6-year-old boy shoots younger sister, 4. In the head. With a shotgun.

[petronius]

6. There really ought to be criminal charges, applied consistently across space

as well as racial and wealth boundaries, for letting an unsupervised child access a firearm (particularly when harm results). Leaving a gun in a place that you know might reasonably be accessed by a child is a deliberate choice, a willful action, and it's certainly a negligent one.

There are a lot of circumstances in which children come to harm due to a mistake, accident, or negligence on the part of an adult. For example, leaving a kid around pets, around a pool, or in a hot car. It's often a debate - and sometimes a difficult one - as to whether charges should be filed. If I was drawing a line, I think I'd say that charges are more appropriate when the harm-causing circumstance results from a direct decision: choosing to leave the kid in the hot car*, choosing to leave the kid alone by the pool, or choosing to leave the gun in the kid-space...

* This one I think is most charge-worthy, because once you've done the leaving the outcome is pretty much deterministic.