

Don't believe that the Senator is universally admired by the NRA, because like Senator Barack Obama he supports a ban on semi automatic assault rifles ***although Obama has, as an Illinois Senator supported calls for stricter control over handgun purchases - he is said to have a perfect record of voting for every anti-gun law that came before him.

Obama shares with Shrillary the refusal to join 300 members in signing a request by Congress to the Supreme Court to overturn the D.C. gun law - that completely bans the private ownership of any handgun and requires anyone who owns a rifle or shotgun to keep it locked up and disassembled so as not to be avialable for ready use. And the ammo must be stored in a seperate area.

Shillary and Obama are on the stump today and will be in downtown Indy - maybe someone will aks them about gun ownership ?

There isn't a national politician who won't say they don't support the 2nd Amendment - it would be political death.... and the violent end to the short and tragic life of Makayla Booher serves to highlight the consequences of this insane and mediaeval law.

***The federal law banning the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons, known as the federal assault weapons ban, has expired. It was passed as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. President Clinton signed it into law on September 13, 1994. Despite his promise to renew the ban, President George W. Bush and Congress allowed the ban to "sunset" in September of 2004. Info

Including Florida (the first to do so) , 19 states have laws or legal holdings (CAP Child Access Prevention) that specifically hold gun owners accountable for leaving a firearm easily accessible to a child, Indiana isn't one of them. In addition, some cities have enacted local CAP ordinances , Indianapolis isn't one of them. Info