5 year old boy shoots his sister with his own rifle

Blay wrote: »

No it's not. A lot of shooters in Ireland would have fired their first shots before they were even 10.

Just because it also happens here doesn't mean it's sensible.

I should clarify, I mean small kids like the 5 year olds mentioned in the OP. Teenagers is a different matter, they're much more mature. But I don't think it's responsible to even let a small child near a firearm even on a range, there's no need to introduce them to that sort of thing.

Blay wrote: »

Define an assault weapon.

My definition? Anything that isn't primarily designed for hunting, or sport use, that's not a handgun. Anything deisnged to kill humans, that's not a handgun.

Even with the caveat that my suggestions above will never happen :rolleyes: you can't expect Americans not to own handguns for self-defence at least in the next generation - in the US crime is much higher and it's probably justified for private citizens to wish to own a gun. But they should have to jump through hoops to get it in the interest of everyone's safety. You have to do more tests to drive a car and be older to drink alcolhol in the states than you do to own a gun which even with restricted magazine sizes can kill or maim scores of people.

Ideally, if you want to defend your home, buy a shotgun. They'll be considerably more effective against a burglar in a high-stress, probably dark environment of a house anyway.

For the record I don't own a gun, and probably never will, I have an interest in them and own an airsoft handgun, but it's nothing more than a sporting interest. I would never see the need to own one here for any sort of defence reasons. In the US, I can see there is a reason, because it's been bred into everyone that you must have one, and there's more guns than people in the place. You can't remove every gun from civilians and leave the criminals as well armed as they started. But you can tightly control them, even within the constraints of the constitution as I understand it.

sdeire wrote: »

sdeire's post

But I don't think it's responsible to even let a small child near a firearm even on a range

Why not?

My definition? Anything that isn't primarily designed for hunting, or sport use, that's not a handgun.

An AR15 is a sporting rifle just like an other .223 semi auto.

I don't particuarly oppose handgun ownership anywhere - but a very large amount of due reason should be required.

Such as?

You have to do more tests to drive a car and be older to drink alcolhol in the states than you do to own a gun which even with restricted magazine sizes can kill or maim scores of people.

It's no harder to get a firearms licence in Ireland than it is to get a driving licence;

Driving licence;

Theory tests
12 hours of lessons+ you have to drive accompanied
Driving test
Various forms

Checklist for a gun in Ireland;

Join a range
Competency
FCA1 Form
Security

Anybody check out the new .22 pistol round that can pass through 13 inches of ballistic gel ,
Most military rifles are an evolution of civilian hunting since smooth bore black powder rifles not the other way around

Doesn't really matter with the size of the round all bullets kill not the guns

Mardy Bum wrote: »

I am quite aware that militias still exist. They are becoming popular once again after Timothy McVeigh nearly put them out of business. The constitutional right was drafted in a time when militias were widespread and vital. Now they are not.

Huh? Then why use State resources training them? Clearly there is requirement/use for them.

I lifted this from a comment elsewhere but it expresses it well.

A “well-regulated militia” was to substitute for a standing army. The Founding Fathers were deadly serious about the “well-regulated” idea and the requirement that every free man between certain ages was to be part of the militia. In the debate over the 2nd Amendment, the major issue was not if all men should be forced to be part of the militia, but how, if at all, those who had religious objections to fighting could be exempted. The final result stripped any clause dealing with religious scruples against fighting.

In fact, in substituting for a standing army, various states already had requirements. “It was a long-standing law in Massachusetts not only that every man could be armed but had to be to protect the colony from invasion; local communities paid for guns for men too poor to afford them. Virginia also mandated ownership of firearms.” --(Triumvirate, by Bruce Chadwick p. 58--a book on how the Constitution was approved).

Virginia’s proposed bill of rights “connected the individual’s possession of firearms to the militia. It stated that “the people have a right to bear arms; that a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural safe defense of a free state.” Chadwick, p. 59.

It is patently obvious that this language was lifted almost bodily for the 2nd Amendment.

sdeire wrote: »

That may well have been the case in 1776.

This is 2013.

Tbh, I don't think they had arming 5yr olds in mind when they drew that bill up. Anyone who gives a 5yr old a lethal weapon is retarded , supervised or otherwise. I'd not let my child play with a knife, traffic, bleach, drive a car, climb a 30 foot tree, play with fire, play with electricity or anything else that would greatly increase their chances of being injured. There is enough things it the world that can harm them without tempting fate.

If people must show a child how to use a lethal weapon, at least wait till their a little older. I don't understand the need to teach a child how to use a lethal weapon, but then again each to their own.

In Ireland you have to be 11/12 to use a BB gun (correct me if I'm wrong), I think that a kid should be at least that age before they are allowed to use a lethal weapon.

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

Tbh, I don't think they had arming 5yr olds in mind when they drew that bill up. Anyone who gives a 5yr old a lethal weapon is retarded , supervised or otherwise. I'd not let my child play with a knife, traffic, bleach, drive a car, climb a 30 foot tree, play with fire, play with electricity or anything else that would greatly increase their chances of being injured. There is enough things it the world that can harm them without tempting fate.

If people must show a child how to use a lethal weapon, at least wait till their a little older. I don't understand the need to teach a child how to use a lethal weapon, but then again each to their own.

In Ireland you have to be 11/12 to use a BB gun (correct me if I'm wrong), I think that a kid should be at least that age before they are allowed to use a lethal weapon.

I'm teaching my sixteen year old how to safely shoot and unload and make safe a gun because she may someday come across one unsupervised. I'd like her to know what makes holes in people and what makes it not make holes in people.

If a twelve year old is safer than a five year old pretty much depends on the parent's supervision and the child, rather than their age, wouldn't you say? Just as a firearm's lethality depends where you point it.

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

I don't see a problem teaching a 16 teenager how to handle a gun safety. Sounds like common sense if she is gonna be exposed to the.

You have childern, are you telling me a 5 year old is as mature and has as much understanding as a 11/12 yr old....? My eldest son just turned 7, the difference between his understanding now and 2 yrs ago is night and day. He was never left alone at the age of 5. Now he plays in his room or goes out and plays football on the green in front of my house - that didn't happen 2 yrs ago.

Anyone giving a loaded gun to a 5 yr old needs to see a physiatrist and probably should not be allowed around childern.

Not what I said. I said the maturity level of the child varies from child to child. There is no reason why a child of 5 should not shoot a rifle responsibly under adult supervision. Leaving a child alone with a gun that was not double checked as safe or locked away was the cause of this tragedy, not the act of shooting the gun under supervision. In fact leaving a five year alone full stop is idiotic. But feel free to conflate that with children being taught how to shoot as the problem.

sdeire wrote: »

Just because it also happens here doesn't mean it's sensible.

Okay, but don't you think that "it happens here" combined with "we don't have kids shooting each other" means that there's something more complex than "guns are evil" going on?

I should clarify, I mean small kids like the 5 year olds mentioned in the OP.

To clarify, that's what we're all talking about.

I don't think it's responsible to even let a small child near a firearm even on a range, there's no need to introduce them to that sort of thing.

Others disagree. I'd rather my son took up target shooting than hurley, for example, because (a) there's less chance he'll be injured, and (b) it's better for teaching control over one's emotions, as opposed to hurling or football where our second lesson from the Christian Brothers was on waiting for the ref to turn away before elbowing the other six-year-old in the ear (the first was on how to relocate our fingers if they were dislocated).

Ideally, if you want to defend your home, buy a shotgun. They'll be considerably more effective against a burglar in a high-stress, probably dark environment of a house anyway.

It never, ever, ceases to amaze me how people get wound up over rifles and handguns, but dismiss shotguns so blithely. If you knew much about firearms, it would be the other way around - shotguns should scare the living poop out of you. Imagine being shot by a .50 calibre rifle and you're terrified; but people never seem to remember that a shotgun is a .73 calibre firearm, and at the ranges you're talking about, even birdshot won't have spread out by the time it hits whomever you're shooting at so they'll get the full impact of being shot by the equivalent of a .73 calibre hollowpoint round. There's less oomph behind it than the .50 calibre - but not enough to make much of a difference if you're the one with the ducks-eye-view of the shotgun blast.

sdeire wrote: »

The original idea, of course,

I'm sorry. You've never owned a firearm, you're not a constitutional scholar, a lawyer, or a supreme court judge, and you don't know enough about firearms to think a shotgun is more dangerous than an AR-15, but you do know enough to know better than the majority decision of the Supreme Court of the United States?

Do you know more then Einstein about physics too?

1. No kids near guns. EVER. It's not responsible to teach them how to use them, it is completely, utterly and indefensibly STUPID.

Wrong.

2. No guns in public. EVER. Concealed carry and all of that maybe, but never, EVER open carry.

You don't want guns you can see, but you're okay with everyone having a gun so long as you don't see them until someone opens fire?
Hmmm.

3. No assault weapons. EVER.

Define "assault weapon", because if you mean assault rifle (ie. the actual thing), that's been controlled tightly since before they were invented; and if you mean "assault weapon" you have to define your term because that term doesn't currently mean much, having been invented for a legal act that's now been abolished (well, it still exists in some states, but their definitions are all independent so you'll still have to define which one you mean).

4. Remove the right to bear arms. It was written 230 years ago when a bolt action rifle hadn't even been invented, yet alone automatic assault weapons.

At the time it was written, repeating rifles with 20-round magazines were in active service. Semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms were not unimaginable at the time.

Add to that, if you can pull the right to bear arms, why can't you pull the right to free speech, or free assembly, or the right to petition or any of the other fundamental freedoms defined in the same place, and which could have cases made for removal (as the War on Terror has so repeatedly proved over the last decade or so).

It's oudated, stupid, moroninc, and needs to be removed from a majority of people who think it's sensible because because the ridiculous notion was bred into them. It's not even their fault that they are so staunch about it.

Do you want to go tell the sovereign nation with the largest military force on earth that they have to do what you say? Because I need a few minutes to go get the popcorn...

people will keep getting shot by the hundred thousand load every year.

30,000. 20,000 of whom are suicides. 6,000 of which are gang warfare. 3,500 or so of which are classed as homicide which includes everything from premeditated murder and deaths during the commission of crimes through to acts of self-defence which resulted in the death of the assailant because the victim shot them. And 500 or so accidental deaths.

Which means, if you ban firearms successfully, you can probably save about 500 lives a year. Of course, the pro-ban camp in the US say firearms are only used in valid, him-or-me acts of self defence 90,000 times a year, so while you'll save 500 lives, you're going to introduce 90,000 beatings, rapes and murders.

The math sucks, doesn't it?

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

In Ireland you have to be 11/12 to use a BB gun (correct me if I'm wrong)

Wrong. We have no lower age limit. If you could get a newborn to hold one at a shooting stall in a funfair, it's perfectly legal to do so.

sdeire wrote: »

And I think that's irresponsible. A differing opinion, just as different to yours as an above poster feels one child can be different to the other.

You're entitled to have an opinion; but having one that's not based on evidence is just plain wrong.

I would have argued the opposite than you have below, I think that 90,000 figure in particular relating to home defences sounds way off but I wouldn't mind seeing the source.

90,000 is the low end of the scale, put forward by those challanging Gleck's 2,500,000 estimate. Businessweek, of all places, has a decent overview here.

Nope. Informed opinions only.

But yours is not an informed opinion by your own admission - how can you support it in the face of their expert opinion?

how often are you going to need it?

That wasn't quite my point - it was that if your problem is seeing them, instead of them being there, then your objection isn't terribly well considered.

Look at any number of gun rights types on youtube

You want to judge the argument based on the personalities of youtube commentators? That's the very definition of ad hominem.

Already have above.

I saw that definition, it wasn't a definition so much as a nebulous description of a vague hand-waving towards a category. Legal definitions are things that need far more thought and care.

Source?

The girandoni air rifle. I've mentioned it a few dozen times before.

Wrong.

You're looking at 2010 data on all homicides (not just gun deaths, but stabbings, beatings and everything else) on wikipedia, I'm looking at the CDC data for 2011 on gun deaths

Source?

Hemenway's work cited in the businessweek article linked to at the top of this post.

Correct, and something that probably shouldn't change for a BB gun or airsoft device. A firearm is a totally different story, in my opinion. (And that's all this is, an exchange of opinions.)

BB guns are firearms in Ireland, same as shotguns or rifles or pistols. And the same law also says that if you could get a newborn to hold an M1 Garand (a semi-automatic 30-calibre WW2 battlefield rifle) at a range, that'd also be legal. An AR-15, because it's semi-automatic, no; but a straight-pull AR-15 (the bolt-action version of the AR-15), that would be legal. (Now, you give him a paintball gun and you're both looking at seven years in jail and tens of thousands of euros of fines...)

Point being that if you're going to point at US law and say it's stupid, you look a bit silly if you don't know the weird quirks of your own law; and that if we have laws like that and don't have the gun violence problems the US has, perhaps the problem is just more complex than the mere possession of firearms; perhaps you have to take into account social, legal and cultural factors.

Kirby wrote: »

This thread highlights the biggest problem with any kind of debate on gun reform in that you have gun owners, users and advocates defending their right to have access to guns and arguing vehemently that guns themselves aren't the problem.

Posters who's avatars show them firing guns, mods of military and shooting forums, experts on firearms. Knowledge of weapons makes them experts and so they believe this somehow validates their opinions and makes their view more valuable because they can they know all the acronyms and can tell you at what range you can hit a target with gun Y and how gun X has 32 rounds in a magazine as opposed to gun Z which has 12.

It's their interest, their passion. They are going to defend it and logic will have no place in their argument. It's a personal issue not an academic one for them. If you want a reasoned debate and solution to alcoholism, you don't ask the people stumbling out of pubs their opinion. You don't ask bankers their opinion on banking reform.

People look out for their own interests and gun users are no different to any other group. Any law that takes their guns from them is a bad one, guns aren't the problem and have nothing to do with shootings in schools, etc. You are biased when it comes to this subject.

So, you think it a good idea that people who do not know what they are talking about set the rules for people who have some expertise.

Sounds like a good system, why don't we let people who are computer illiterate censor the internet?

Kirby wrote: »

This thread highlights the biggest problem with any kind of debate on gun reform in that you have gun owners, users and advocates defending their right to have access to guns and arguing vehemently that guns themselves aren't the problem.

My word, the first amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of petition. That's what's wrong with the "debate", is it, that there is more than one side (even if it's the fine detail they're arguing over instead of the broad strokes)?

Knowledge of weapons

Firearms. "Weapons" are whatever you've used to harm other humans. Knowledge of those in this country is something the Gardai frowns on gathering.

makes them expert

In some cases, by any reasonable definition, yes.

they believe this somehow validates their opinions

Hm. So your argument is that twenty years of experience in firearms and firearms legislation does not validate an opinion on firearms legislation?
That somehow an uninformed opinion from someone who doesn't know enough about the subject to know what's dangerous and what's not; what has been tried in the past and why, and what parts worked and what parts didn't; or even what the very terms they're using mean - that their uninformed opinion is somehow better?

They are going to defend it and logic will have no place in their argument.

Ah, I see, you don't actually have an argument, you just think that slinging mud at the people making the argument counts as dialogue, discussion, debate and resolution, all rolled into one.

Sorry, I know a few of you have responded to this post but I can't let it go without getting my speak in.

Kirby wrote: »

This thread highlights the biggest problem with any kind of debate on gun reform in that you have gun owners, users and advocates defending their right to have access to guns and arguing vehemently that guns themselves aren't the problem. .

I'm not defending my right to have a gun. I live in Ireland so I've no right to have a gun. The Gardaí allow me the privilege of having one, well, more than one actually. They are the tools of my sport, the same as football boots and hurleys are tools for another sport. As long as I behave myself and act safely, responsibly and lawfully, what's the problem?

America is a different kettle of fish, they have a lawful right to have a gun. You mightn't agree with it, but it's there and is unlikely to be changed any time soon.

Of course I am going to defend the sport that I am passionate about. The same as Pat Spillane would defend GAA if I told him that it was sh1te and dangerous to play.

Target shooting in Ireland has had way way way less injuries and fatalities than GAA but yet nobody says ban GAA. I'm not knocking GAA, I'm just stating a fact.

Posters who's avatars show them firing guns, mods of military and shooting forums, experts on firearms. Knowledge of weapons makes them experts and so they believe this somehow validates their opinions and makes their view more valuable because they can they know all the acronyms and can tell you at what range you can hit a target with gun Y and how gun X has 32 rounds in a magazine as opposed to gun Z which has 12..

Sorry if I'm not allowed to say this but that's a dumbass statement above. Of course someone who knows about a gun can have an opinion about guns because they know what they are talking about.

Why did the Government call in doctors, psychiatrists, and such when they were consulting about the abortion laws. They called them in because they knew what they were talking about.

Now, not everyone with a gun is an expert, but there are some out there that know what they are talking about.

It's their interest, their passion. They are going to defend it and logic will have no place in their argument. It's a personal issue not an academic one for them. If you want a reasoned debate and solution to alcoholism, you don't ask the people stumbling out of pubs their opinion. You don't ask bankers their opinion on banking reform. .

Yes, of course I will defend my sport. Here is some logic for you.

Would you ban something if it killed people? Probably yes if it happened often, and probably if it happened occasionally too for that matter.

Would you ban something if nobody got killed and nobody got injured? Probably not eh. I mean it's safe, nobody gets hurt.

The above seems logical to me. What do you reckon?

Yet here in Ireland, nobody was ever murdered with a legally held centre fire pistol, nobody injured with a legally held centre fire pistol and nobody was robbed with a legally held centre fire pistol and yet they were banned to cut down on gun crime. Where's the logic in that?

That's the logic that we in the shooting community have to put up with.

People look out for their own interests and gun users are no different to any other group. Any law that takes their guns from them is a bad one, guns aren't the problem and have nothing to do with shootings in schools, etc. You are biased when it comes to this subject.

I make no apology for looking out for my own interest. Any law that takes my guns away from me is a bad one because I'm a law abiding citizen, safe, responsible and I do as I'm supposed to do with my firearms and use them for the purpose they were intended for, target shooting.

http://news.sky.com/story/1088445/boy-3-shoots-himself-dead-with-uncles-gun

A three-year-old Florida boy has died after shooting himself with a gun he found in his uncle's backpack, authorities said.
The shooting occurred in a bedroom Jadarrius Speights shared with his uncle at an apartment complex in Tampa.
Authorities said the uncle, 29-year-old Jeffrey D Walker, had been charged with culpable negligence.
Police said Walker has a concealed weapons permit.
Hillsborough County sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said the uncle was not in the room when the shooting happened, but the child's parents were there.
The boy was taken to a hospital where he died.

..... Don't even know what to say...

I'm also staggered that a 3 year old had the strength to pull the trigger.

Just to say, the following had to happen for this child to shoot himself.

1. The gun had to be loaded.
2. Any safety had to be disengaged
3. If semi-auto the slide needed to be racked to chamber a round.
4. A force of 4-5 lbs of pressure needs to be put on the trigger
5. The child needs to point the gun at himself.

What this probably means is the uncle had a loaded gun with the safety off with a round in the chamber and he left it unattended in a house where a 3 year old could get access to it.

Holy fuck, this guy is doing time.

Wtf? My 10 year old is not allowed play video games with guns, but some kentucky fried retard given their 4 year old a real rifle as a gift. He kills his sister with it and they say its an accident? Not in my book. Parents should be jailed for this.