Let’s see if we can figure it out.
The Chief of Police of Peachtree City, Georgia, William McCollom, was sleeping with his gun in bed. He went to move it, he said, and it just went off, shooting his wife. He immediately called 911.
During the call, McCollom said he and his wife were sleeping when the shooting happened. No one else was in the home. The nearly six-minute conversation between McCollom and the dispatcher sheds little light on how the gun fired. Authorities previously identified it as McCollom’s 9-mm Glock handgun — his service weapon.
"This just occurred now, right before you called?" the dispatcher asked.
Yup, yup, went off in the middle of the night,McCollom said. He told the dispatcher his wife was shot twice, though investigators later determined the wife was shot once.McCollom said his wife was having difficulty breathing and appeared to be bleeding internally and externally. She was flown to Atlanta Medical Center, where she was listed in critical condition Friday, hospital spokeswoman Nicole Gustin said.
McCollom’s wife can be heard crying in the background.
Oh my God,the police chief said.How the hell did this happen?
Well, I’m not Sherlock Holmes, but I think all the necessary pieces of the puzzle are present in the tale as told, and all we need to do is apply some elementary powers of deduction to solve the mystery of how Chief McCollom’s wife was shot.
Because Chief McCollom is a gun-fondling dumbass, that’s why.
Gosh, that felt good to solve that tricky problem. Anyone else have any crimes that need detectin’, just give me a call.
The dumbass probably stuck the gun under his pillow. He may have been giving it a midnight fondle when he inadvertently pulled the trigger.
And here I thought that gun-fondling was only figurative.
I’m sorry for the wife.
A 2 year-old recently shot his mom, in a Walmart store.
In the USA, do accidents with guns, & being killed with one’s own gun, kill more than die in deliberate shootings?
Up here in Canada, the easy availability of handguns is facilitated by the situation in the USA. Fortunately, it’s probably mostly gang members who are victims of shootings, but there are also a lot of innocent people shot in domestic disputes. One of the worst of these has just occurred in Edmonton.
It’s too bad we can’t bring a class-action lawsuit against the USA Government over their gunfondling policies. Or can we?
Actually there is another possibility which is that the shooting was deliberate not accidental and then he had second thoughts. I wonder how many murderers get away with ‘it was accidental’.
Yep, any loaded weapon is intrinsically unsafe. Sleeping with a gun in your bed means it isn’t under direct conscious control at all times.
Stupid fuckwitted idjit.
When any weapon is not under direct conscious control or unloaded, but discharges, it is negligence, criminal negligence when someone is injured/killed. The DA should bring charges.
Slight correction: Chief McCollom is a gun-fondling dumbass who happens to be a criminally-negligent, irresponsible gun owner.
I want to see a federal law—let’s call it McCollom’s ‘One-strike’ Law—that says that anyone whose weapon* kills an innocent bystander will be charged as a Felon and lose the privilege of owning any firearm for the rest of their lives.
*Yes, Timmy, you are responsible for your weapon until it is destroyed, given away or sold. Maybe you shouldn’t loan out your weapons if you don’t want to be responsible for what your buddy does with it.
The proper way to store a firearm is:
1) Separate from its ammunition,
2) With a trigger lock, and
3) In a gun safe or gun lockbox.
Now, I understand that police carry for personal safety. Okay, fine. So nix #1 and 2 above for those folks.
There are gun lockboxes that allow one to quickly open them (using biometrics or a finger reach that a child cannot do), so there is no reason on this earth why a weapon needs to be under a pillow, mattress or in a closet, NONE. Except if its owner is a dumbass who has no business owning any firearms.
He hasn’t been charged with anything.
Are there no laws at all regarding negligent use of guns? Anywhere?
Erp #4:
It’s possible. Reading the story at the link, there does appear to have been a fair amount of marital non-bliss.
Either way, I expect he’s now a bona-fide irresponsible gun-owner, and therefore not representative at all, of people who completely responsibly worship killing-machines, no sirree.
SEKUND AMMENANT!!
Given that McCollom cannot bring himself to say “I shot my wife”, can we now put to rest the silly bumper sticker slogan “Guns don’t kill people”? It sure sounds like he is holding the gun responsible.
(Note that McCollom’s wife was not killed and according to the article is in critical but stable condition. Wishing her a speedy recovery.)
Up here in Canada he would have just publicly confessed to criminal negligence causing death, something that can result in life imprisonment.
dick @ 2,
Link here.
Says her father-in-law:
So, carrying a loaded gun in a handbag, and leaving that handbag where your two-year-old child can reach it (even if it’s in a zippered compartment) is responsible gun-ownership?
In what world?
As for the case in hand, either we believe the police chief, in which case he had a gun in bed and somehow it went off while he was moving it (while he was asleep? was he sleep-moving?).
Or he intentionally shot his wife? girlfriend? at any rate, the woman he was once married to and reconciled with after divorcing her, marrying another woman, and then getting divorced and being accused of cheating….
Either way, it’s fucked up.
But hey, gotta have those guns to keep us safe! The only one who can stop a bad two-year-old with a gun is a good two-year-old with a gun!
There are, but you have to be shooting beer bottles off a fence inside of city limits and the bullets are hitting the side of a preschool.
You might have to pay a fine.
Okay, so the above is hyperbole, but as we’ve seen with all these numerous cases of “accidental” discharges, the standards of negligent discharge are pretty insane.
@11, Rick Pikul
I thought she was still alive, but in critical condition. Hopefully she’ll live.
#3
Just look up the numbers on suicides. It’s staggering. Guns unquestionably do more harm than good in the US.
Following up on what Ryan said @17, here’s a CDC link with some numbers. In 2011, 19,990 people used a firearm to commit suicide.
‘Breathe easy’, the cops’ t-shirts say.
Arguably suicide is one of the better (or of the few good) uses of firearms. But how many accidents or “accidents” have to happen until something changes?
Well, here we have another perfect example of the only way to tell Heroic Responsible Gun Owners from Terrible, Barely-human Irresponsible Gun Owners – wait for someone to get shot.
Do we have an official term for someone being disowned by the NRA ilk for this kind of thing?
Everybody is a fine, upstanding, responsible gun owner. Until they aren’t. I mean, yes, this is incredibly stupid; so people will simply say No True Gun Owner™ would ever do something so irresponsible with their weapon. Also, him being the police chief, the local leader of a group of people trained particularly well with the handling of guns you might think, adds further irony to the stupidity and tragedy of this situation. I hope his wife makes a full recovery.
It get worse. The gun is a GLOCK. I happen to own one myself (because of my job) and there is a detail about it that makes this story even more outrageous.
Glock handguns do not have a safety lever. All the safeties are internal, which means once a round is in the chamber that’s it. The safety of that gun is in a unique double trigger mechanism, but ALL Glock users know you need a special holster that guards the trigger even to carry one safely with a round in the chamber.
He was sleeping with a handgun (already a bad idea), and the gun was a Glock… with a round in the chamber! What kind of idiot does that!? I don’t even carry it like that when I am fully awake. Not even with the special holster.
Glocks are extremely reliable… but they are the last gun you’d want to place where an accidental trigger pull may happen. It is already established this guy is an idiot… but it takes a special kind of idiot to do this with that particular gun.
dick @ 3
Um.
I wouldn’t call that fortunate.
This was such a responsible gun owner they even made him chief of the police department! Screening and training, it really works, folks!
++
Yeah, sounds a bit like “I saw so many people get away with complete fuckery, why not me?”
Elementary, my dear Horde.
Maybe I am repeating things already said, but I see only two possibilities. Either that is the result of another responsible gun-owner, or it was a quicky divorce. Even if couples are reputed to have “happy marriages”, no one knows for sure what is going on between them.
Words … cannot … begin …
If this isn’t gross negligence then the term has lost all meaning. Sleeping with a loaded gun? That’s insane! Why not throw in a hand grenade, a couple of scorpions and a chainsaw while you’re at it?
Well, they think that a zipper, which can be undone by a 2 yo as shown (and you don’t need a particularly smart toddler for that) is an effective safety meassure.
And her FIL is not particularly concerned about more children losing their mother and having to live with the fact that they killed her, he’s concerned about people no longer being allowed to carry guns in zippered purses.
So, no safety catch? I love weapons like that. No, wait, I despise them. Absolutely idiotic. Whoever designs these clearly doesn’t understand that their customer base (Humans) is prone to mistakes, errors and baffling stupidity, all of which would suggest the inclusion of a* separate safety device to prevent the unintended triggering of the life-ending device. That, or not making the life-ender in the first place. Yes, yes, naive. Money to be made and maybe other reasons, too.
*a number of, ideally. I don’t care about being user-friendly if user-friendly is defined with quick-draw wild west shootout in mind.
—
Anyhow, reading this – yet another report of idiots with guns – I just found myself wondering if all these accidents aren’t really the point of guns. That they are somehow necessary in the minds of the people who keep invoking that second amendment of yours whenever something like this happens, which seems to be daily.
The main argument for guns seems to be self-defence. Hoodlums are everywhere and if you don’t have a gun they will kill you, rob you, burn your house and salt the earth, or something among those lines. In other words, the gun under your pillow is your nuclear deterrent; if someone tries to cross you universal destruction shall ensue. Therefore, noone will ever cross you.
But deterrents only work if people know you have them and if they fear them.
So you run around in public with a clearly visible rifle strapped to your back. You decorate your car with bumper-stickers displaying your Fire-at-will attitude. And so forth. That way people will know you are armed, which is the first step to the magical protection bestowed upon the heavily armed.
But without fear the deterrent is worthless. A gun is just a piece of metal until people start dying. So the gunfondlers of America must almost be pleased by the constant string of deaths caused by guns. Yes, it’s a hassle batting down all those attempts at gun control but on the “positive” side, this is a constant reminder of how dangerous these weapons really are. And what good is a deterrent nobody is afraid of? Heck, some people might like fear and intimidation and guns are just the thing for that. Light, portable (if you like) and inexplicably legal, at least in the US.
In the good old days of the cold war nuclear tests in the Pacific made a good reminder that the arsenal was still in good shape, just in case anyone was wondering and maybe getting silly ideas. Now, on a smaller scale, a couple of people are shot every week just so nobody could ever forget just how dangerous guns are. Just a necessary evil of the deterrent. It simply wouldn’t work otherwise. And you wouldn’t want fine upstanding citizens like yourself to be defenceless when the hoodlums come for you and your family, now would you? So drop that bill and walk away. It’s for the good of the Country, as God and the Founders intended.
I think everyone’s a little too quick to dismiss cases where someone made a mistake, like sleeping with a gun under his pillow, as being just another irresponsible gun owner. Everybody makes mistakes, including responsible gun owners. Maybe not quite as dumb as this clown, but they still do.
But for exactly this reason, I think the Walmart case is more powerful than this one. In the Walmart case, the mistake was a lot more understandable. In fact, by all accounts, the woman who got shot was a fairly responsible gun owner. They don’t exactly train you to keep a close eye on your purse in handgun defense class. I think a lot more people can look at that example and say, “That’s a mistake I could have made.”
Of course, I’m too cynical to believe either of these cases will result in any useful changes like required background checks, mandatory waiting periods, magazine limits, and, most important of all, stronger handgun regulations. But I still think the Walmart shooting makes the case very well that the truly responsible gun owner doesn’t feel the need to walk around in public with a concealed firearm every damned day.
Are we just going to believe this asshole?
Thirding Erp and What a Maroon, this guy is a murderer: his wife was shot, with his gun, which he was holding, and the only counter evidence comes from this idiot who claims he didn’t mean to? Why is he not in jail? Ah, right, he is a member of America’s biggest gang, the police. Barf.
What we have here is either a) criminal neglicence or b) attempted homicide. Unfortunately b) can be a bit difficult to prove, despite suggestive circumstances; it’s a price we pay for little thing like “presumption of innocence”.
The Old “pistol under pillow” is reckless even if you are paranoid enough to sleep with gun in your reach: There are several specifically designed bed-mounted holsters for home-defense purposes. And since you’re not carrying the thing around, you’re probably better off with a shotgun and 00 Buckshot. (Yes, there are shotgun mounts for bed too. Only in America…)
@17: I do not think suicide rate has much bearing on gun politics or gun (ab)use. Suicide is suicide, whether it’s by hanging, carbon monoxide, cyanide pill or firearm. The Method itself is a distinctly secondary consideration.
@22: The Problem is called “proving a negative”.
@24: The Sad fact is that certain combinations of ethnicity, sex and social associations have truly disproportionate rates of criminal behaviour and victimization in comparison. Another sad fact is that one cannot rationally discuss causes and potential solutions to these problems without getting called “racist”.
31. brinderwalt
No, its not their job to teach you to keep an eye on your purse. Most people’s purses do not have loaded firearms in them as far as I know. It definitely is their job to teach you to always keep an eye on your guns, especially if they are loaded, and around children ffs. How is that responsible in any way?
I am not so quick to call the police a “gang”, but I would not dismiss murder in this case, for technical reasons.
As I said before, the Glock does not have a safety catch, but it DOES have a safety. To shoot, the double trigger has to be pulled firmly, with your finger properly aligned and fully inside the trigger guard. A lateral push, a casual action, a string snagged on the trigger… won’t fire that gun.
I am sure it is possible to fire it in your sleep (and that’s why only an idiot would have it loaded and with a round in the chamber in bed), but the amount of pressure that trigger requires, and the safety built in… make it difficult.
A policeman KNOWS about the Glock, about its trigger and about its safe and unsafe points… He also knows that shooting your wife will end with you prosecuted, no matter how much you try to hide the evidence. Now, if only you had a escape clause, like making it look like an accident…
He is either criminally stupid or a murderer. I am not sure which.
Nope, definitely not a responsible gun owner. No responsible gun owner leaves a loaded gun anywhere near a toddler. It is unloaded and locked up so everybody is safe. What part of intrinsic safety are you having trouble with.
Every discharge of a gun should be criminal negligence.
During residency I encountered a similar case where a priest tried to strangle his wife during sleep. Of course there was suspicion of attempted foul play. However during his polysomnogram there was significant motor activity during REM sleep and he was diagnosed with REM sleep behavior disorder. It was possible that the assault was the manifestation of dream enactment as his defense alleged. To add to the complexity, his brain MRI showed microvascular ischemic changes in the pons. Theoretically this disrupts the circuitry involved in muscle hypotonia during REM sleep. After weighing all the forensic data we in fact sided with the plaintiff. Why? Because it was uncovered that the priest went to bed with a machete tucked under his pillow. You can’t blame that on a parasomnia. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chief of Police’s legal team brings up the twinkie parasomnia defense.
Komarav #30, I have often said that gun nuts don’t have guns for self-defense but simply because they are gun nuts.
If it is attempted murder, it’s a pretty smart way to do it. I mean, if we’ve learned anything, we’ve learned that there’s pretty much no level of negligence with a gun that will lead to being charged, and that there’s pretty much no way to indict a cop for hurting someone.
As for the mother shot dead by her two-year-old, there’s plenty of things in the average purse that could harm a toddler; adding a gun to the mix doesn’t improve that. I mean, I remember locking the cabinet with the cleaning products, and putting one of those child-proof thingies on the knife drawer, and taking the knobs off the stove, and chaining the basement door, and getting electrical cords out of the way, and child seats, and so on and so on, but having a gun protected by nothing but a zipper – and anyone who’s tried to keep a toddler in a winter coat they didn’t want to be in knows how well that works – isn’t obviously and on the face of it negligent? It would have been safer if the purse had buttons, for the love of fuck!
The dead woman may have been a relatively responsible gun owner. That is what terrifies me.
The same lazy argument people make about murder. You know damn well a gun makes hasty, bad decisions a easier. They are machines designed to kill. A quick, violent way to exit the world in the hands of a person with suicidal depression is a recipie for tragedy.
Oh yes one can – provided one does not rely on racist stereotypes in doing so. Perhaps that’s where your problem lies?
Sorry, @24 should be @33 in my #41.
Apparently the gun suffered from an instance of premature ejection.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10782720/
In case this rather obvious fact is still controversial to anyone.
Minor fix. Of course, some people might be inclined to argue that the standard for a responsible gun owner might be too high, but they’d probably be waving guns around while doing so.
—
#31:
Emphasis mine. First off, we have very different definitions of “understandable” mistakes when it comes to firearms. This leads on to the second issue: what do they teach in those classes then? I assume that’s not the official name and that those classes do involve basic safety training for firearms but may be mistaken on that count.
As a gun owner you would be the first person at risk from firearms due to improper handling, poor safety precautions or poor maintenance. So if those classes don’t teach you to keep an eye on your weapon, what good are they? You won’t be able to protect yourself from yourself, much less anyone else. You are the prime threat to yourself and others if you have a gun you cannot operate properly.
– Misused or missing safety devices: Bad!
– Improper or careless storage: Bad!
– Magazine loaded at all times: Bad!
– Chambered round: Very bad!*
*Seriously. Unload that weapon now and turn it over to someone competent. You’re done. Contrary to what gun nuts will tell you, this actually is for your own protection!
The worst part is that the aforementioned gun safety basics are not that difficult to grasp. It’s just that some gun owners are either not interested or think that those rules are beneath them. I’m guessing the police chief might be a good fit in the latter category.
This really could be a case of complacency coupled with stupidity rather than actual malice, but if so, so what? If veteran officers can fuck up so massively despite all their training then why would anyone think it a good idea to keep giving untrained civilians, including the fetishists who couldn’t care less, broad access to the same weapons? How can this possibly end well?
brinderwalt
Holy fuck NO
A “mistake” is when you push the button of your Senseo machine and have forgotten to put a mug underneath. It means that you have to wipe coffee off the kitchen counter, not blood off the wall. Others have detailed how many fucking basic safety meassures this guy disregarded, if it was disregard indeed.
The only reason you’d consider her a fairly responsible gun owner is because you’ve been brainwashed by the US gun lobby. Keeping a loaded gun somewhere your toddler can access and fire it is NOT being responsible.
I don’t own a gun. Short of the apocalypse I never will. I own a longbow. A weapon no toddler can accidentially discharge. The FIRST rule I learned at the shooting range was that you NEVER EVER put an arrow to the string as long as anybody is in the shooting area. No, it didn’t matter that you hadn’t even lifted the bow, it didn’t matter that you didn’t draw the bow. You DO NOT DO THAT. EVER
That’s safety with a fucking 25″ bow.
komarov
Apparently they teach 25 specific scenarios with 12 variables each and as soon as ONE variable changes the gun owner cannot be expected to know what to do. Really, nobody’s fault if your 2 yo accessed the gun from your purse, because the class only talked about backpacks and kindergarteners.
Stupid. He should have got his gun its own bed, like Heavy Weapons Guy did.
mirrorfiled @33
So sad when racists who use dog whistles are called racist. *sheds tear*
The sad fact is that when people say “certain combination of ethnicity, sex, and social associations” they mean young black men, without thinking about why young black men have a higher arrest rate. They follow that up with saying they should pull their pants up, get a job, etc etc. There are ways we need to address problems of high crime rate in some neighborhoods, but people who start with “certain combinations” of people as the problem aren’t usually interested in really helping.
Whether it was an accident or homicide attempt, I hope that woman never gets into a bed with that man again, for her own safety.
Young black men.
They truely have the weirdest superpowers in the world.
Not only do they make police kill them, and black women, and black children, they also make white people shoot their family members. Whatever it is, it’s their fault. And the gays’. And feminism’s.
mirrorfield @ 33
Fucking idiot. I didn’t challenge the objective truth of his claim that gang members die by gun violence more often than the average person. I didn’t say anything at all about racism although, as you’ve obviously spotted, dick’s comment @ 3 does have racist implications. I observed that it’s fucking awful to say that it’s fortunate that one group is more often a victim of shootings than another.
Really? And the classes don’t teach “generalities” (and the students don’t generalize the specifics, themselves?) ? Such as, “the object/bag you’ve left your gun in. Monitor it very closely”, Is this not an example of the “concrete thinking” one goes through during early development? That one only has to be concerned about leaving your weapon in a specific kind of object, anything else is perfectly secure? And we call these kind of narrow-thinkers, “responsible g*n owners”? I think “responsible” requires a little more than just Attending A Single Course, that the person does not generalize to other, possible, scenarios.
html fail@53: I wanted the [strike], to only strike the G word. ie …
gun[thing] …I look at these news reports like a dispatch from a distant planet. Unheard of in the UK. What is this wide spread fetish?
Oh and before anyone comes out with the facile guns and cars can kill people blah, cars are designed to travel without killing, and kill when stupidly driven. Guns are designed to kill, and when they do kill, they are performing as designed. So why have some thing that can and will kill you when properly used? It’s like jumping into a tiger’s den and expecting to get out alive.
If this is how the chief of police behaves, I shudder to think what his subordinates do with their guns.
tbtabby,
Ooh! I know this one!
@Erland Meyer #28:
Because you’d never fall asleep with that chainsaw noisily snarling away, obviously.
As others have said this merits investigating into their marriage, whether they were having arguments, an affair, or if one was planning a divorce. Was this merely stupidity by an incompetent idiot, or was he trying to kill her?
If it turns out he was trying to murder her and make it look like an accident, I won’t be surprised. He won’t be the first cop to resort to violence over a breakup.
“Why is he not in jail?”
Before charges are filed, a suspect has no Miranda rights. Often charges are withheld until after an invesigation is done, so the suspect can be questioned.
@40: I said “secondary consideration”, not “irrelevant”. Of course firearm availability and their relative reliability for the purpose of committing suicide has effect, but there are far more relevant considerations (eg. polar night and semi-Russian drinking habits in Finland). IMNSHO banning firearms for purposes of suicide prevention would be the moral equivalent of treating dandruff with decapitation, as a certain musical artist once compared treating naughty lyrics with censorship.
@41, @49, @51, @52: Thank you for beautifully demonstrating why discussion of that subject is utterly impossible in USA.
mirrorfield
You’re an idiot.
Many of are not in or from the USA
Actually, police must honor a suspect’s Miranda rights (right to refuse to answer questions, right to have a lawyer present during questioning) any time they interrogate a suspect in custody. Whether or not charges have been filed doesn’t matter.
mirrorfield @ 61
Lol. You say this like it’s a bad thing. No, shitwit. You can’t say you think it’s fucking fortunate that one group dies to guns more than another without being accused of bigotry against that group. Why the fuck should you be able to say something like that without being accused of bigotry? If openly saying the lives of one group are less valuable than the lives of others doesn’t constitute bigotry to you, what the fuck would?
Also: fucking use people’s nyms, asshole.
Chris @55. I know exactly what you mean. I even had to raise an eyebrow @46 – Sensible comments from someone who doesn’t own a gun but has a Longbow ? I don’t own anything that is designed primarily as a weapon, and can’t envisage any circumstances in which I would want to.
Not only did he have the gun in an unsecured, unsafe location…under his pillow…but…
The gun was loaded. Not just loaded, but had a round in the chamber. And…
The gun’s safety wasn’t engaged.
Dumb. Just Dumb. And terrible gun safety, as if that wasn’t perfectly clear. That a professional who supposedly is trained in handling weapons made these mistakes is horrendous.
No it isn’t, but it does show that your paranoia is showing.
mirrorfield,
It’s not a coincidence that the ethnicity that you have in mind is also the ethnicity that has been and continues to be treated like shit by another ethnicity. I’m sure you’re familiar with that history.
There’s the cause. The solution is for that other ethnicity to stop doing that.
Unless in Watsonesque fashion, you’re trying to imply that some ethnicities by default like stealing and killing.
Actually he has Miranda rights even before charging and presumably as a cop he knows he can demand a lawyer and refuse to answer at any time. The article says they are waiting to question his wife. One hopes he is on leave from his job though even if disguised as compassionate leave because his wife is in hospital.
A few years ago the retired chief of the local university’s police was interviewed about his 30 or so years as chief. Apparently the first thing he did when hired was disarm all his subordinates until they had undergone proper firearm training (he also split the force between regular police who had guns and community service officers who did not).
If fear of being called a racist prevents you saying what you mean, you’re either a racist, a contemptible moral coward, or both.
mirrorfield,
Does that make your argument any better? No one is arguing that guns should be banned merely for suicide prevention, though that would be one nice side effect. More important, though, are accident and murder prevention. (And yes I realize that banning guns would not prevent all murders and suicides, but it would reduce the rates greatly.)
In these debates there’s always someone who says that no one is calling for banning guns or repealing the Second Amendment. For the record, I am in favor of either repealing or radically reinterpreting the Second Amendment, and banning most guns for most people.
From the link on the Wal-mart story:
Right there is the problem. The woman in Wal-Mart was not carrying her gun; it was out of her control. Furthermore she was not paying attention to it long enough for the two-year-old to reach the purse, unzip the special pocket, withdraw the gun, aim it and pull the trigger. So yes, I color the woman irresponsible.
I’d best not get started on the father-in-law.
Not completely unrelated is the fact that she left her purse in the shopping cart. Happens all the time. When I see a purse in a shopping cart with no one near it, I think how easy it would be to grab it and go. But I don’t say a word about it; I’ve decided that would be a waste of time.
mirrorfield
So go ahead and rationally discuss the causes and potential solutions you have to the problem. If you aren’t racist it shouldn’t be a problem. Don’t let your fear hold you back from educating us. Please, do go on . . .
mirrorfield @ 33:
Ok, then, let’s have that rational discussion right now. Setting aside sex and social associations, what about ethnicity causes disproportionate levels of criminal behavior, and what are your potential solutions?
I’m all ears.
Re the Wal-mart case:
From http://www.idaho.gov:
#3 Dick & Mirrorfield:
Being thankful that an oppressed minority attempting to find meaning in life and are turned to crime for a support structure/family (places where the state have failed their duty in financial support and education) are only shooting each other instead of the bootstrap-pulling-up hard working citizens. This isn’t racist?
I’d almost say David Duke is less racist than you are, since he’s threatened to out racist politicians recently.
There was a similar case on one of the forensic investigation programs a few days ago, a rerun of Forensic Files I believe. That time a woman killed her husband using the same excuse. As I recall –I was channel flipping so I missed pieces, she got away with it for some time until someone really looked at the evidence. The bullet trajectory and blast pattern were completely inconsistent with her story. Also, she claimed the gun had a hair-trigger. Measurement revealed that it required four pounds to pull the trigger –definitely not a hair-trigger.
If it was intentional, unless he is much smarter than he sounds, good investigation should nail him. Being he is the local police chief, may well not happen unless an outside agency is brought in before the evidence is hoplessly compromised. Peachtree City is close to Atlanta, so that could happen. If she recovers, as we all hope, it will probably be swept under the rug.
Research strongly suggests that this is not true. The method makes a huge difference. Roughly half of suicides are impulsive, when a person suffers from an acute crisis, and on average they decide to commit suicide within about 5 minutes of their attempt. Having a quick and efficient method of killing themselves makes it far more likely that they’ll succeed; anything that takes extra effort or gives them pause for second thought will dramatically decrease the likelihood of the attempt. Guns are by far the most quick and effective method and account for about half of successful suicides in the US. Pills, razors, etc. have a high failure rate. Fewer guns would almost certainly mean fewer suicides.
@34 – speed0spank
Are you asking me to justify as responsible behavior I specifically called irresponsible in the very same post you quoted? But I would argue that carrying a gun in a purse is a common mode of carry for women and therefore the safe handling of a purse with a firearm in it seems like a reasonable topic to cover in a course on handgun safety, especially if it’s aimed at people who are going to carry a concealed weapon.
@46 – Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
And yet I’ve stood on an archery firing line and watched someone shoot an arrow downrange while there was a person beyond the firing line. Everybody makes mistakes, some more egregious than others, even responsible gun owners. NRA types would have us believe that accidents can be prevented by following the rules every time. And that’s more or less true. However, humans aren’t good at following the rules every time.
@45 – komarov
I use understandable in the sense that I could understand how it happened. Are you seriously saying you can’t understand how a woman who has a CCW and probably carries her gun everywhere she goes, every day, might forget someday that maybe her purse should not be kept near a toddler?
Actually, it’s pretty close to the official name of a lot of courses. There’s no one course and no one curriculum and no one name. So what they cover will vary from place to place. The NRA does certify some, but I’m not especially familiar with the details of that certification. In any case, safety usually is covered, but you have to remember that the kinds of people who teach and take these courses are already generally true believers that they need a gun to be safe. They generally encourage you to carry a gun more, not less, and reinforce the argument that a gun is necessary for your personal safety. At least, that’s my experience.
Exactly. Hence why I said carrying a gun everywhere you go is not the brightest idea. At some point, you’re going to screw up. Most likely, nobody gets hurt. But occasionally someone does.
This Tweet by Ferrari Sheppard is a reminder of how the police chief’s white privilege benefits him
Oooh, I know the answer to this one! Disproportionate levels of criminal behavior are created by white politicians who enacted drug crime laws as a way to maintain racial power structures after the formal end of Jim Crow.
I have a pretty simple solution too. Go to an elite college, like Harvard, and arrest every single student you find smoking a joint of weed. Throw the book at them and send them to prison for years. If drug laws were actually enforced evenly against white folk and the wealthy, I guarantee that the U.S. would change its drug laws within a matter of weeks.
brinderwalt, #31
Bullshit. Go look at Daz’s post #75.
And if your two-year old is getting to your loaded gun, you are not a responsible gun owner. You must have a fucked up definition of that term.
Actually, carrying loaded firearm when there’s fuck-all need to do so means you’re an irresponsible gun owner.
P.S. The baddies will get me or Second ‘mendment muricah fuck yeah are NOT valid needs.
brinderwalt @79:
Guns are omnipresent in U.S. society. When gun owners make mistakes, human beings often suffer and die. Sometimes it’s people who turn to their gun in a moment of anger or frustration. Many times it’s people who have not stored their gun correctly (while keeping it loaded) or people who do not clean their weapon correctly.
The people who are involved in many of these accidents lack the proper training*, or have anger issues. Neither of them is a responsible gun owner. That’s one of the reasons I support stronger gun control laws (especially important is psychological testing prior to gun ownership).
*Yes, the police chief likely had firearm training, but then I wonder why he was irresponsible enough to keep a loaded gun under his pillow. From the NRA itself:
So I wonder why this police chief didn’t follow one of the basic safety rules that even the NRA endorses.
Nope, prima facie evidence, carrying a loaded weapon in public is inherently unsafe, and from time to time folks claim the NRA web site says any gun carried in public should be unloaded for safety. Which any responsible gun owner will do.
Seconding Saad @82 and 83.
brinderwalt
And that person should have been removed from the range instantly. Because they were handling a dangerous object without taking basic precautions.
Also: These people did not make ONE mistake. They disregarded several basic safety rules.
No, we’re saying that CCWs are 99.9% irresponsible as such and so is carrying a gun everywhere and it is twice if you have a toddler. You know, the greatest harm my kids could do with the contents of my purse was to smash the smartphone.
Actual responsible gun ownership means having multiple safety meassures so that making this ONE mistake you keep talking about does not get anybody killed.
You don’t hang an elevator from one cable and when it crashes down you say “well, occasionally cables do break”
82 Saad,
Sorry, what? I made a simple statement of fact. I can even cite sources. People (not me) really are calling her responsible.
Or did you bother reading to the end of my post where I specifically called her behavior, and indeed, anyone who regularly carries a gun in public, irresponsible? I also would say the behavior does not become responsible if she carried the gun unloaded. People make mistakes and think loaded guns aren’t loaded when they are all the time as just one example of how that can go wrong, too.
That’s how stupid that question was. If you’re in charge of highly dangerous things, then damn right you should be expected to observe proper safety precautions at all times. If you don’t want to, or cannot, follow such precautions, then you should not be in charge of highly dangerous things.
Saad
Indeed, gangs of the sort implied by the first person to bring that into the discussion are pretty much exclusively a function of a complete failure of social order; they exist when and to the extent that legitimate* governance does not. So, when the official government/social order actively refuses to do its job where certain segments of the population is concerned, and sabotages any efforts by those segments to build their own, you get outlaw social orders who provide many of the services that a functional society should (most gangs get started as mutual protection societies in places where there aren’t any police, then become vigilante societies, due to lack of a functional justice system, and they need money and can’t tax, so protection, numbers, loansharking and black marketeering creep in. Thing is, if there’s actual courts where you can get a fair shake, police you can call about a robbery who won’t shoot you when they arrive, and banks or credit unions that’ll give you a loan, you don’t go to gangs for those things, because they kind of suck).
What a Maroon 71
Likewise. For those who want to treat the U.S. Constitution as unchallenged holy writ, we have a well-regulated militia, it’s called the National Guard, and if you’re a member of said militia doing training or active service, you’re welcome to carry whatever weapons are duly issued to you for that purpose. Otherwise, no, not yours. For the record, I definitely and explicitly include the police in this; they’re about the last people I want to see with guns, frankly.
brinderwalt 79
Which is why responsible gun owners leave their guns locked up at the range, unloaded, and don’t just wander around with them like a fucking security blanket. That way the opportunity for mistakes is greatly reduced. Really responsible gun owners remove the firing pin, pour molten lead down the barrel, and hang the thing on the wall as a presentation piece. (I will also note that someone carrying a longbow around in public has zero chance of accidentally killing anyone with it. Same goes for swords and knives and suchlike. Not that I’m in favor of everyone going around armed with that sort of thing, but it’s not an active threat to everyone around you as long as you’re present).
Which shows with prima facie evidence they are not responsible gun owners either. Don’t ever believe a lot of gun owners won’t lie and bullshit to protect their precious “rights”, and seem totally non-plussed when you ask them “how many negligent deaths are needed to show that public carry is unsafe, and should be banned?”. And never give a straight answer….
@87 – Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Regardless of compound vs. simple mistakes, people can and do make egregious errors with guns and with bows. Frequently. As you say, bows do have the advantage of making it pretty much impossible to mistakenly fire it, but that’s not the same as making it impossible to mistakenly shoot someone with it. All the more reason we should be suspect of the people who tell us that gun safety merely requires perfect adherence to a set of rules.
Let me remind you of what I said in my post #31:
What are we arguing about, exactly?
brinderwalt, #88
No, I’m sorry. My comments should then be meant for the friends/family calling her responsible.
When so much is at stake, the only responsible thing to do with killing machine apparatus is to not have them with you in public. There’s nothing responsible about carrying a gun around people. The whole term “responsible gun owner” is ridiculous when people try to describe CCW people with it.
Look idjit, I can guarantee not one person being killed by a negligent misfire of a gun in public. Nobody carries a loaded weapon in public. Easy peasy. Basic gun safety. Basic law in Idaho even.
The Rambo wannabees pretend they need protection from ????? (With crime rates continually decreasing, they just sound paranoid.)
A straight non-bigoted answer is never forthcoming. It is all about MEEEEEE.
Doing a “Pistorious”?
I didn’t mean it your honour.
brinderwalt
And therefore we do what exactly?
Nothing?
Act like “well, shit happens even when you follow the rules”?
Because that’s all I hear you saying. Ah, but people might forget they’re carrying a loaded gun in their purse!
What’s the reason people make “egregious errors” with guns and bows and how come they get to do so frequently
No, nobody acts like following actual safety rules would prevent 100% of accidents, just like traffic rules don’t prevent 100% of traffic accidents. But following the most basic safety rules would have prevented those two shootings.
Dalillama
Anybody who carries a strung bow in public should have the bow removed on accounts of cruelty against innocent bows. Whatever you see on TV, you don’t carry a strung bow and you don’t draw and hold for 5 minutes until somebody shouts “fire”*
*double no sense. You shoot, you don’t fire.
Nerd @94:
Having re-read what Brinderwalt is saying, I think you might want to retract the titanium fangs. Xe is agreeing that it’s irresponsible to carry a CCW. I could be wrong but this comment from Brinderwalt
reads like someone who thinks being safe with guns is more than just following the gun safety rules. Which is true. Nowhere in the NRA’s gun safety rules will we find “don’t carry a CCW”, for instance.
Sorry, I should have completed this idea. Not only is it about them, but also about an imaginary boogie man (usually a POC), who tries to mug/rape them on a public street, when the odds are they are more in peril from a family member who also owns a gun, and treats it cavalierly, hence unsafely. They just can’t grasp statistics through their paranoia of “self defense”, ironically with a weapon that is offensive, not a shield that is defensive.
They want to kill, not be safe.
Giliell 96
Strung or unstrung, you won’t kill anyone with it by accident.
The command ‘fire’ dates exclusively to the era of, well, firearms (hence the name). With a cannon lock or matchlock gun, you literally have a peice of burning material, and on the command of ‘fire’, you apply the flame to the powder and the gun goes off. With bows, the historical command in English was probably something like ‘Loose’, although I don’t think anyone knows for certain. I actually recall reading an Asterix book as a kid and catching that one when a Roman commander yelled ‘Feu’. Granted that they were using fire arrows, but still.
96 – Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Quoting myself from my first post again:
My point, over and over again in this thread, has been that the standards for responsible behavior from the gun lobby are inadequate to protect people as are any standards that require perfect adherence to rules and constant vigilance. The conclusion is obvious to me, at least — we cannot rely on them and need to have a set of rules that do not require these things. The easiest way to do that is to make sure people are not armed in public.
And again, to reiterate the point in my first post, this is what makes the Walmart shooting so interesting. At least as far as the news media is presenting the facts, it’s a woman who let her guard down for just a moment and got shot for it. Again, I’m cynical and I doubt much will change, but maybe some people will finally realize the real amount of diligence required when you’re carrying a weapon and decide the consequences aren’t worth the risk.
re @99:
the historical command in English was probably something like ‘Loose’…
My bet is on “Release!”, but that is only based on my archery phys ed in ’82. I could well be mistaken. I’ll just stand with that, as my bet.
OT:
Even IF, it was an anomalous event of the handgun alone; this police chief should still be demoted for such reckless trust in his handgun. Taking it to Bed?!?!? That alone should disqualify him from Police Chief status. All other debate points are just incidental. Police Chiefs should be well aware of the dangers of unsecured handguns. And holding it while sleeping does not qualify as “secured”. Police Chief should have foresight, this guy has none.
The order to ‘fire’ an arrow: This chap makes a good argument that the orders given would have been ‘knock’ and ‘stretch.’
Technically, that’s ‘nock’ (the notch at the end of an arrow) not ‘knock’ (to strike something); the words are etymologically unrelated.
Area Man wrote:
Exactly. There was research that found that putting up rails to prevent people from jumping off a major bridge to end their lives actually reduced the total number of suicides by residents of the area, even though there were other locations nearby that could’ve accomplished the same goal. Apparently just making suicide inconvenient is enough for many to just decide to live instead. Some people rationally decide on suicide, and will not easily be dissuaded by mere inconvenience (and perhaps should be accommodated for better), but if half of suicide attempts (these impulsive ones) can be thwarted easily, shouldn’t they be?
Dalillama, Schmott Guy #104:
Ah, thanks. The silly thing is, I knew that at the back of my head. I kept looking at the word and thinking summat seemed off, but couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it. (Sadly, nine years after the fact is probably a bit late to let the author at the link know.)
***OT***
Giliell
What is that position called?
the one where you have drawn your bow and are about to loose?
brinderwalt wrote:
The problem is that those rules aren’t really rules. They’re guidelines or suggestions at best, because there are no negative repercussions for not following the NRA’s “rules”. You can be as negligent as you want with your gun, and get away with it, because “haven’t they suffered enough? or “Gun grabbers gonna gun grab!”
I don’t care if they’re laws carved in stone by god himself and carried down a mountain by Zombie Charlton Heston. They’re still inadequate, and the best way to keep people safe is for guns not to be so ubiquitous.
He’d have had to have a round in the chamber, and the gun cocked, with the safety off, for it to go off like that. That’s … unbelievable.
Oh look, yet another toddler has shot their mother to death. That one was in November, but I missed it.
carlie, #111
Loaded gun under a couch in a home with toddlers. Nice and responsible.
@3:
If you include suicides, yes. If not, no. In the US in 2012, there were 11,622 gun homicides, 20,666 gun suicides, and 548 accidentally killed by guns.
In the same year, there were 81,396 non-fatal gun injuries, of which 17,362 were accidental and 4086 were self-harm.
You can access the data here: http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html
I can’t say how accurate the CDC data is. My suspicion is that gun-related injuries in particular are seriously under-reported, but I don’t know that for sure. One imagines that the homicides are accurate.
Brinderwalt, #79:
Others – including yourself – have already spoken to that effect but I’d like to add that if someone becomes so jaded and indifferent to gun safety that they simply forget about their weapons, they should not be armed. I suppose if we used “understandable” in the technical sense, that is, “I can see how events string together to produce the end result” then fine. It did happen, so this is inevitably true. But I fail to understand the massive systemic failure underneath.
Professionals are prone to complacency regarding safety because they are always armed. Which is why the organisations employing them usually have them undergo continuous training and tests to ensure they remain aware of these issues and to verify that they are still fit to handle their weapon.
Civilians who get a gun and treat it like a mobile phone (always on, always in your pocket) are bound to ignore the safety rules. They are (currently) not subject to training, re-certification and have no control or oversight by another party. Which is exactly why they should not be armed in the first place.
This is not just a matter of individuals being careless, that’s just the last step of it all. Where are the trainers telling the chief he needs to get re-certified and turn in all his weapons until he passes his test? Where is the investigator noting in the chief’s file that he has failed to uphold safety standards and egregiously breached basic protocols by keeping a loaded weapon in his house?
Where is the lawmaker who should point out that that woman was not properly trained or qualified to handle weapons? Why are the cops, after the fact, shrugging and pointing out that it is not uncommon for untrained people to roam around with deadly toys (as they are regarded, not as they are)? How can a society tolerate this as a normal state of affairs?
I bet it must have been a long and difficult journey for the fetishists to get to a place where, from the lowest level of personal common sense – that gun is dangerous and I really don’t need it – to the highest levels of government and law – second amendment and that’s that – and everywhere in between, noone gives a jot about the safety issues and the huge and often unecessary risk factors involved with US gun culture.
You’re right when you say rules alone can’t prevent all incidents but it seems these rules are scarcely known among the gun lovers in the States. There should absolutely be more levels of safety including severe restrictions, bans, testing, background checks etc. but as it stands just adding the basic safety rules to the gun fondler repertoire would be a huge boon to public safety. Which is a terrible thing to say, but one that I think would hold true if the US ever dared put the notion to the test.
Yes, putting the firebrands in charge of religion has also had such wonderful effects. At any rate, thanks for clarifying this a bit. In a sane world with insane gun laws I would have expected the governement to lean heavily on anyone providing weapons training to enforce a suitable standard. Especially since if you can’t legislate guns away you might still be able to use “failed certification” as a lawful reason to still disarm people who should probably not be armed after all. I’m sure the police wouldn’t mind at all enforcing that particular law. Oh well, small government, second amendment and other right wing boiler plate stuff.
I was using understandable in the sense that it can maybe be understood by the kinds of people who carry CCWs every day and think it’s not a risk to them or others, that they are responsible gun owners so nothing bad will happen. This woman is an example to those people. Sure, many or even most, will say it’s a mistake they’d never make. I’ve already heard people blaming her choice of equipment and saying she should have been hiding the gun in her clothing instead of in her purse. But perhaps some of these people might think to themselves, “You know, I’ve left my purse at a table before. That’s something I’ve done. I never thought I might get shot because of it.”
I know it’s a small thing to hope for. Like I said, I’m too cynical to expect anything more. I satisfy myself with the small hopes.
Unless Chief Wiggum here slept with a twitchy, unreliable weapon in his bed next to his wife’s head, or fucking ghosts did it, there is only one possible solution. Guns don’t “go off”, people make them go off.
I triple-dare any gunsturbating paranoid Wild-West fantasist to defend sleeping with a loaded weapon, alone or otherwise (I use the “gunsturbating” etc pejorative because no sane & reasonable gun owner could possibly have a defence for this).
As for the toddler shooting its mother, nope. If, however you justify it, you think you need to carry a loaded fucking firearm when you’re shopping with your kids, it is entirely on you to take every possible precaution to separate child and gun. Dumping the thing in your handbag like it’s a pack of gum is the polar opposite of what a sensible gun owner would do.
I am continually flabbergasted that this argument continues and this problem goes unaddressed, as if people are waiting on some kind of mind-blowing new evidence that guns are inherently not safe, need to be kept away from children (except if competently supervised in a sensible location) and clearly need to be kept away from a large proportion of adults. It’s already clear that on-duty cops can’t be trusted with the fucking things, especially if black people are around, much less while they’re home asleep. How people think your average civilian should be trusted with a concealed firearm is far beyond me.
Another thing: there are always accusations thrown around at critics of gun culture in the wake of the latest senseless or entirely preventable gun casualty. Critics are accused of being chicken littles and overreacting to every little incident, wanting to take everyone’s guns away because one person got shot, or one person lost their mind and killed a bunch of people. But it’s important to note that we’re not having this strong reaction to whatever incident happens to have made the news that week, but to the entire body of spree murders, single killings and accidental deaths or injuries via firearm. Each new murder or accident just raises the issue of gun culture afresh, because it is that gun culture and the refusal to look, in an honest and adult way, at methods of controlling people’s access to lethal weaponry, that guarantees future incidents. Meanwhile, if you look for robberies, muggings, home invasions, murders and mass-killings that have been prevented or mitigated by the actions of armed civilians so you can compare that data to the reams available on accidental and purposeful gun deaths and injuries, there really is little to be found. There is, on the other hand, plenty of conjecture after the fact regarding how such tragedies could have been prevented by the actions of armed civilians. “If only Sandy Hook’s teachers had assault rifles.” “If only the students in Santa Barbara were packing.” “If only the patrons at that Sydney cafe were armed.”
If only. If only a significant percentage of civilians at every conceivable public location had professional weapons training and/or combat experience, that would lessen the casualties at every inevitable future spree-killing, store robbery or violent burglary. So that’s what we should do – arm civilians to prevent other armed civilians killing large numbers of other civilians. Nothing could go tragically wrong there. Don’t worry about meaningfully controlling how easy it is to get a gun without resorting to the black market. Just let people arm up, because more guns equates to less gun violence. Despite the US leading the developed world in civilian gun deaths, both accidental and otherwise.
Hell, this is perfectly understandable. I stroke my gun as I go to sleep, and when I wake up, I find I’m still doing it. It’s such a satisfying feeling. The TV show Sledge Hammer!/ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sledge_Hammer!) was a perfect description of how soothing it is to cradle your .44 Magnum. You guys sound like your guns aren’t the most pleasurable extensions of your body.
Seriously, I’ve written about this many times. If you insist on owning a gun, you are responsible for locking it up when it’s out of reach (not in a body holster) or you’re asleep. Anything that happens with your unlocked gun that results in the injury or death of another being is no accident, and you should be prosecuted as though you are the one who did it. The police chief will probably get away with murder, and the mother of the two-year old has already paid dearly for what should be common sense. (The other thing I keep harping on is that every gun owner must know and practice the 4 rules of “safe” gun handling, and be prosecuted for any injuries of deaths incurred when those rules are broken. Again, these are not accidents, and owning a gun requires not succumbing to willful ignorance.)
Let her guard down for just a moment? I’m willing to bet most of my possessions that this woman drove her car with her child and the other children in it to the shopping centre. I don’t know about anyone else, but my handbag is usually kept next to me or on the floor of the passenger side of the car when I’m driving.
Just going out with the gun in a handbag means that you cannot possibly keep continuous control of the weapon and/or the container where you’re temporarily storing it if you are also the driver of the car. And I strongly suspect that these fear-addled, self-defense types wouldn’t contemplate putting the bag in the boot (trunk) while driving because it wouldn’t be available for all those quickdraw scenarios that seem to occupy their minds.
Merely having travelled to the store in a car full of children means that this woman had already permitted an extremely dangerous situation where she was incapacitated from control or intervention if one of the kids did something with her gun because she had to keep her eyes on the road and maintain control of the car. The whole thing was fucked up from start to finish.
Hank_Says #116:
Hank and everyone else who used the phrase, there is no such thing as an “accidental shooting”, except in extremely rare cases of mechanical failure: http://www.thegunzone.com/glock/upgrade-faq.html. Please, let’s call this what it is: a preventable crime.
I think that open/concealed carry laws should include a requirement that it be strapped in a dedicated holster directly to your body, precisely because with any other method of transportation, it’s too easy for someone else to gain control of it.
Unless it is a lightening strike, it is a criminally negligent discharge. Which if anybody is hurt in the slightest or killed, should be crime.
Carlie,
I disagree. There is no way to carry a weapon in public that is intrinsically safe unless the weapon is unloaded. There is no way, other than having the weapon unloaded, to carry a weapon safely in public. The gun nuts refuse to see the obvious….
Yep. They’re in the process of putting up suicide netting on the Golden Gate Bridge for precisely that reason (over 1500 suicides and counting; only 29 jumpers have survived). For a related story, see the British coal gas story. When a major kitchen appliance can double as a suicide booth, suicide rates skyrocket. Take that away, and suicide rates plummet. Keeping death machines away from people is an effective means of keeping otherwise healthy people from offing themselves. Even when guns are locked in safes or stored in basements, that enough to dissuade people. Just a few minutes of extra thought or inconvenience makes a difference.
The NYT magazine had an excellent article about this general phenomenon several years ago, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the issue.
“Melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins” isn’t bad either.
Seven of Mine @64: First of all, I’m not American; I have no part and only limited interest in the american racial issues. Second, I do not rank people by ethnic groupings. (Sectarian, political and behavioural ranking is a different thing; as my now-deceased grandma taught (roughly translating) “Appearance and size are determined by God, manners are determined by persons themselves”.) Third, the fact that gangbangers kill other gangbangers at greater ratio than innocents is fortunate.
Here I must say again: Gangbanger != Young Black man. However, large fraction of Liberals have a short circuit saying “gangbanger == young black man” and they take any attempt to correct this as a proof of racism (Cf. Kafkatrap). I do recommend Esr’s article on the subject he calls “kafkatrapping”; it rather accurately describes the primary reasons rational discussion on the subject is impossible.
What a Maroon @ 71: Your version is simply false. Traditional Finnish homicide is committed under influence of alcohol, over some dumb-ass drunken argument. Usually by stabbing.
Second (assuming you’re US Citizen), thank you for your making clear your disregard of law and proper legislative process. I hope it will come to light when you’re being considered for any position of responsibility.
Tony! The Queer Shoop @ 80: I suspect that’s more of a matter of “police privilege” instead of “white privilege”.
mirrorfield @ 126
And this makes you a horrible person regardless of your pathetic rationalizations. Again, I said nothing about racism until you brought it up. I was reacting to the fact that someone had said it’s fortunate that X group dies in A way more than Y group. It’s a horrible way to think about other human beings. The idea that people commit crimes out of disregard for others’ property and lives and not out of desperation because the society that is supposed to look out for them has failed them in every way possible is typical right wing, glibertarian, just-world bullshit. It’s bullshit even before you get to the racial implications of saying it.
Not precisely equal to but hispanic and black men are vastly over-represented in gangs compared to other races and genders. When you say “gangbanger” you are, with very few exceptions, talking about members of racial minorities*. If you deny that, you deny reality. If you say it’s fortunate that gang members die more from gun violence than other groups, you are, in fact, saying it’s fortunate that young black and hispanic men die more than white people from gun violence. That is the practical reality of what those words mean regardless of what was bouncing around in your skull when you typed/said it.
* I’d also bet dollars to donuts that, when you say “gangbanger”, you’re picturing a member of a racial minority and will have no qualms about calling you a liar if you deny it.
You seem to be working from a rather odd definition of “rational” wherein there is no expectation that you check your premises against reality.
You lie and bullshit. There are also white gangs and latino gangs. Not every black man is/was a member of a gang. Quit lying to yourself. That makes you stupid. You are racially profiling with bigoted ignorance.
@ Hank_Says, 117
Or those two police officers who were murdered in their patrol car. If only they had been carrying a side-arm, had been trained in the use of it and had experience in spotting suspiscious behavious they would have survived for sure ….
… Wait, you tell me that police are trained in all that … oh well, they certainly won’t be better at it than your average person who can buy a gun whenever the fancy strikes them, right?
.
There are many reasons why I’m glad to live in Western Europe as opposed to the States … but you can be sure that our gun control laws are one of the main ones. That’s not to say that tragedies don’t happen, but they are certainly less frequent.
mirror wrote: “Here I must say again: Gangbanger != Young Black man. ”
is that ( != ) symbol meant to be interpreted as “Not equal” ? Then you are correct and Nerd misunderstood you. I only think this cuz you contrasted the != against ==.
It seems to me that alot of the args against mirror are misinterpretation of mirror’s symbols. Mirror, I like shorthand symbols too, but to avoid argument, maybe better to expend a few extra keystrokes to spell it out explicitly. instead of “glug != young bugger”, how about “glug does not equal young bugger”?
Usually the symbol for not equal (≠) is shown as =/=. Non-standard symbolism is easily confused.
Gangbanger is dog whistle, usually used to imply a person of color, usually young black man, somebody to be afraid of, a boogie man.
So there is that element going on.
A Nerd:
“!=” is a logical operator meaning “not equal” in C and maybe other programming languages. Likewise the “==” is a logical operator for “equal”.
I knew what mirrorfield meant but, as Nerd points out, the reference to gangs is a dog whistle and mirrorfield quite clearly recognizes it as such since they’re the one who started whining about how you can’t point out that gang members are disproportionately racial minorities without accusations of racism before anyone had even said anything.
It’s easy to put the ≠ sign anywhere in a post using ampersand codes.
For the not equal sign, type ≠ (ampersand en ee semicolon) and you get ≠.
I know basic, fortran, Pascal, and apple 6502/65816 assembly. I’m not familiar with that syntax. Nor is any non-programmer.
I’m not a programmer myself. It just happens that the one language I have any real knowledge of uses that syntax. I didn’t mean to imply you should have recognized it.
mirrorfield @ 126,
My mistake; I didn’t realize that this was the Finnish homicide thread. Please enlighten me, then: What is the homicide rate in Finland? How many Finns are killed annually by knives accidentally going off? When was the last time a Finnish mother was killed when her two-year-old child found her knife in her handbag and accidentally set it off? What’s the suicide rate by knife in Finland?
Advocating that the courts reinterpret the Second Amendment or that the country repeal the amendment through the procedures prescribed in the Constitution shows a “disregard of law and proper legislative process”?
I’m not one of them investigative journalist or police detectives or some high and mighty liberal scholar, but I think I might look at motives for killing a spouse first……….cause that’s the MOST probable.
Being a moron being a short 2nd.
mirrorfield @ 126:
Oh?
Then what did you mean when you said @26:
(bolding mine)
What sort of non-race-based “ethnicity” were you talking about?
mirrorfield #126:
While I’m usually all in favour of reminding people not to be country-centric, the OP in this case is about US gun-law. In short, don’t be silly.
Travelling at 50mph on a 30mph road is disregarding the law. Campaigning to raise what you see as an unnecessarily low speed limit is not. In short, don’t be silly.
What a Maroon @136: If gun-banners were honest, they’d run campaign for constitutional amendment, but it’s never going to happen because they know they’d lose. Instead, they want to go simpler and easier way by bribing/cajoling/threatening 5 supreme court justices, 51 senators and 218 representatives to say that 2nd amendment doesn’t mean what it plainly says. (“It’s a noble lie for noble cause” and so on.) Unlike progressives who honestly got 18th amendment ratified (along 21th when the prohibition proved to be a …not that hot idea. And let’s not get started on drug laws…)
That is the fundamental dishonesty which I oppose.
bullshit. See, there supposedly are these things called District Attorneys, whose job it is, so I hear, to actually look at charging people who may have committed a crime, given the evidence, and resolve the issue at trial.
but I guess Americans not only do not believe in the rule of law over the rule of gun any more, but they have entirely FORGOTTEN WHAT IT’S EVEN LIKE.
says which supreme court? the current one, or ALL the ones previous to the current one?
Agree! I think strapped with a belt around your forehead would be good. that way, I can spot assholes a long way off.
stylish headgear.
Mirrorfield, #140:
Odd. Admittedly I have been watching from a transoceanic distance but I was under the impression that pretty much the entirety of the constitution was subject to reinterpretation and … bending. Consider, for example, every case of church and state separation in the US ever. If memory serves it also took US law some time to figure out that segregation wasn’t lawful or constitutional. And so forth.
It seems everything in that constitution is open for re-examination except the second amendment, which is somehow ageless. Everything else may shift and change with time but not my second amendment, the one that has me armed to the teeth if I like. No sir.
I find ths very strange indeed.
Oh, you mean the part where it plainly states the purpose of people owning guns is to support the “well regulated militia”, which has ceased to exist, therefore nullifying the right?
I’d be perfectly happy to campaign for an amendment that repealed or clearly altered the second amendment. It wouldn’t work if introduced now, but I recognize that’s because gun fondler culture has more political and cultural influence than rational people do. We need to change that state of affairs through ethical means, rather than resign ourselves to apathy.
The cultural influence I mention: The bar for “responsible gun owner” seems to keep getting lower and lower every time one of these negligent shootings happens.
Hmm, so that’s twice now, I’ve asked mirrorfield about their initial statement @33 (my error in numbering in my 138, oops!), and twice I’ve been ignored.
Which is odd from someone bemoaning:
But I guess when mirrorfield was talking about having a debate, they didn’t actually mean debating what they said, but… something else.
But, hope springs eternal, so…
@140:
To quote Nerd, @145:
Or did you mean the bit where it says:
plainly saying that no laws regulating any sort of weapon can be enacted, ever?
…unless, of course, you’d be willing to allow that ‘arms’ and ‘infringed’ might just require legal interpretation from all them silly justices, senators, and representatives?
So we have a case where either a trained law enforcement officer doesn’t follow the most rudimentary safety procedures regarding his service weapon (and that’s not too surprising, it’s hardly the first case of irresponsible handling of guns by law enforcement) or we have a cold blooded murder. Given his assumed weapons training, I’d say that if the autopsy indicates that an accidental shooting is possible, he still ought to be tried for negligent homicide.
But either way, he’s demonstrated that even someone who it is reasonable to assume has had a high level of firearms training is still not a “responsible gun owner”. It’s time for a change.
As for the 2nd Amendment: Those “clear words” still leave lots of room for interpretation, but frankly, I think that amendment was a mistake. Kind of like some other mistakes made in the drafting of the Constitution, like denying women and black people the right to vote, allowing slavery to continue, and treating black people as mathematically and specifically less than human. They made mistakes, no one would deny that. The 2nd Amendment was one of them.
gussnarp @148
I’m at the point where I assume any gun owner is negligent until proven otherwise. Gun owners who actually give a crap about safety are becoming rarer and rarer.
So, carrying a loaded gun in a handbag, and leaving that handbag where your two-year-old child can reach it (even if it’s in a zippered compartment) is responsible gun-ownership?
With either no safety, or the safety off. Because, as one gun-store employee said to me, “safety is in the mind.”
In the Walmart case, the mistake was a lot more understandable. In fact, by all accounts, the woman who got shot was a fairly responsible gun owner.
Which “accounts” are you talking about? The ones where she never left her gun in a place where a two-year-old could get hold of it?
They don’t exactly train you to keep a close eye on your purse in handgun defense class.
And that means what? That she couldn’t have been expected to learn anything outside of a handgun-defense class? I have yet to meet a woman who needs a handgun-defense class to remind her to keep an eye on her purse.
I think a lot more people can look at that example and say, “That’s a mistake I could have made.”
I think a lot more people can look at that example and say, “That’s a mistake I could have made, therefore it’s not a good idea for me to carry a gun in my purse, or even own one at all!”
Instead, they want to go simpler and easier way by bribing/cajoling/threatening 5 supreme court justices, 51 senators and 218 representatives to say that 2nd amendment doesn’t mean what it plainly says.
Okay, so tell us what the Second Amendment “plainly says.” Not the second half of that single sentence, but the WHOLE SENTENCE.
They don’t exactly train you to keep a close eye on your purse in handgun defense class.
But I’ll BET they do train one to keep a close eye on their handgun in handgun defense class. And if the handgun is in something/anything beyond one’s reach, keep one’s close eye on that thing, or else aaarrrggghhhh.
And to say “it was in her purse so long, always unused, that she just forgot it was in there” (I’m guessing) and also, “she was a responsible gun owner”, do not fit together very well.
@gussnarp #148
I imagine Maggie McCollom will be hoping that the doctors hold off on the autopsy for the moment. It is a bit inconvenient when you are still alive.
Because Chief McGollum is a gun-fondling dumbass who took his Preciouss to bed with him, that’s why.
Sorry, had to say that. Now back to grownup dialogue.
Komarov @144: Church-State separation is another problem, yes. Especially when there are lots of people who see estabilishment of “christian states of america” as a religious obligation. Those people are equally wrong. As were the segregation laws (which were a rather blatant attempt to do an end-run around 13th, 14th and 15th amendments).
Nerd of Redhead @145: So you believe that twitter and internet are not covered 1st amendment, since they’re neither speech nor press? I don’t think so. Even if the “well-regulated militia” (ie. “well-functioning militia” by today’s terminology) became obsolete (which I’m not willing to grant, but that debate is outside the scope of this discussion), the latter part is by no means dependent on it. The Wording is awkward, but plain.
Anri @147: I’ll elaborate here:
*Fact, that gangbangers victimize mostly other gangbangers is fortunate for the rest of us non-gangbangers. In such cases very little value generally is lost, as callous as this may sound.
*Another fact is, that young black men form a disproportionate number of gangbangers. To such degree that if your discount young black men from homicide statistics, the legendarily high USA homicide levels start approaching european levels.
*Correlation ≠ causation (and sorry about the non-standard logic operators in previous posts), but this statistical overrepresentation must have a cause or several causes. (He’re we’re entering a dangerous territory.)
*Generally accepted reasons for this overrepresentation include (among other things) poverty, profitability of illegal narcotics business and lack of employment opportunities.
*According to liberal dogma, underlying all of these “accepted” reasons is racism.
*Also, according to liberal dogma, anyone who believes that perhaps the racism has mostly faded and that there are other causes, which are not related to racism, in play (eg. breakdown of family structure, perverse incentives caused by badly-designed and -operated welfare, disdain of educational archievement as “acting white”, musical genre(s) and subculture glorifying “thug life”), must be a dog-whistling crypto-racist, whose denials are merely further confirmation of said dog-whistling crypto-racism. (See: Kafkatrap.)
*Opinions of anyone thus “determined” to be racist can be ignored. That’s why it’s impossible to discuss the subject in USA.
Even if the “well-regulated militia” (ie. “well-functioning militia” by today’s terminology) became obsolete (which I’m not willing to grant, but that debate is outside the scope of this discussion), the latter part is by no means dependent on it. The Wording is awkward, but plain.
The Second Amendment mentions the “well-regulated militia” guaranteeing “the security of a free State” FIRST, and “the right of the People to keep and bear Arms” SECOND. The wording is not at all “awkward” — it clearly describes the right to keep and bear arms as SUBORDINATE TO, and LIMITED BY, the need for the security of a free State. Unlike all other rights in the Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms is explicitly set forth as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
mirrorfield #154:
You have an odd definition of ‘fortunate.’ I do not count myself fortunate to live in a world where people kill each other.
Poor people tend to turn to crime more often than do rich people, for childishly obvious reasons. Could there, do you think, be a reason why black people tend to end up poorer than white people?
Hint: It begins with ‘systemic’ and ends with ‘ism.’
*Correlation ≠ causation (and sorry about the non-standard logic operators in previous posts), but this statistical overrepresentation must have a cause or several causes. (He’re we’re entering a dangerous territory.)
See above.
*Generally accepted reasons for this overrepresentation include (among other things) poverty, profitability of illegal narcotics business and lack of employment opportunities.
See above.
*According to liberal dogma, underlying all of these “accepted” reasons is racism.
Give me one single other reason, barring systemic racism, why black people would so often end up at the shitty end of the economy-stick.
*Also, according to liberal dogma, anyone who believes that perhaps the racism has mostly faded and that there are other causes, which are not related to racism, in play (eg. breakdown of family structure, perverse incentives caused by badly-designed and -operated welfare, disdain of educational archievement as “acting white”, musical genre(s) and subculture glorifying “thug life”), must be a dog-whistling crypto-racist, whose denials are merely further confirmation of said dog-whistling crypto-racism. (See: Kafkatrap.)
See [Link]
*Opinions of anyone thus “determined” to be racist can be ignored. That’s why it’s impossible to discuss the subject in USA.
You have offered no alternative to racism, as a cause for the obvious economic bias. Please do so.
Oops. Please imagine the above with blockquotes.
*Fact, that gangbangers victimize mostly other gangbangers is fortunate for the rest of us non-gangbangers. In such cases very little value generally is lost, as callous as this may sound.
That’s not just callous, it’s stupid and dehumanizing. That’s only a “fact” if you assume that “gangbangers” have less value than other humans. What is that assumption based on, other than your arbitrary devaluing of humans in certain groups?
*According to liberal dogma, underlying all of these “accepted” reasons is racism.
That’s not “dogma,” that’s easily observable historical fact: racism has had noticeable effects on nearly all aspects of our society over many generations; and these effects don’t simply vanish when public schools are integrated or a black man gets elected President. And as our recent experiences with police misconduct and stand-your-ground laws clearly prove, racism is far from dead in America. Your total failure to come to grips with this reality is not the liberals’ fault; it’s yours.
*Also, according to liberal dogma, anyone who believes that perhaps the racism has mostly faded and that there are other causes, which are not related to racism, in play (eg. breakdown of family structure, perverse incentives caused by badly-designed and -operated welfare, disdain of educational archievement as “acting white”, musical genre(s) and subculture glorifying “thug life”), must be a dog-whistling crypto-racist…
Maybe not a “dog-whistling crypto-racist,” but at best, definitely too ignorant and simpleminded to participate in any serious grownup discussion of such issues.
Had his gun in bed with him, huh? Take heed, ladies–the dangers of marrying an ammosexual.
mirrorfield @ 154
It doesn’t sound callous. It is callous. It’s abso-fucking-lutely disgusting.
If you don’t count a bunch of homicides, you end up with a lower homicide rate, therefor….something.
“Liberal dogma”, otherwise known as “reality”. You should visit it some time.
Again, according to reality anyone who thinks that perhaps racism has mostly faded has their head so far up their ass they’re in danger of becoming a singularity.
You appear to be discussing it.
Even if the “well-regulated militia” (ie. “well-functioning militia” by today’s terminology)…
Excuse me, but those two things are NOT the same. They’re not even close. “Regulated” and “functioning” are not the same things — as every advocate of deregulation has been telling us for decades.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space, #159
I gave all of them away over the holidays, but remind me that I owe you a brand new internet.
mirrorfield, #154
Anyone who believes that racism has mostly faded is either ignorant or a racist asshole. No third option. Which are you?
As for the other causes (some of which do seem to be contributing factors), why would they disproportionately appear in black people if not due to systematic racism? Finish your thought. Just what is this “dangerous territory” you hesitate to venture into?
He can’t tell you — that’s the dangerous part.
So dangerous, it can’t be shared, but totally not racist, nope no way, it’s because of liberal dogma . . or something which is why it can’t be discussed. That and the danger. I’m sure all the FOX News talking points displayed so far are just to protect our fragile liberal minds from the truthiness mirrorfied is about to bring.
Mirrorfield, #154:
In response to me you are badly missing my point, or trying to. The point was, if the constitution and amendments are so straight-forward, why is there an endless list of legal cases surrounding them? Sure, in some cases there are relatively ‘obvious’* attempts to get around uncomfortable parts of the constitution. But even then the cases would be unecesssary if the constitution really were clear-cut. The judge would simply say, “Nope, it’s obvious it has to be / musn’t be this way, says so right in [here]”, and throw the case out. Instead the US legal system is constantly rehashing similar cases (church / state separation) or may, for years or decades, remain stuck with laws that are later overthrown as ‘clearly unconstitutional’ (segregation).
Besides, law depends on circumstance and circumstances change, which is why you have to be damned careful about just what you want to anchor in your constitution to make it, so to speak, an eternal law. Fundamental human rights? Fine, no problem there because there is no forseeable set of circumstances where we should not have some basic respect for our fellow human beings. The right to bear arms, on the other hand, has not turned out so well for the US, especially when compared to other developed nations.
This is hindsight, naturally, but even when it was first written people should have realised that weapons technology is advancing, meaning more destruction in smaller packages. Which is just one reason why weapons as a fundamental right are a bad idea. I also wonder if the people writing this law thought the need for personal armaments would remain current in society for as long as it persisted.
*Quotes to account for the fact that what is obvious varies from person to person
Well, if you have to resort to ranking different murders and / or murder victims against each other, whatever you’re doing is not fixing the root problem. You might as well ignore something that only kills the elderly on the basis that they have fewer years left to live than young people. In either case, the correct response from an ethical (and engineering) point of view would be, “Screw that, let’s find the actual problem”.
How, pray tell, do all these people (I won’t use the word, thank you) get all the guns for killing? Cursory inspection of the issue suggest a potential cause in that general direction.
Ingenious. You’ve reached murder-parity between the US and Europe by disregarding a significant chunk of the US population. Allow me to apply the same method to fix several of humanity greatest problems.
1) Poverty and economic disparity: Let’s just remove low-income families from consideration and everything is peachy!
2) Cancer: By ignoring older age groups and possibly some developed countries with life expectancy that is simply too high, cancer as a cause of death becomes so insignificant that we can safely ignore it. Let’s re-invest all that money in guns and ammo instead!
3) Famine: Countries with a low per-capita food yield and low GDP limiting the abilitiy to import required foodstuffs are not very interesting to look at so we won’t. So on average everything is now fine!
4) Global warming: By disregarding certain heavy industries such as smelting and power generation from fossil fuels our carbon budget can be made to look like anything you like. By my calculations, CO2 levels should return to a tenth of current levels by this time tomorrow afternoon. Better fire up your steamcars or it’ll be a cold winter!
But if you take anything away from this, let it be this. Root cause. Everything else is just symptoms to make you wonder what is actually going on.
P.S.: The second quoted point, incidentally, says nothing about who is doing the murdering. Could just be lots of black people being murdered by worried white accountants on their way to the office. Accountancy does strange things to people.
I’ve heard a big gun is compensating for … something… but isn’t this a bit on the literal side??
;)
He’s a cop: no charges filed in 3… 2… 1…
Raging Bee @150
The one I linked to in #88 as a start. CNN had something similar to say, as have other news networks.
It means what it plainly says. They don’t teach that in the handgun classes. Keep in mind that knowing something intellectually and practicing it are two very different things. If you store a handgun in something familiar, like a purse, it is quite natural to continue treating your purse as just another purse. It’s just one example of the kinds of problems you have when people carry guns in public, as I’ve thoroughly explained elsewhere in this thread.
Yes, thank you for reiterating the whole point of my post.
I THINK brinderwalt is trying to say that the Walmart example is an even more powerful example of why guns are a bad idea because that is a scenario more people can identify with? Because while most gun owners don’t fondle guns in their sleep like the idiot cop, a lot probably DO carry one in a purse so while the cop was obviously an idiot, Walmart mom was supposedly an example of responsible gun ownership and look what still happened to her? So her mistake was a lot more “understandable” in the sense that it was more relatable even if she is just as bad as the police chief in the end. You can dismiss the police chief as an idiot, but not the mom.
I think…
Worse, in the end. Sadly, she died at the scene. Luckily the police chief’s wife survived her ordeal, and hopefully the police chief, despite making an even dumber mistake, has lived another day and hopefully learned something important.
mirrorfield @ 154:
So – and I want to make sure I’m not misunderstanding you here – you are of the opinion that people who join gangs are less valuable than people who don’t?
As humans, I mean?
If so, tell me: did they become less valuable humans when they joined the gang, or did they join because they were of less value?
A couple of questions here:
1) Taking your first two points together (that gang members are worth less than non-gang members, and young black men are disproportionately gang members), would you make the case that young black men are, on average, worth less as humans, then young white men?
2) Does your comparison include black young black male Europeans? In other words, if you compare young black American men to young black European men, do you get the same level of homicide stats? If not, what’s the differential factor?
Again, I just want to check here – are you of the opinion that lack of employment opportunities (which helps drive the other two things you mentioned, in many ways) aren’t worse for young black men?
I presume you’re aware of studies showing that identical given CV’s, one with a race-neutral name, and one with an ‘ethnic-sounding’ name, the former receives vastly preferential treatment to the latter? Just as an example.
How exactly are you defining ‘dogma’?
Ok, I’ll ask: what decade do you think racism became a non-issue, and what are you using as your basis? In other words, about what time period did white people stop oppressing black people, and how do you tell? I get that such an answer isn’t going to be exact – I’m not planning any kind of gotcha – I’m just wondering when you think racism went away?
Do you believe that welfare in European countries – far more leftist in nature than any US liberal could ever aim for – are creating a similar situation? Is the breakdown of welfare systems more heavily seen in places where liberal progressive policies are in place, or where conservative policies hold sway?
As far as subcultures go, every generation thinks it’s the first one who’s kids are obviously lost to devil music. Go back and read what they said about The Beatles. Hell, go back and read about what they said about Jazz, or waltzing, for that matter.
Except you’re not being ignored, just asked to explain – at least by me.
So at least one side in our discussion is misrepresenting the other.
And here’s the crazy thing – you actually can ignore anyone you don’t think is going to have a ‘rational’ discussion with you. If you don’t think someone on the blog is worth responding to… don’t respond. Ask ’em to leave you alone (they might not, but this place is pretty decently self-policing) and just skip over any posts headed by their name.
That way, you’re both happy: they get to huff off and claim victory, and you only have to deal with those worthy opponents you hand-pick. Win-win!
mirrorfield: “You strident libruls, it is impossible to discuss the fact that black men are violent criminals who are the cause of the United States’ gun problem because you all just accuse me of being racist!!!!”
Fuck off, mirrorfield.
Yep, nothing but a bigoted RWA who believes a word that FAUZ SNOOZE
yeah, he can get away with attempted murder by saying he did the absolute, dumbest thing imaginable… and people will believe him.
very instructional indeed.
I believe his wife, who has said it was an accident. You are welcome to believe what you like, but I’m going to believe the victim (and Hanlon’s Razor).
how would the wife know. she was asleep, right?
she believes what her husband told her.
why, thanks for your permission.
you can be as gullible as you like, and apply Hanlon’s Razor too, but what’s more likely?
someone who is a fucking POLICE CHIEF, was dumb enough to bring a gun to BED with him, and have it ACCIDENTALLY SHOOT HIS WIFE, or it was actually intentional, and he can use the fact that there really ARE a lot of gullible people out there as cover?
…and Janay Palmer is SURE that it was an accident that Ray Rice knocked her the fuck out.
uh huh.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother. You seem determined to believe everybody is acting in bad faith. You know damn well what that phrase is intended to mean, and it isn’t to grant you permission to do anything.
Who’s granting permission now?
What’s more likely? Really? A police chief who, as you say, is trained in the use of firearms attempted, but failed, to kill his wife at point blank range and then, instead of waiting for her to bleed to death, he called 911 in time to save her and risk her testifying that he had tried to kill her.
Plus he was also confused on the 911 call about the number of times he shot her. He claimed it was twice. It was, in fact, only once. Or was that an intentional mistake?
People accidentally shoot other people all the time. Even people trained with guns. It’s why people shouldn’t have guns with them everywhere they go. People even sleep with their guns under their pillows. Yes, even people who should know better. Do a google search for [gun instructor accident] and see what comes up if you don’t believe me. In fact, I’ve done it for you. Here’s another example of a police officer sleeping with a gun under her pillow, except she shot herself with it. Or was she just trying to commit suicide by shooting herself in the wrist? You know, like slit wrists, but with bullets?
There’s nothing in this story that is particularly difficult to believe, and yet you seem predisposed to disbelieve it and choose a more fantastic version.
I also can find no evidence that Janay Palmer has ever said that what happened to her was an accident. She has said some regrettable things about how it was her own fault, and even one article about how it’s god’s will, but an accident? Not that I’ve seen. Perhaps you’d like to share a source for that information.
yes, I do. I also know it’s a very silly phrase and is deliberately intended to be dismissive.
but you can believe what you like.
see?
remorse.
or is it in fact, entirely irrelevant?
and people murder each other all the time as well.
point being, she never said it was his fault, which it most clearly was.
or are you agreeing with her?
And calling people gullible when they don’t agree with you isn’t?
Only if you’re into confirmation bias. It indicates he was likely confused about the events that happened. You know, as if it wasn’t deliberate.
Murderers don’t normally call 911. Attempted murder victims don’t normally tell the news media it was all an accident. Murderers who are trained in weapons use don’t normally have this much trouble killing a sleeping person in their own bed.
The funny thing is, I know what evidence would be required for me to change my mind. Evidence of domestic disputes, forensic evidence disputing his story, the wife saying she thought it was intentional. Any of these things would do it. I wonder what evidence would be required to change your mind, Ichthyic? Do you have any evidence for your view other than, “I can’t believe anyone would be so dumb” when it’s clear other people have been that dumb before?
Yeah, that’s why I said her comments were regrettable. I always call statements I agree with regrettable.
/sarcasm
We’re done here.
brinderwalt @ 181
Are you acquainted with anyone who has access to a clue who might let you borrow one? Abuse victims defend their abusers all the damn time. Can you seriously not comprehend that someone who has to live with the person who attempted to murder them might want to appease them so they maybe don’t fucking try again? Can you not imagine that a man who wants to murder his wife might fucking not want to go to jail for it and that she might just be frightened enough to help him achieve that end in exchange for living a while longer? Really?
@182
Do you also maybe know someone with an imagination who’d let you borrow one? Jesus fuck, but you’re dense. You can agree with something and still think it might have been better not to say it out loud.
Thank Glod.
I’m not.
so, as an expert on murdering, you can give us the statistics on that then, or tell us why it’s relevant to the ones that do?
one would certainly hope that much.
frankly, I’m not much caring what that would be at this point.
Murderers don’t normally call 911.
They do if they want to make their crime look like an accident or someone else’s doing. If a guy shoots his wife, the cops will inevitably get involved, and what else can the guy do when that happens? Hiding the evidence will only work for so long, even if he does succeed in killing her.
Well, I hope I’m not jumping to conclusions with regards to mirrorfield being done, but it looks like we might have cheated:
When asked for a rational discussion, we tried to start one. Totes unfair.
Raging Bee, #186
Well, he could have shot her a couple more times by accident before calling 911. It’s always good to avoid too many witnesses, since she wasn’t dead when he called.
@Monsanto #188:
The sensible, rational part of me wants to say that multiple shots in such a hypothetical murder would undermine the plausibility of an accident. Anyone would expect sensible, rational people to find multiple negligent discharges in such a short time period into one victim to be suspicious and implausible, unless the murder weapon was fully automatic.* Even more so if they had to reload multiple extended drum magazines (or would it be clips?) to fire that number of accidental shots. Therefore, any competent murderer with a basic grasp of human nature and probability who fires multiple shots would be smart enough make up a more plausible story, such as self-defense, mistaking the victim for an aggressor, or blame the murder on a third person. Or they would simply cut their risk by not firing a second shot, hope the victim dies in the emergency room, and wait for another opportunity if they don’t die.
But since I’ve been made aware that I live in a willfully stupid gun-friendly culture and that we have extensive corruption in our legal system over here in America, my cynicism buries any charitable impulses. I wouldn’t be surprised if a white male police chief could murder his wife, make up an incompetent lie about an accident in which he was obviously, fractally negligent with the weapon despite supposedly being trained to handle it, and still get off with a slap on the wrist, if anything. Trolls would then show up in the corresponding blog comments and forum threads to claim that we’re all overreacting, that the woman deserved to get shot (and worse, because she was a woman), and that frequent preventable negligent homicides are a small price to pay for keeping the privileged portions of society as free as anarchy.
—
*In such a case, in addition to the standard reckless behaviors that produce such incidents, we’d likely be complaining that 1) the perpetrator handling the weapon without immediate, apparent need instead of leaving it inside an especially secure gun locker, 2) that the perpetrator could actually gain ownership of full-auto weapons despite making mistakes that suggest a habitual disregard for his own safety and those around him, and 3) having his weapon in full-auto mode at the time.
Bronze Dog #189
I was being sarcastic in the extreme. As I pointed out in an earlier comment, there is no such thing as an “accidental shooting” except in extremely rare circumstance (with a reference to an example). Anyone trained properly in handling guns could have prevented this (also explained earlier). This is murder, pure and simple.