albania

I decided to put this in politics and not general discussion, I don't know if that was necessarily the right choice hopefully a mod won't be mad at me if they have to move the thread...my comments about this article are at the bottom of the article.

Link

One of 18....last time I checked there weren't 18 stars on the flag. If you wish to own a gun you should also bear the responsibility of what your kids do with the weapon that you introduced into your home. I don't understand what's the argument against such a law, and also why haven't more states adopted a similar law? If you can't properly secure your gun you shouldn't own one...if it's sitting in a box in a closet somewhere and you don't even know exactly where it is then you don't really need a gun. Crimes such as these shouldn't happen. I can understand having a gun to some degree of accessibility when you are home and can keep an eye on your kid and the gun, at any other time there is no excuse…simply if a child does something with that gun it’s partly the owner’s fault and they should be punished.

Checking up on the law 19 states not 18 have such laws(including my home state)....

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/faqs/?page=cap
Below is another article on the effect of the law on suicides .....

Link

Daniel_

Remind me again how allowing people to keep handguns at home makes them safer?

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╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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maximusveritas

Allowing citizens to have guns in their homes keeps them safer not just so that they have them in case of an emergency, but also by detering criminals from committing home burglary in the first place.
If people act responsibly and keep their guns in a safe place away from where their kids can get at them, there's no problem. That's why laws like this are important in order to force people to act responsibly. I don't understand why anyone other than the NRA would have objections to it.

Daniel_

I get the INTENTION.

Sadly what I see in reality is that more people are killed by guns in the US than in all the rest of the parts of the world where there's not a war on.

If there were fewer guns it stands to reason that there'd be fewer gun deaths.

Maybe that's too simplistic, but we don't have guns in the UK, and I like it that way.

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

NCB

What about knives? Cars? Why are they exempt? Why not just make the adult responsible for all the actions a child does?

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Ustwo

Accidents happen all the time. When accidents happen with a firearm its suddenly a political issue.

Personally I'm far more worried about being killed by a 16 year old in his car, than any children of any age with handguns.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

samcol

Guns in the hands of everyday civilians is the one thing that can keep populations from falling under total tyranny.

Pro-gun Quotes

Try reading the quotes of past patriots and defenders of liberties who describe why having a civilian population armed is so important. I tend to agree with people like Jefferson, Madison, Malcolm X and Gandhi on their views of guns. These quotes are enough reminders for me of how gun ownership actually keeps us safer despite unfortunate accidents like that of these two kids. It's seems illogical to me how some people can be so strongly for civil rights, yet are so against the one thing that can defend those rights.
With that being said, I think the parents should be held responsible if the child commits a crime or has an accident with the gun (like this child did), but not for simply leaving a gun in an un-secured container.

albania

A car and a knife are different they can be used as weapons they aren't intended for violence(I assume you were talking about regular kitchen knives and not hunting knives), if a parent doesn't adequately explain and imprint to the child the dangers of using a car or a knife and if they don't supervise their children when in the use of such dangerous objects they should also be held accountable with respect to the child’s actions...I am talking about young kids who still need parental supervision not 12-17 year old jackoffs.
A parent is responsible for all their child’s actions to some degree, and I believe that sometimes that degree could be high enough to require punishment by law. Once a child can make the distinction between right and wrong at that time the degree of responsibility that a parent has in relation to their child in my mind is drastically reduced.

The_Jazz

First I feel horrible for the families involved here. I can't imagine anything more heart-wrenching that to be one of the parents unless it would be one of the kids.

Ustwo, your point is well taken. I saw a statistic yesterday that the national average for 16-year olds involved in fatal accidents is roughly double that for 18-year olds. Pretty scary. That aside, I think that any adult with a gun in the house should be required to attend firearms safety classes with any children living in the house or demonstrate that they've taught firearms safety to the kids. I would argue that it should be a part of any licensing requirement. The NRA is the first to tell you that all kids that could even conceivably access guns unsupervised should know how to safely handle them. Maybe requiring safety classes is overkill, but there are dozens of kids hurt or killed every year when they or a playmate encounter a gun, legally owned or not.

Gunsafes and trigger locks are wonderful inventions and should be used at home under pretty much all circumstances. Remember that guns are most likely to be used against a member of a household than an intruder.

samcol

Your government likes it too. The UK, not unlike other states, has a long history of using it's army to disarm other nations and bringing them under their control or essentially enslaving them.

Daniel_

The last time the UK enslaved anyone, was many many years ago (if you count formal slavery), and I'm pretty sure that we made slavery illegal before the US.

In the main, countries taken over in less enlightened times have been given back to the indigenous peoples. Nowadays they seem to quite like us - after all the vast majority of them are in the commonwealth.

The unarmed nature of the UK does not lead to tyranny as an earlier poster mentioned. Any government can only rule by the consent of the people.

An armed populace doesn't keep them free - it leads to the local tyranny of the strong and ruthless. The US is not the shining beacon proving that freedom comes from a heavily armed populace; it is the exception that proves the rule "armed populations are unstable and violent".

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

djtestudo

Unarmed populations are as well. Criminals will ALWAYS find guns (it isn't like they are going to be obeying the law), and when the general populace becomes unarmed, then the criminals can go around with impunity.

When you are unable to defend yourself, whether it be from the government or from the criminal breaking into your home, you lose all power.

As for this situation, I hope this guy gets the worst penalty he can, since he obviously didn't want to make the effort to keep his gun in a truely safe place.

__________________
"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

Poppinjay

The local news on this story added a little bit this morning.

Turns out, the father TAUGHT his 7 year old boy how to shoot the thing.

Not how to be responsible (which you can't really teach a 7 YO how to be responsible with a gun), but how to point and bang.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Ustwo

With any story like this you need to remember this..

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=100235

Saddly you can only really trust the basics involved.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

The_Jazz

I think that the father has now official been registered as an asshat.

dksuddeth

there are people who are responsible, and then there are people who aren't. This father was obviously in the latter category. The problem with a lot of people in these types of issues is that they see one tragedy and want to completely eliminate the possiblity of it ever happening again without thinking of the unintended consequences of the aftermath. Take the UK for example. The GOV banned firearms, violent crime skyrocketed, even the police are unarmed and at the mercy of armed criminals. It shouldn't take a genious to figure out that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

In the US, many communities, DC for example, have outlawed handgun ownership, yet it competes for murder capital of the country every year. why? people would like to blame the easy access of guns in neighboring states, but who is getting the guns? criminals. banning guns is not going to work, only fighting crime will work. police cannot be everywhere and you ARE on your own when it comes to the safety and security of your home and family. If you aren't responsible enough to make firearm safety your top priority, then you should not have a gun in your home and by 'firearm safety' i'm not talking about locking all your guns away in a safe with trigger locks on them and the ammunition in another room. That does nothing to secure your home from invasion. I'm talking about instructing your children to respect the use of, and the danger of misuse, all guns. It can be done as noted below.

11-year-old shoots, kills assailant threatening his grandmother

SOUTH BEND, INDIANA -- When Tony D. Murry held a box cutter to Sue Gay's neck Monday night, Gay's 11-year-old adopted son ran upstairs at the home at 1348 N. Huey St. and grabbed a gun.

"He hit the bottom of the stairs with the .45 and stood ready stance with the gun," said Gay with feet spread apart and her hands outstretched as if holding a handgun.

The boy shot one round and hit Murry, 27, in the chest, even though the man was shielding himself with Gay.

"I don't know how he did that. One shot and he got him. He's my little hero," Gay said of the grandson she adopted.

The fifth-grader may not have been just a lucky shot. This is a family that knows guns.

"Before his dad died, they'd go target shooting. He knows they're not toys and not something to mess with," Gay said.

Ironically, it was guns that Murry may have come for in the first place.

"Murry demanded all the weapons in the house. Gay's late husband was a weapons collector and Murry knew of the collection," said St. Joseph County Prosecutor Chris Toth, who said this was a case of justifiable homicide.

Gay said her daughter, who is the boy's biological mother and currently in prison, was acquainted with Murry. Murry, or " Casper" as Gay knew him, would come by every couple of months to ask about Gay's daughter. The two never dated, according to Gay.

"I'm not sure where they met. Probably in South Bend when she was off on one of her drug binges," Gay said.

In an arrest in November, Murry listed " drug dealer" as his occupation, according to booking records at the St. Joseph County Jail.

"I'm upset because she put us in this position. She didn't send him (Murry) over here, but he was one of her acquaintances. I'm more mad at him though," Gay said.

Murry had been inside Gay's house before Monday night and she trusted him. But this visit was different.

"I know he was drunk. At first he wanted me to buy him booze. Then he wanted me to drive him home. I don't leave my house after dark," Gay said.

Gay said Murry had been at the house for about a half an hour. She said she asked him to leave at 8 p.m. because she needed to go to bed. She normally leaves for work at 3 a.m.

"He got irritated and asked for a drink of water. When I was in the kitchen he held the razor knife (box cutter) to my son's throat and said "This is not anything personal," Gay said.

Then Murry rushed up behind Gay and held the box cutter to her throat, she said.

"He told me, "Take me to where the guns are." He pushed me through the kitchen and into the front room," Gay said.

Gay stopped at the love seat, put her left foot on it and pushed back on Murry, she said.

"I pushed up so he couldn't push me forward any more, and I tried to push his hands down off my neck but he had a tight grip. I called for my son to say "call 911," Gay said.

That's when the boy appeared with the gun. Murry ducked his head behind Gay's small frame. Some of his torso was left unshielded.

"I'm looking down the barrel of a gun that's in an 11-year-old's hands. I knew that if he pulled that trigger I was going to die," Gay said.

But Gay was not hit. She said they didn't immediately know Murry had been shot.

"Casper went for the front door, turned the handle and went out of the house. My son ran to me and set the gun down. I hurried up and locked the door and called 911," Gay said.

South Bend police found Murry, of 2009 W. Linden Ave., outside the home. He died in the emergency room at Memorial Hospital.

"The young man reasonably believed his mother and himself to be in danger of dying. It was clear to us this was a justifiable homicide," Toth said.

"He did what he had to do. That's an unfortunate burden for an 11-year-old to have on him," he said.

Murry had a criminal history. Between 1993 and 2001 he had several misdemeanor arrests.

Murry had a theft conviction from 1994 and a conviction for attempted theft in 1993, which was treated as a misdemeanor.

Murry had been convicted of unarmed robbery for which he received a four-year prison sentence in 1997.

At the time of his death, Murry was charged in two Class D felony auto theft cases pending in St. Joseph Superior Court. He was scheduled to appear in court Feb. 26 for a possible guilty plea.

Meantime, Gay said after 23 years at 1348 N. Huey St., she is putting the house up for sale and moving with her son out into the county, where her fiance lives.

Gay said the boy is doing well since the shooting.

"He's proud of himself. He feels bad he took a human life. But he didn't want to lose me. He lost his dad three years ago to a heart attack," Gay said.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

highthief

*Wonders what response would have been had he missed and capped Grandma instead.*

__________________
Si vis pacem parabellum.

samcol

Well if it was a cop shooting it would be an unfortunate accident, but if the boy shot her he would probably be in juv hall and prison the rest of his life.

Poppinjay

I can trust myself on this one, I work with reporters who reported this, am a reporter, and live in the area where this happened.


If you’ll notice my reply in that thread, when you have a staff writer covering human interest, there are many small facts that go by the wayside.

The equivalent to using that blurb to equate it to all press being mistaken more than not, would be the same as me assuming all dentists are butchers who get high on laughing gas because of what I’ve seen on Little Shop of Horrors.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Daniel_

Certainly criminals have guns. But the point is that in the UK they are really hard to get hold of.

It doesn't matter how you dress it up, more guns = more gun deaths

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

The_Jazz

Let's also remember that guns are much more likely to be used against a resident than an intruder. The occurrence of home invasion (generally defined as burglary with the resident present) is pretty low in the US. I wish that I had a link to the story, but I read something fairly recently where the chances of being struck by lightening are 1 in 27,000 and being a victim of a home invasion are 1 in 1,500,000. I could easily have those numbers wrong since it's been at least a couple of months since I read that article, so my apologies in advance if I messed it up. In other words, please don't flame me if my early-onset Alzheimers is acting up again.

AngelicVampire

Daniel, thats not really true, look at Canada.

What you need is an armed and civil group of people. Totally armarment is probably a good thing but mandatory training is should also be a requirement. Not a 5 minute wham bam thank you ma'am course I mean proper training (military service?) and discipline.

I am in the UK, have fired many guns, am actually reasonably accurate as well, first thing I learned was: Don't point guns at things unless you want them to die. Ok most of the weapons in the UK are air rifles but the point stands, hitting a target and killing it with an airrifle is fairly easy. Its all about training rather than the guns themselves, look at the kids shooting fire officers etc, if they respected life and the gun they wouldn't be doing that.

Marvelous Marv

Heard of Afghanistan? Iraq? Cambodia? Chile? The former East Germany? The Sudan?

Looks like you haven't heard of Switzerland, either.

__________________
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher

Marvelous Marv

Well, you wouldn't be so obviously disappointed, for one thing.

__________________
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher

dksuddeth

not to flame you too badly, but I am unaware of any official study that calculates the odds of having a handgun turned against you. If you can find that, i'd love to read it.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

The_Jazz

dkuddeth - I don't feel flamed at all. Here are the studies that you've apparently missed.

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/f...s/pdf/home.pdf

I expect that you'll want to disregard this as irrelevant since its coming from the Brady Campaign, but this page is actually clearing house for studies by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC, the National Opinion Research Center and the Gallup Organization. Pretty mainstream organizations.

The scariest statistic for me is that 43% of homes with kids under 17 keep a gun in the house and 28% of the 43% keep at least one gun unlocked and hidden. In other words, 12% of homes with kids keep an unsecured gun somewhere in the house. That is the reason that there are so many accidental shooting involving children in this country.

For the record, I'm not against guns at all. I just think that there need to be more requirements for a certain level of competency and responsibility involved. I also think that drivers licenses should be harder to get too, for that matter.

The_Dunedan

Please note, however, that this "clearinghouse" page deals almost exclusively with the much-discredited Kellerman "Study" and "studies" which derive from or reference it. Kellerman is nonsense which even its' original backers have disavowed; its' conclusions were reached by dishonest and manipulative means for purely political ends. Kellerman refused to allow any peer-review of his statistics or methods, did not "count" any DGU in which the weapon was not actually fired ( as opposed to brandished or displayed ), and eliminating any DGU which occurred outside the home but still on the homeowner's property ( in the yard or driveway ).
http://www.building-tux.com/dsmjd/rkba/kellerman.htm
http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/...s.html#43times


Kellerman is discredited nonsense, unfit for use in any serious discussion, and is acknowledged as such. John Lott's statistical debunking of Kellerman's work has been awarded the Michael Hidelang Award by the American Society of Criminologists, and has been declared to be accurate and sound by Dr. Marvin Wolfgang, one of America's premier criminologists.

highthief

Huh? Talk about leaping to conclusions.

__________________
Si vis pacem parabellum.

dksuddeth

That would be a smart expectation. maybe not disregard it as 'irrelevant', but certainly suspect. I've seen way too many 180's by the bradycampaign to justify taking any info they put out as accurate.
On top of that, it doesn't mention anywhere about a handgun being turned against you if used as a defensive weapon.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

The_Jazz

So I guess that you're telling me that the CDC studies were politically motivated (footnote for the number of gun deaths in 2002 showing most were suicides or accidents) as was the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control? Neither of these organizations are politically funded or motivated and provide good solid data on a wide range of other issues. I agree that the Kellerman study was fundamental flawed and should be disregarded, but that still leaves a lot of other questions unanswered. I think that my point still stands.

And for the record, I don't think that I ever mentioned anything about a handgun being turned against the user who was using it as a defensive weapon. My point was on general use, not specific home protection. From the CDC study alone (and I understand that it is restricted to fatalities only), a gun is more likely to be used accidentially or in a suicide. Again, the data backs up my point that guns are more likely to be used against a resident than an intruder, and even that is accepting the outlandish idea that all of the deaths counted by CDC were home intruders and not incidents of domestic violence.

Thoughts?

The_Dunedan

The problem is that more than 75% of all DGUs end without the gun ever having been fired. This distorts the DGU/accident/suicide data because while any accidental gun death or suicide obviously ends in a dead body, less than 25% of DGUs do. To obtain a meaningful comparison, you would need to compare ALL DGUs ( firing and non-firing ) to accidents and suicides across-the-board. The CDC figures only take into account those incidents in which a corpse hit the floor; they "ignore" the 75%+ of 2,000,000 DGUs ( yearly ) in which the defender's weapon is not fired. Once these non-firing DGUs are taken into account, the numbers of accidents and suicides ( particularly among children ) seem paltry in comparison.

Your data supports the conclusion that a gun in the home is, perhaps ( and this is a BIG perhaps ), more likely to -kill- a resident than an intruder. It is not, however, more likely to be -used against- a resident than an intruder.

It should also be noted that the Brady Bunch and HCI count any person under the age of 25 as a "child" and list their death as a "gun violence death" no matter the manner in which it occurred. Their numbers include 20-year-old gangbangers shot in self defense, criminals shot by the cops, and at least one instance of a 22-year-old soldier killed in Iraq. Reduce the "child" threshold to something more reasonable, like 15 years, and the total nationwide figure hovers at less than 1,000 deaths per annum.

dksuddeth

All CDC studies are politically motivated. It is just a matter of the current administration and DoJ wants and needs at the time.


That was my misunderstanding. My apologies.

The data would suggest that ANY home with a gun represents a higher risk of danger to the resident, however, the premise is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't address the issue of responsibility of the gun owner. It just lumps it all together and magically spits out a theory that guns in the home are bad. In actuality, guns in the hands of irresponsible idiots is how the report should read and then it should equate them to the number of accidents in the homes of responsible owners. That would be a better reasoned comparison of one vs. the other.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

The_Jazz

Focusing strictly on the CDC data and the questions that it raises, I would love to see the numbers on what happens when a gun is discharged in the home. That would settle this little controversy once and for all. I knew that the CDC data was out there since I've seen it several times, but I don't recall ever seeing anything along these lines. However, I can see where it would be a statistical nightmare to collect, especially since the CDC gets their information strictly from hospitals and medical facilities as a rule, regardless of the study. Then again, I'd also like to see a study on gun injuries including fatalities, which would also go to settle my point one way or the other. I don't really see where DGUs that do not result in firing are really relevant to the arguement one way or the other since all along my entire point has been that once the gun is discharged, the person on the other end was not an intruder. A suicide, accidential victim or domestic violence victim would all be under the umbrella of my definition.

Your point about accidents and suicides "obviously end in a dead body" I think is a little farfetched. Granted, suicides are much more likely to end in a death with a gun involved, but certainly not always. Accidents, however, are a much different story. Please remember that this entire thread was started by a girl who was wounded by a playmate. Gun accidents are certainly not always fatal by their very definition. To say otherwise is akin to saying that all car accidents where the car is totalled are fatal - they very well may be, but lots of people survive them every year.

I'm not sure why you're harping on the Brady data when I've already conceeded that it might be suspect. I also think that you're missing my greater point from earlier as far as the number of children's gun-related deaths anually. Although I'm sure it wasn't intentional, stating that there are less than 1,000 deaths annually from guns for kids under 15 comes off as callous. If having kids in car seats only saves 1,000 lives annually, don't you think that it makes sense to have them there? My entire motivation for even entering into the discussion on this thread was to point out that gun owners need to demonstrate responsibility for their weapons, not that they should be allowed to own them. We're talking about the third-leading cause of death among children aged 10-14. Are you telling me that if there was a shot that we could give them to make them immune to the 4th leading cause of death, whatever that may be, that you would be against that.

I have the feeling that we're closer together in opinion that you guys realize. As I stated earlier, I by no means advocate elimiating gun ownership. However, I do think that anyone who owns a gun needs to be able to demonstrate a level of responsibility at least as high as owning a car. If that means that you need to buy insurance, register it and demonstrate that you know how to safely store, maintain and discharge it, then all the better. And anyone who lives with a child should be held to an even higher safety standard. I'm not advocating that anyone needs to do anything other than show that they know the basics that the NRA tells all of us that we need to know.

OK - let the flaming begin...

The_Jazz

So you're telling me that the CDC studies on birth defects, vacinations and the common cold are politically motivated? I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that since I actually know people that work there and how the whole things works. They basically take data provided by hospitals, doctors and other health care professionals and turn it into statistics. The doctors on staff then work with the numbers to figure out what it means. It's pretty much conceeded in Washington that the CDC is immune to pressures from higher-up, unlike the FDA. That's one of the reasons that it (the CDC) is in Atlanta and not DC.


I don't think that the premise is flawed at all. Any home with a gun is demonstrably more dangerous than one without one. It's also demonstrably more dangerous to have pets in the home since they can spread disease, attack owners, etc. By your logic, homes without guns would have the same incidence of gun deaths as homes with guns. That is obviously not the case, and I'm sure that wasn't how you meant it. I completely agree that irresponsible idiots with guns need to be eliminated where at all possible, as seen by my post above. Unfortunately the irresponsible idiot label is subjective, and we're left with focusing on what the actual number tell us, especially since there are most certainly home intruders included in the statistics that we're looking at, along with other justifiable homicides.