Gun rights advocate accidentally shot in the back by her 4-year-old son
A north Florida woman is in the hospital after her 4-year-old son shot her in the back while sitting in the backseat of her pickup truck.
31-year-old Jamie Gilt is a self-described advocate for "gun sense" who posts enthusiastically on social media sites about firearms and protecting her right to bear arms. She appears to be the same Jamie Gilt who was hospitalized yesterday.
A Putnam County Sheriff's Office news release says a deputy saw Gilt behaving frantically inside the truck Tuesday afternoon and quickly realized she'd been shot.
You May Also Like
Once she pulled her car over, she told deputies her 4-year-old son, who was sitting in the back of the truck, shot her in the back while she was driving.
The bullet went through the seat and entered her back, before exiting her stomach. Her son wasn't harmed and was reunited with family members. He will remain with family while the Department of Children and Families investigates.
Relatives told investigators Gilt was traveling to a family member's home to pick up a horse when the shooting happened, according to local news outlet First Coast News.
Deputies say a .45-caliber handgun was on the truck's floor. The gun had been purchased legally, the sheriff's department said in second news release Wednesday. It is, however, a misdemeanor in Florida for a person to leave a loaded firearm where a child might access it.
It is a misdemeanor in Florida to leave a loaded firearm where a child might access it.
Gilt was taken to a Gainesville hospital, where she was in stable condition but police have not yet been able to interview her.
Captain Joseph Wells of the Putnam County Sheriff's Department said the child was not in an appropriate seat while riding in the car, according to The Florida Times Union.
“There was a booster seat in the back of the vehicle, but however the boy was not strapped in when the deputy got to them,” Wells said.
Investigators are still trying to determine how the boy got the gun, he added.
Gilt recently posted about getting a new .45 caliber handgun in one of her many firearm-focused social media posts.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Many of her photos show her holding rifles. One of the images shows Gilt holding her son on her lap with a rifle in the other hand.
Gilt runs a Facebook page called Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense whose goal "is to protect and expand our 2nd Ammendment [sic] rights."
On a comment posted to her personal Facebook page on Sunday night, Gilt commented that all of her children know how to handle guns.
"Even my 4 year old gets jacked up to target shoot with the .22," she wrote.
Additional information from the Associated Press.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Topics Gun Control
Megan Specia was Mashable's Assistant Real-Time News Editor and joined the team in September 2014. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of New Hampshire after growing up in the Jersey 'burbs. She made her way to New York via a four year stopover in Dublin. Megan previously worked as a journalist and editor at Storyful in both Dublin and New York. Before all of that, though, her claim to fame was as head cake arranger and purveyor of all things sweet at Queen of Tarts cafe in Dublin, where she developed a serious addiction to macarons.
