Why kids shouldn't get guns

[CDN_Merlin]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/01/us/kentuc ... ?hpt=hp_t2

What a sad thing. Seriously, 5 years old getting a gun? That is WAY to young in my opinion.

[Krom]

WTF? What kind of parent leaves a 5 year old unattended with a loaded gun?!

[Will Robinson]

That is so sad! Too many people are so extremely stupid it makes me wonder how long the species is going to last instead of how great it could become.

[Sergeant Thorne]

I think we can skip to the important point, since we all know why this made national news...

"The mother was home at the time of the incident but she had stepped outside," Gregory said. "It's just one of those nightmares -- a quick thing that happens when you turn your back."

A child playing with a gun is not one of those quick things that happens when a responsible parent turns their back. This is an instance of a parent or parents that did not appreciate the potential danger enough to take steps to prevent it. When I was young my dad kept the ammo for my first .22 rifle. But even if he hadn't, there's no way I would have been doing anything with it off the range. You don't load a gun unless you're going to shoot it. That's firearms 101, and it's backed up by a whole slew of other safety practices (line of fire, ...), at any age.

[Will Robinson]

There is no reason I can think of why there isn't a law that could prosecute the parents for negligence contributing to the death.

Gun owners are, for the most part, responsible enough to not allow this scenario to play out. Those that are not are a problem for all of us and if they were punished by the law I think we would see these kind of problems reduce drastically.
The same with Adam Lanza's mother for making weapons available to a person she knew to be mentally incapable to manage himself safely.

[CDN_Merlin]

In Canada, the parents are responsible for there kids actions when it comes to stuff like this and even some crimes if I remember right.

[CUDA]

In Canada, the parents are responsible for there kids actions when it comes to stuff like this and even some crimes if I remember right.

in America the parents are responsible for their kids actions when someone wants to make them an example. otherwise the Government says that the kids can do and what they cant with no regards to the parents.

[Spidey]

This is why idiots shouldn't have guns.

The mother again...am I seeing a pattern here?

[flip]

I have 4 kids and could leave everyone of my guns loaded and they will not touch them. For God's sake, if your gonna have firearms in the house, take your children shooting. Most kids are very respectful of firearms after having fired them.

[woodchip]

All I wanted when I was 5 was a baseball mitt.

[Will Robinson]

I have 4 kids and could leave everyone of my guns loaded and they will not touch them. For God's sake, if your gonna have firearms in the house, take your children shooting. Most kids are very respectful of firearms after having fired them.

Even the most seasoned user can make a mistake if they believe the gun to be unloaded.

Rule#1 All guns are loaded until you prove to yourself it isn't by inspection.
Rules#2 Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to destroy.

Those two rules ingrained in your being will prevent most accidents and should be taught in elementary school through high school.

I've been handling guns for at least 44 years if you count my first BB gun.
I never had a negligent discharge until last year when I failed to follow rule#1.

I had been working on a new pistol and was about to put it in the safe and decided to cycle and dry fire one more time to see if it would reproduce the strange recoil spring hang that happened upon the first reassembly.

I forgot that I had slipped a loaded magazine into the grip to reduce the number of loose items I was going to be carrying back to the safe so I could make it in one trip.
Fortunately for everyone and everything except a file cabinet full of layers of papers I still followed rule#2 like I have literally thousands of times before.

It can happen to anyone.

I've amended Rule #1:
All guns are loaded until you prove it to yourself they are not by inspection AND you must inspect it every time you pick it up regardless of what has happened previously.

And for the sake of this topic, I don't care how wonderful your 5 year old is, 5 years isn't enough to let a couple of rules protect him.

I also don't think a gun should be loaded unless it is in your possession. Lock them up unloaded.
A quick access safe works fine for home protection so take your carry weapon out of the holster and slip it in there when you go to bed or take a shower, etc.
The time and level of consciousness required to push the buttons to open it will ensure you are awake enough to go find what went bump in the night...

/sermon

[ThugsRook]

natural selection at work.

[flip]

Lol! Man I got ocd when it comes to that, I always cycle a gun several times when I first pick it up. Always. And yes, just as important is muzzle control and how to carry a weapon, I always keep mine pointed at the ground. Sounds to me you got over-confident Will :p.

[CDN_Merlin]

I think it's human nature that once you have done something repetitive for so long, then it becomes second nature and in turn will eventually make a mistake because you tend to lose focus and not pay attention.

[Will Robinson]

... Sounds to me you got over-confident Will :p.

In a way that sums it up.

I had returned from the range, cleaned a couple of them, one being a totally new design and upon reassembly the recoil spring and plug must have been assembled wrong so the slide was slightly less than closed. I took it apart and couldn't see anything wrong....reassembled and it seemed fine but it bugged me that I didn't know why it had been out of sorts. So I cycled and dry fired numerous times tore it down and reassembled numerous times...never could reproduce the failure.

Ultimately my mistake was that I had mentally put the gun in a state where it was to be put in the quick access safe but then put it down where it had been placed before i had worked with it so i could organize some other items then spo ntaneously decided to try once more to get it to fail. Picking it up from that same spot where i had been placing it during the dry fire session my brain let me believe it was still in the unloaded state....cycling the slide sent a live round into the chamber and the filing cabinet now has a .40 cal hole just left of the handle. That hole glares at me everyday reminding me to keep my head in the game.

Fortunately I was still enforcing Rule#2 so only my pride and confidence died.

I almost sold every gun and gave up. It took a week or so before I was sure I was making the right decision to carry on.

[flip]

Lol, yeah I bet you bout crapped your drawers. I agree with Merlin, could happen to anyone. I don't know why, but ever since I was a kid, as soon as I picked up a gun I'd cycle it 5-6 times. It's a good habit to develop.

[Sergeant Thorne]

I always cycle mine 12 times just in case there's one in the bottom of the mag...

[Top Gun]

And for the sake of this topic, I don't care how wonderful your 5 year old is, 5 years isn't enough to let a couple of rules protect him.

This is the bottom line for me: putting all other questions of responsible ownership aside, there is no ★■◆●ing way that ANY 5-year-old should be considered responsible enough to handle a firearm. ★■◆●, at that age we were still using goddamn safety scissors in school. Now this kid and his parents are going to have to live with this tragedy for the rest of their lives, because of the latter's utter stupidity.

[callmeslick]

natural selection at work.

most succinct and accurate post in this whole thread.

[Isaac]

<Mod> Keep it civil, Isaac. (This applies to everyone else as well.) </Mod>

[Duper]

natural selection at work.

most succinct and accurate post in this whole thread.

WRONG.

That would have been the parents shot, not the sister.

I can't believe you guys are arguing over this.

[Isaac]

natural selection at work.

most succinct and accurate post in this whole thread.

WRONG.

That would have been the parents shot, not the sister.

^---this is what I was trying to say, but couldn't say it nicely.

I really don't like you, callmeslick and ThugsRook.

[flip]

I always cycle mine 12 times just in case there's one in the bottom of the mag...

Heh, you have to do it at least twice to make a sure a gun is cleared , the rest is just for good measure.

[callmeslick]

sorry to disabuse you, Issac, but the parents have already bred, so this really is a case of Darwinism keeping the next generation from survival. Yes, I know, it sounds, and is, mean-spirited. Still, there are WAY too many people in this nation who own guns and use guns stupidly. These people are amongst those, and a little girl paid the ultimate price.

[CDN_Merlin]

Sadly it's all to often that kids end up paying the biggest price.. Ever wonder if any of these needless deaths would be the next brilliant mind that would cure cancer or something? I think about it always.

[Sergeant Thorne]

I'm pretty sure that particular next brilliant mind was collateral damage--snuffed out by a drone strike, or aborted as an unwanted pregnancy...

[Spidey]

But that just brings you back to the same old argument about how many other things kill more children than accidental gun shots.

Children drown in buckets, should we take buckets away from irresponsible car washers?

I know its cliché, but it really is the only way to make that point. Everyone goes crazy when someone dies by gunshot, but just walks by when it’s a car crash.

I saw a child get run over by a trolley once, was a horrible thing, but nobody clamored to ban trolleys and never thought once that the parent was irresponsible for leaving the kid alone outside. (“he was left outside with a loaded trolley”)

Don’t get me wrong here…my only point is how people react to guns, opposed to other things.

And yea…its been said a million times………….

[Will Robinson]

But that just brings you back to the same old argument about how many other things kill more children than accidental gun shots.

Children drown in buckets, should we take buckets away from irresponsible car washers?

I know its cliché, but it really is the only way to make that point. Everyone goes crazy when someone dies by gunshot, but just walks by when it’s a car crash.

I saw a child get run over by a trolley once, was a horrible thing, but nobody clamored to ban trolleys and never thought once that the parent was irresponsible for leaving the kid alone outside. (“he was left outside with a loaded trolley”)

Don’t get me wrong here…my only point is how people react to guns, opposed to other things.

And yea…its been said a million times………….

If there was the NRA equivalent Trolley Car Lobby that leaned heavily with contributions to the republican party you would have heard the outrage....

[Sergeant Thorne]

Exactly, Spidey.

I don't know, Will, I think it's more like if trolleys empowered the individual in a way that makes classroom oligarchs and sheltered liberals paranoid and afraid for their potential safety...

[Tunnelcat]

But that just brings you back to the same old argument about how many other things kill more children than accidental gun shots.

Children drown in buckets, should we take buckets away from irresponsible car washers?

I know its cliché, but it really is the only way to make that point. Everyone goes crazy when someone dies by gunshot, but just walks by when it’s a car crash.

I saw a child get run over by a trolley once, was a horrible thing, but nobody clamored to ban trolleys and never thought once that the parent was irresponsible for leaving the kid alone outside. (“he was left outside with a loaded trolley”)

Don’t get me wrong here…my only point is how people react to guns, opposed to other things.

And yea…its been said a million times………….

Yes Spidey, everyday things we use can kill. Even an enjoyable swim in a river, or a fall from a ladder, can result in death. But a gun is used for one purpose, TO KILL SOMETHING. So why leave a lethal loaded weapon lying around the house that a child, who hasn't got the frontal lobes to take full responsibility for it's proper use of in the first place, can get easy access to? I don't know about you, but a 5 year old hasn't the mental capacity to even know about life and death, let alone to realize how easily a life can be taken. You can bet if some company accidentally put a toxin in baby food and ended up killing someone's child, that the outcry would deafen the media and the lawsuits would fly and the company would be held responsible.

[Top Gun]

Tunnelcat gets it in one, and I've made the same argument here before. Most everyday objects that can potentially prove fatal weren't designed to cause death: obviously, the reason a car exists is to get people from point A to point B. But the underlying reason why firearms came into existence in the first place was to shoot and kill other people. Most gun owners aren't there aren't ever going to use them for this purpose, and that's fine, but we can't pretend that said purpose doesn't exist, and that's where most of the counter-arguments along those lines fall woefully short. What really gets me about the "Cars kill people too!" line is the fact that it's much harder to obtain the qualifications to legally operate a motor vehicle than it is to do so with a firearm.

[Will Robinson]

Tunnelcat gets it in one, and I've made the same argument here before. Most everyday objects that can potentially prove fatal weren't designed to cause death: obviously, the reason a car exists is to get people from point A to point B. But the underlying reason why firearms came into existence in the first place was to shoot and kill other people. Most gun owners aren't there aren't ever going to use them for this purpose, and that's fine, but we can't pretend that said purpose doesn't exist, and that's where most of the counter-arguments along those lines fall woefully short. What really gets me about the "Cars kill people too!" line is the fact that it's much harder to obtain the qualifications to legally operate a motor vehicle than it is to do so with a firearm.

There is no amendment to the Constitution that specifies the government can not infringe on your right to 'keep and drive an automobile' so legislating taxes and regulations on them is much easier.

And you and TC are not following Spideys comments too well. He is pointing out how we take accidental/negligent deaths caused by the use/ownership of other things in stride but there is a concentrated effort to highlight gun related deaths. That is the result of the political component not that some tools have death as the primary function by design. The 5 year old was never intended by the manufacturers/designers to have unsupervised access to a loaded rifle just as he isn't intended to have unsupervised access to a swimming pool.

[Spidey]

Exactly

[CUDA]

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

- Thomas Jefferson

[Top Gun]

Man I wish there was a variant of Godwin's Law I could cite every time someone quotes one of the Founding Fathers in a political discussion...

There is no amendment to the Constitution that specifies the government can not infringe on your right to 'keep and drive an automobile' so legislating taxes and regulations on them is much easier.

True, but that's where we get into exactly what "infringement" is taken to mean. As Slik has pointed out, it's only in the past half-century or so that this "own ALL the guns!" interpretation of the Second Amendment has gained any legs...hell, even the NRA itself was for much stricter regulation of firearms before it underwent a sea-change a few decades ago. Plus it seems a bit silly to make comparisons to owning an object that wouldn't even exist until a century after the Bill of Rights was passed.

And you and TC are not following Spideys comments too well. He is pointing out how we take accidental/negligent deaths caused by the use/ownership of other things in stride but there is a concentrated effort to highlight gun related deaths. That is the result of the political component not that some tools have death as the primary function by design. The 5 year old was never intended by the manufacturers/designers to have unsupervised access to a loaded rifle just as he isn't intended to have unsupervised access to a swimming pool.

No, I think the primary function is definitely part of the argument, in that the vast majority of accidental firearm deaths are preventable by default. Per capita, Americans own an obscene amount of firearms, and given what I know of the average level of intelligence out there, I don't trust the vast majority of their owners from Adam to utilize them responsibly. Of course said stupidity extends to any potentially-dangerous item, but at least in the case of cars there's some level of filtering that goes on beforehand, and you can't kill someone with a swimming pool by waving it in their general direction and having your finger slip. My fundamental assertion here is that we don't need nearly this many firearms in this country, and that interpreting the Second Amendment in such broad terms is both disingenuous and flat-out dangerous.

[Tunnelcat]

And you and TC are not following Spideys comments too well. He is pointing out how we take accidental/negligent deaths caused by the use/ownership of other things in stride but there is a concentrated effort to highlight gun related deaths. That is the result of the political component not that some tools have death as the primary function by design. The 5 year old was never intended by the manufacturers/designers to have unsupervised access to a loaded rifle just as he isn't intended to have unsupervised access to a swimming pool.

No, I think you have it backwards. Swimming pools are now required to have fencing, even in private residences. Why is that fencing NOW required? Because kids were drowning in residential pools at an alarming rate, no matter how careful parents were at watching their kids. A regulation was created to protect kids, because even though a pool is not intended to have unsupervised access to young children, it still happened, A LOT.

How many accidental deaths have caused all sorts of uproars and big stinks, like faulty safety equipment in cars, or food contamination, or shoddy construction. Every time one of these things happens, someone gets blamed and someone, or some company has to pay up and fix the problem, because we have "regulations" and "laws" against that sort of thing. Cars now have airbags, safety cages, and seat belts, not something I'm guessing they would have done voluntarily, because it took profits out of their bottom line. Homes and buildings have building codes to keep things from falling down, or burning down, or electrocuting people. Look in any third world country and I dare you to find a safe building that isn't a firetrap, or have faulty electrical wiring, or even shoddy, unreinforced construction that can't be guaranteed to not collapse either by itself or in some natural event. Even our food is watched over with oversight and regulation, and yet, once and awhile, someone, many times children, still die of the occasional bacterial poisonings because someone wasn't paying attention to some detail along the line. But at least we're trying to keep people from getting hurt or killed when we eat things, not throwing up our hands and saying, "That's the price of freedom".

You say the market would drive safety eventually? No necessarily. We went decades before safety equipment in cars became standard. People had to get injured or die in droves before the outcry finally got things changed. Most of that change was driven by lawsuits too. I should know. My father was a personal injury attorney. Some of the shoddy stuff he sued companies over, that killed or injured people, was due to either just plain stupidity, willful neglect, or market driven safety omissions for cost reasons.

Food sourcing is another example of a communal issue that can kill scores of people if abuse or neglect is allowed to happen and which definitely needs regulation for all of our safety. No one gripes about that requirement, except the farmers and food production companies. Food was especially pretty nasty back in the early twentieth century. My grandparents knew back in the Depression days that any meat they bought at market had to have the hell cooked out of it to be safe to consume. It was just gross and the people who sold it didn't care how dirty, or rotten things were as long as they made a buck.

But with guns, whoa! Hands off! That's my Second Amendment right to have my kid shoot his or her sibling, because, sh*t sometimes happens. Tough luck. We'll be careful next time. Our kid may be dead, but hey, at least we're free to do what we want with our beloved guns. Yee haa! We don't need that evil government regulation and oversight, or the law coming down on our asses when someone dies or gets hurt, because we're free to be morons with our guns.

Take this example. Would you arm and lock open a bear trap and put it in the middle of your living room as a burglar deterrent? A bear trap is a lethal weapon, it's meant to main and kill, but it would do the job, so why not? Just be sure to tell your little Johnny or Sally to stay the hell away from that damn trap so he or she won't get get snapped in half as collateral damage. But knowing kids, curiosity drives their lives and that child might just trigger that trap because it looks like a cool, new toy. Daddy said stay away, but it's just too tempting. I'm betting that if some parents accidentally let their kid get killed by a bear trap, those parents would be pilloried, and new laws would come along to make up for their stupidity.

[Spidey]

Setting traps for burglars is very illegal...at least here in PA.

[Krom]

No matter how many times you try, the one thing you can't legislate away is stupidity.

[Will Robinson]

And you and TC are not following Spideys comments too well. He is pointing out how we take accidental/negligent deaths caused by the use/ownership of other things in stride but there is a concentrated effort to highlight gun related deaths. That is the result of the political component not that some tools have death as the primary function by design. The 5 year old was never intended by the manufacturers/designers to have unsupervised access to a loaded rifle just as he isn't intended to have unsupervised access to a swimming pool.

No, I think you have it backwards. Swimming pools are now required to have fencing, even in private residences. Why is that fencing NOW required? Because kids were drowning in residential pools at an alarming rate, no matter how careful parents were at watching their kids. A regulation was created to protect kids, because even though a pool is not intended to have unsupervised access to young children, it still happened, A LOT.

How many accidental deaths have caused all sorts of uproars and big stinks, like faulty safety equipment in cars, or food contamination, or shoddy construction. Every time one of these things happens, someone gets blamed and someone, or some company has to pay up and fix the problem, because we have "regulations" and "laws" against that sort of thing. Cars now have airbags, safety cages, and seat belts, not something I'm guessing they would have done voluntarily, because it took profits out of their bottom line. Homes and buildings have building codes to keep things from falling down, or burning down, or electrocuting people. Look in any third world country and I dare you to find a safe building that isn't a firetrap, or have faulty electrical wiring, or even shoddy, unreinforced construction that can't be guaranteed to not collapse either by itself or in some natural event. Even our food is watched over with oversight and regulation, and yet, once and awhile, someone, many times children, still die of the occasional bacterial poisonings because someone wasn't paying attention to some detail along the line. But at least we're trying to keep people from getting hurt or killed when we eat things, not throwing up our hands and saying, "That's the price of freedom".

You say the market would drive safety eventually? No necessarily. We went decades before safety equipment in cars became standard. People had to get injured or die in droves before the outcry finally got things changed. Most of that change was driven by lawsuits too. I should know. My father was a personal injury attorney. Some of the shoddy stuff he sued companies over, that killed or injured people, was due to either just plain stupidity, willful neglect, or market driven safety omissions for cost reasons.

Food sourcing is another example of a communal issue that can kill scores of people if abuse or neglect is allowed to happen and which definitely needs regulation for all of our safety. No one gripes about that requirement, except the farmers and food production companies. Food was especially pretty nasty back in the early twentieth century. My grandparents knew back in the Depression days that any meat they bought at market had to have the hell cooked out of it to be safe to consume. It was just gross and the people who sold it didn't care how dirty, or rotten things were as long as they made a buck.

But with guns, whoa! Hands off! That's my Second Amendment right to have my kid shoot his or her sibling, because, sh*t sometimes happens. Tough luck. We'll be careful next time. Our kid may be dead, but hey, at least we're free to do what we want with our beloved guns. Yee haa! We don't need that evil government regulation and oversight, or the law coming down on our asses when someone dies or gets hurt, because we're free to be morons with our guns.

Take this example. Would you arm and lock open a bear trap and put it in the middle of your living room as a burglar deterrent? A bear trap is a lethal weapon, it's meant to main and kill, but it would do the job, so why not? Just be sure to tell your little Johnny or Sally to stay the hell away from that damn trap so he or she won't get get snapped in half as collateral damage. But knowing kids, curiosity drives their lives and that child might just trigger that trap because it looks like a cool, new toy. Daddy said stay away, but it's just too tempting. I'm betting that if some parents accidentally let their kid get killed by a bear trap, those parents would be pilloried, and new laws would come along to make up for their stupidity.

TC, cars and swimming pools and all those other consumer items you point to are not supposed to hurt the consumer in the course of normal operation so when that proves to be happening it is going to cause people to seek protection from faulty products...
The rifle that the five year old used worked exactly as it was designed to!
The faulty component was the end user. Therefore the solution to the problem isnt the manufacturers responsibility. So your analogy is lame.

When too many people die on a particular road they adjust the behavior of the driver not the car. They lower speed limits or install traffic lights etc.
The same can be done with guns but if the law that demands the new traffic light also had provisions written into it but not discussed that outlaw 99% of all cars and yet the politicians who wrote the law said ' Oh no! We don't want to outlaw cars' ....well you would see the same kind of outrage! Blame the liberal legislators for writing laws that are the equivalent of the Trojan Horse instead of simple genuine solutions!

For TopGun, you want to ridicule someone citing the founding fathers and in the same breath credit slick's twisted interpretation of history and law, an interpretation that is completely full of spin and counter to reality and contemporaneous evidence as well as the documents themselves. Spin that has been disproven in the Supreme Court and by numerous other experts, liberal and conservative, on the subject.
So to you I offer a big No Thanks. You have disqualified whatever point you think you were making! Your Godwins mechanism needs to indict anything gun related from slick as well. You render yourself null.

[callmeslick]

Man I wish there was a variant of Godwin's Law I could cite every time someone quotes one of the Founding Fathers in a political discussion...

worse still, is use of misattributed, or known false quotes. Sadly, CUDA has been guilty of this one more than once in the past month or so. Time to call him on this one, and warn anyone else that they would be wise to double check CUDAs source materials, as these have become so ideologically warped of late as to be appalling. From one of my reference works on Jefferson(a personal favorite biography subject for me):


This was not a quote by Jefferson as many on the net have asserted. He compiled a book of quotes called, “Legal Commonplace Book.” The quote is actually from Cesare Beccaria’s Essay on Crimes and Punishments. The only notation made by Jefferson on Beccaria’s quote is, “False idee di utilità.” or …false idea of utility. It should not be attributed to Thomas Jefferson unless one’s philosophy allows for the sophistry of ‘false ideas’"

'