Some wonder if tighter gun control helps

TAMPA - It's not exactly how 10-year-old Simon Rios planned on spending his summer break.

Playing Monopoly with his sister and praying for a miracle from a hospital bed at Tampa General Hospital.

"I was outside fixing my bike," Simon said. "And I don't know, all of the sudden I just got shot."

"When he got to Lee Memorial at first he wasn't going to make it," said his sister Maria Rios. "And so my mom was already practically losing hope."

A long-time family friend was playing with a loaded handgun in their Immokalee home— an accident, by all accounts.

Some might look at Simon's story and say, "See? If only we had tighter gun laws, this would've never happened."

Soon the U.S. Supreme Court will decide what place gun control, if any, has in America and who has the power to decide.

This time a year ago—the high court established the right to own a gun is an individual right.

Now the justices must decide who makes the rules, the federal government or local city and state governments?

Experts say the expected confirmation of nominee Sonia Sotomayor may change the game completely at the high court level in favor of tighter gun control. The question is: will it help?

Nationally renowned expert FSU Criminology Professor Gary Kleck has spent decades studying the numbers.

He says there is no credible evidence that more guns in more hands mean more crime.  Kleck uses the landmark Supreme Court overturn of one of the most restrictive handgun bans in the country as an example.

"It was ineffective," Kleck said. "That is, homicide didn't go down as was promised following the law's implementation."

So how do you protect the Simons of the world? You can't, Kleck says, at least not with the second amendment

It's as simple, he says, as this: "Good guys have good effects with guns, bad guys have bad effects with guns."

Professor Kleck says his research is based on a couple of key facts:

• First, groups that have the highest gun ownership have the lowest involvement in violence and
• Second, the vast majority of gun owners have guns for purposes other than self protection-- they use them for target shooting and hunting and private collecting.

In the end it really comes down to educating yourself and your children about guns and the dangers. Kleck says any true gun restriction will not happen any time soon, unless a case comes before the Supreme Court and a legal precedent is set.

The Rios family knows that and while guns might be a reality in their part of the world, they are not a necessity— certainly not in their home.

>>TGH's firearm safety program

Simon is ready to get home. It will be a few more weeks, but he's set on his goal. It's simply to make his mom smile again.

"She's just happy cause she knows I'm going to walk again," he told FOX 13, smiling. "When I first came in here they told her that I wasn't going to be able to walk again."

Simon's prognosis is very good. He'll spend another year in a wheelchair, but there is every hope, doctors say, that he will walk again.

It all depends on Simon.