Two-year-old boy shoots himself dead with father's gun

walshyn93

COYVB wrote: »

There's a clear correlation between gun ownership and accidental child deaths from gunfire though

No there's not. Switzerland?

TeaBagMania

shamrock55 wrote: »

I feel sorry for anyone living in america,thet are socially gone as a nation

Couldn’t agree more and if Ireland doesn’t close its borders you’ll be going down the same path

walshyn93

TeaBagMania wrote: »

Couldn’t agree more and if Ireland doesn’t close its borders you’ll be going down the same path

care to elaborate?

handlemaster

Every American needs a gun because....... everyone is their enemy or so the gun makers want them to believe

Sparks

steddyeddy wrote: »

What idiot with a kid buys a gun without manual safety.

The same kind that leaves a toddler alone with a loaded firearm. The "unfit parent" kind.

Kirby wrote: »

You are welcome.

You are not

Sparks

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

Could they legislate more harshly for people who don't keep the gun at least moderately secure? Say 10 years in prison if your child manages to shoot themselves? Or is that taking too much freedom?

That's the law in a lot of countries, so there's precedent. I'd be surprised if they're not prosecuting them under other laws in the US though. Child endangerment, criminal negligence, that sort of thing.

COYVB

walshyn93 wrote: »

No there's not. Switzerland?

Switzerland has half the guns per head than America. Switzerland also has a higher gun homocide rate per 100,000 people than countries with stricter gun laws

Sparks

COYVB wrote: »

When was the constitution drawn up again? How different were things then?

[Useless irrelevant trivia]
You're missing the point of the second amendment of the US constitution.

It does not grant the right to americans to keep and bear arms.
It grants the right to the US federal government to limit the right of americans to keep and bear arms (the guys who wrote the constitution believed that right was a preexisting one - we hold these truths to be self-evident and so forth).

Erase the second amendment there and you wipe out the really surprisingly extensive amount of firearms control legislation they have at federal and state levels. Wal-mart could be happily selling machine guns the next morning if you did that.

(All the US constitutional amendments work that way bar the 13th, by the way)
[/Useless irrelevant trivia]

kylith

Egginacup wrote: »

I'm wondering what the statisitics are for people who have been killed by an intruder but had an unloaded gun in the house and but for it being unloaded they would have killed/wounded their assailant.

I'm wondering what the statistics are for people who have been killed by intruders when the intruder has found their gun or disarmed them. A weapon you don't know how to use/ are not fully prepared to use belongs to your opponent.

walshyn93

handlemaster wrote: »

Every American needs a gun because....... everyone is their enemy or so the gun makers want them to believe

Every year, guns are used over 80x more often to protect a life than to take one. This figure is achieved when you include situations where a gun was drawn but not fired.

The error rate of a police officer is 11% whereas the error rate of an armed citizen is 2%. The disparity in legal protection in the event of error is obviously a big factor in how guns are used.

walshyn93

Sparks wrote: »

[Useless irrelevant trivia]
You're missing the point of the second amendment of the US constitution.

It does not grant the right to americans to keep and bear arms.
It grants the right to the US federal government to limit the right of americans to keep and bear arms (the guys who wrote the constitution believed that right was a preexisting one - we hold these truths to be self-evident and so forth).

Erase the second amendment there and you wipe out the really surprisingly extensive amount of firearms control legislation they have at federal and state levels. Wal-mart could be happily selling machine guns the next morning if you did that.

(All the US constitutional amendments work that way bar the 13th, by the way)
[/Useless irrelevant trivia]

The amendments work however the president appointing the Supreme Court judges wants them to work.

Sparks

COYVB wrote: »

Switzerland has half the guns per head than America. Switzerland also has a higher gun homocide rate per 100,000 people than countries with stricter gun laws

Switzerland's rate is 0.52 per 100,000 people.
Canada is 0.51, Greece 0.59, Luxemburg 0.60. All of which have stricter laws.
Incidentally the US rate is 2.83, which is more than five times the Swiss rate.

In other words, the numbers don't scale or back up your argument.


None of which explains why a parent would leave a toddler alone with a loaded firearm. Seriously, I wouldn't leave mine alone with a plastic fork, what kind of incompetent gob****e would leave one alone with a loaded firearm that had a round in the chamber?

Sparks

walshyn93 wrote: »

The amendments work however the president appointing the Supreme Court judges wants them to work.

You'll generally find that's not the case with the supreme court, law being a bit less flexible than that when half your population are all lawyers...

COYVB

Sparks wrote: »

what kind of incompetent gob****e would leave one alone with a loaded firearm that had a round in the chamber?

One who has had it bred into them all their life that they need to have a gun in the house

kylith

Sparks wrote: »

Switzerland's rate is 0.52 per 100,000 people.
Canada is 0.51, Greece 0.59, Luxemburg 0.60. All of which have stricter laws.
Incidentally the US rate is 2.83, which is more than five times the Swiss rate.

In other words, the numbers don't scale or back up your argument.


None of which explains why a parent would leave a toddler alone with a loaded firearm. Seriously, I wouldn't leave mine alone with a plastic fork, what kind of incompetent gob****e would leave one alone with a loaded firearm that had a round in the chamber?

Probably because military service is mandatory in Switzerland meaning that certainly every man in the country (don't know if it's mandatory for women) has had two years of instruction in the use and upkeep of guns along with a scary man yelling at them about how guns are dangerous. Unlike in the US where you can just decide to go out and get a gun with no experience or training whatsoever.

walshyn93

Sparks wrote: »

You'll generally find that's not the case with the supreme court, law being a bit less flexible than that when half your population are all lawyers...

There's different ways of interpreting the constitution as opposed to the literal interpretation of statute. To take your interpretation you'd have to take an originalist interpretation but that's unlikely given how the subject matter has progressed over time.

Sparks

COYVB wrote: »

One who has had it bred into them all their life that they need to have a gun in the house

I've had three in mine for years, the only effect it has on me is to constantly remind me never ever to leave it where my toddler could get to it. This is why we have gun safes, it's why Irish law (in SI 307 of 2009) specifies minimum security requirements before you get a licence. You have a pistol licence? You need a gunsafe built to a known standard, properly installed and inspected by your local Crime Prevention Officer before your licence application is even considered, and that's by law, and the Superintendent can ask for more security than the legal minimums if he thinks it's needed.

Honestly, the US situation and the Irish one? Poles apart.

Sparks

walshyn93 wrote: »

There's different ways of interpreting the constitution as opposed to the literal interpretation of statute. To take your interpretation you'd have to take an originalist interpretation but that's unlikely given how the subject matter has progressed over time.

Heller disagrees, as do all of the SCOTUS cases taken so far on this point.

Egginacup

jank wrote: »

I wonder how many kids poison themselves by drinking something they shouldn't and I wonder if this makes the News?

You can bet the farm that if the kid overdosed on the parent's valium or drank some of the parent's wine and got drunk and fell into a manhole or drank bleach and burnt his little belly out, people (including the NRA) would be howling for the parent to be banged up for negligence for not having the meds or bleach or plonk locked away in a damn bomb-proof cabinet. Some would even be screaming that the parent should be sterilised for being unfit to parent.
Of course when the kid blasts his chest open or whacks a sibling with a fucking gun then that's a different story. "It's just one of those tragedies that could happen to anyone". The sacred gun laws must NEVER be questioned.

Egginacup

hfallada wrote: »

I think in freakeconomics, the book says far more children die in swimming pools in the US, than by guns. Yet you will never hear a child dying in a swimming pool being reported. Although its a completely preventable death. If you put a safety net around a pool, your children cant enter it. Not all guns can have a safety though

And once again the inanity bubbles to the surface.

walshyn93

Egginacup wrote: »

You can bet the farm that if the kid overdosed on the parent's valium or drank some of the parent's wine and got drunk and fell into a manhole or drank bleach and burnt his little belly out, people (including the NRA) would be howling for the parent to be banged up for negligence for not having the meds or bleach or plonk locked away in a damn bomb-proof cabinet. Some would even be screaming that the parent should be sterilised for being unfit to parent.
Of course when the kid blasts his chest open or whacks a sibling with a fucking gun then that's a different story. "It's just one of those tragedies that could happen to anyone". The sacred gun laws must NEVER be questioned.

Hold on, you never suggested that bleach, valium, or alcohol should be banned, just that the parent should be punished for negligence.

Sparks

Egginacup wrote: »

The sacred gun laws must NEVER be questioned.

EVERYONE ELSE ON THE THREAD wrote:

What kind of fupping moron leaves a toddler alone with a loaded firearm?

Think maybe you didn't read those posts correctly.

Egginacup

kylith wrote: »

I'm wondering what the statistics are for people who have been killed by intruders when the intruder has found their gun or disarmed them. A weapon you don't know how to use/ are not fully prepared to use belongs to your opponent.

I would be interested in that stat as well because. The reason for my post was that the apologists for the idiots who keep loaded guns in their house say that you need it loaded because you only have a split second when the Terminator comes barging in to kill you. I want to know who got killed because their gun was unloaded and would have survived if it was lying around loaded.

Egginacup

walshyn93 wrote: »

Hold on, you never suggested that bleach, valium, or alcohol should be banned, just that the parent should be punished for negligence.

I'm not calling for anything to be banned. I'm calling for rigid restrictions on things that are dangerous and please don't try to rope me into some kind of lame pro-gun, anti-regulation strawman argument, pal. It's clear you're a shill for the gun-lobby and all you're trying to do is deflect. That dog doesn't hunt where I'm concerned mate. Good luck.

Egginacup

Sparks wrote: »

Think maybe you didn't read those posts correctly.

I haven't missed anything. What are you getting at?

AtomicHorror

walshyn93 wrote: »

Hold on, you never suggested that bleach, valium, or alcohol should be banned, just that the parent should be punished for negligence.

What a bizarre analogy. Harm is an unintended and not necessarily certain outcome of a child getting access to the above. The functions of these items are various, but certainly not to cause harm. We balance the necessity of the function against the risk. Guns have only one function, to turn living things into dead things.

Overall this thread, particularly the story of the 2 year old and the 9 month old, are just about the saddest things I've read in months. Horrible.

Witcher

AtomicHorror wrote: »

What a bizarre analogy. Harm is an unintended and not necessarily certain outcome of a child getting access to the above. The functions of these items are various, but certainly not to cause harm. We balance the necessity of the function against the risk. Guns have only one function, to turn living things into dead things.

Overall this thread, particularly the story of the 2 year old and the 9 month old, are just about the saddest things I've read in months. Horrible.

Is that right?

Sparks

Egginacup wrote: »

I haven't missed anything. What are you getting at?

That nobody here is saying what you're saying they're saying. If you follow me.

MarkAnthony

Guns aren't really the issue its the morons that own them. Gun restrictions aren't really there to stop people owning guns, generally, I'd expect most of the population of Ireland could own one if they really wanted, they are there to stop morons and people doing moronic things; much like a drivers licence.

The problem is the correlation between wanting to own a gun and being a moron.

steddyeddy

K4t wrote: »

This. It's too easy to only look at cases like this involving complete stupidity on behalf of the parents.


I live in a rural area of Ireland myself (closest neighbour approx. half a mile) and I often carry a knife or a hammer on me when outside the house at night. I don't have a gun as the chances of an intruder having a gun are quite slim, but it is all about proportionate response. In the US, an intruder may well have a gun, several even. And the older you are the less able you are of defending yourself so a gun is required. Look at the case of Padraig Nally for example, an embarrassment to our justice system that he served time behind bars.

The intruder is more likely to have a gun because of the nuts demanding the rights to have guns.