Khaiy

So, yeah.. having seen people drive and the stupidity which that causes I don't trust them and nor do I trust them with a weapon.

Yet they ARE trusted with a drivers license.

Per capita many more people are killed by cars than by guns, but somehow you don't see people calling for bans on automobiles.

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But you do see lots of people demanding heavier restrictions on driving, particularly for people who have demonstrated that they shouldn't be trusted with a 2+ ton machine that can travel at 100 miles per hour. Plus, there are more restrictions on driving (liability insurance, mandatory training and provisional licensure, maintenance of licensure, possible temporary or permanent revocation of a license, registration of vehicles, regular checks and enforcement, and so on) than there are on gun ownership. And there are legal liability issues that apply to cars but not guns-- you can be charged with vehicular manslaughter, for example, but manslaughter with a gun is just manslaughter.

I personally would want more restrictions preemptively (before you can get a driver's license), but the last century of US city planning make cars a virtual necessity for a lot of people. Without massive upfront investments auto restrictions would produce serious obstacles for people to live and work. Guns are just not as integral in the practicalities of everyday life as cars are, and so there are different constraints around restrictions of each, fair or not.

I can't quote well on my phone, but:

@frob: the castle doctrine (and using the word "doctrine" overstates its legal significance) would indeed address this particular case but does not address the underlying point. The arguments in favor of unrestricted guns tend to assert that the responsibility of gun owners will resolve the inherent dangers posed by guns.

Every time there's an unjustifiable gun incident (by that I mean not even arguably self defence) it undercuts that idea. I'm not conceding that this incident was irrelevant because it killed their kid in their home, but even if I were to do so it's not as if the danger was limited to their home anyways. A bullet can blow right through a wall or window, does a person's "castle" privelege to not secure a gun in their home cover a passerby getting shot on the sidewalk"? If this same situation happened in the apartment below mine, except thr bullet hit me through me floor, what then?

I'm not in favor of restricting random activities overall. But guns are extremely dangerous, and it's not that rare for people to expose others to that danger via their own inability to use guns safely.

Also, the castle doctrine doesn't cover things like the police telling you to turn your speakers down if you're blaring music at three in the morning, bullets should be no more permissible.

@tstrimple: true about nothing short of a ban preventing the tragedy. But this family has shown that their judgment regarding gun safety is lacking, and as much as it was an accident it was also a coincidence that the toddler was killed rather than someone walking their dog in front of the house at the last moment. An unsafe situation was created through carelessness, and the danger was, in this case, realized.

There aren't going to be any legal consequences for this family. That would also likely be the case if it had been a jogger outside killed instead. If the five year old shot a passerby and paralyzed him, the family would also face little to no responsibility of any kind.

That's bullshit. The prevailing attitude and current legal approach enshrines nearly unlimited ability to own and operate guns whle refusing to ascribe any reponsibility for the damage they can cause. That's not the case for cars or really anything else. Why are guns the only liability-free category? How can that be justified?

Sad? Yes.
 
A reason for more strict gun control? No. 

 

How do you figure? I agree it's not a good argument for banning guns, but this is exactly the kind of situation that makes people uncomfortable about the almost total lack of restrictions around gun ownership. These parents bought a gun, legally, and thought that their son would be able to handle it safely and responsibly so they gave it to him. They kept it out in the open, in a corner, and were obviously not careful enough to ensure that it was unloaded while they weren't around. It's a tragic accident, but the misjudgments and  carelessness of this family left a lethal instrument in reach of a kid, and now an innocent person is dead.

 

Do you think it's unreasonable to question this family's ability to manage something as dangerous as a gun in a safe and responsible manner? Or to be concerned about similar incidents? I may have forgotten a post of yours upthread (I'm not going to dig through from page 1 again to check), but where do you stand on legally mandated liability insurance for gun owners, or some sort of "strike" system for gun owners relating to dangerous accidents? Would you oppose any and all restrictions relative to the current system?

 

If we want to have a serious impact on crime then we should do away with the so called War on Drugs. It has ruined so many families in the USA and continues to devastate Mexico. It has been a major supporting factor for gangs in the US which account for a very large percentage of violence in this country. Lets fix our education system which allows for high school dropout rates of over 50% in some major cities. Lets fix our fucked up sense of "morality" and get serious about sex education and birth control. There is no reason anyone in the USA should have to pay for birth control (including students). The cost of single parent families in the US is much, much higher than the cost of providing the means to prevent it!

 

I agree with these. But there is zero reason that doing any of these precludes making changes to gun policy.

 

Instead we're distracted by bullshit like whether a rifle can have a pistol grip or not, even though "assault weapons" are used in less than 5% of all gun crimes.

 

So then the argument is for broader gun control, not a thin reform that creates arcane distinctions between types of gun used in crimes that, by definition, are gun crimes, and would be less severe without guns involved at all. And if you want to talk percentages, it's something like ~70% of homicides in the US are caused by guns. I don't know if those are "assault weapons" or not, and at that proportion I don't especially care.

Maybe. It depends on what the operations and missions involve, and how fun those are to do. It would be cool to have a first person view of the station, but if it's just ta simulated tour of the ISS I wouldn't be especially excited to see it.

It's not especially elegant, but you could build a new list and copy any elements you don't want deleted to it. Then you can replace the original list with the new one. If you want an in-place solution, it's unfortunately beyond me to think of one that hasn't been mentioned yet.