GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, OR DO THEY?

[HairOfTheDog]

Hopefully the next mom wont feed those nasty strained carrots to them.

Those damned strained carrots must be nasty; they're driving little ones to commit suicide too.

These are some of the shootings by children under 4 in just the last 10 days...

-On April 20, a 2-year-old boy in Indiana found the gun his mother left in her purse on the kitchen counter and fatally shot himself.

-The next day in Kansas City, Mo., a 1-year-old girl evidently shot and killed herself with her father's gun while he was sleeping.

-On April 22, a 3-year-old in Natchitoches, La., fatally shot himself after getting hold of a gun.

-On April 26, a 3-year-old boy in Dallas, Ga., fatally shot himself in the chest with a gun he found at home.

-On April 27, the Milwaukee toddler fatally shot his mother in the car.
That same day, a 3-year-old boy in Grout Township, Mich., shot himself in the arm with a gun he found at home. He is expected to survive.

-On April 29, a 3-year-old girl shot herself in the arm after grabbing a gun in a parked car in Augusta, Ga. She is also expected to survive.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...this-year/
-----------------------------------

I'd really like to see smart guns surge in demand/popularity soon.

[Maggot]

Their aim is off they should be shooting the idiots that left the gun there.

[HairOfTheDog]

Their aim is off they should be shooting the idiots that left the gun there.

Well.......that wouldn't prevent or reduce shootings by toddlers, it would just change the homicide / suicide ratio.

Still, it's no less logical than suggesting lack of woopins and insufficient gun education for babies is the root of the problem.

Gun locks are given away free at all kinds of places. Lock boxes for cars are cheap. Still, good and bad parents from all walks of life negligently leave loaded guns unlocked and in reach of small children all the time.

I read a little more about the goals of that lawsuit the Sandy Hook families filed -- the one Hillary Clinton supports. One of the goals appears to be pressuring gun manufacturers to reduce their potential liability by investing more in smart gun technology and marketing. I'd like to see that happen, though I don't think attempting to hold the manufacturer responsible for a mother who allowed her disturbed teen to have guns is the way it's gonna get done. But, who knows?

[HairOfTheDog]

"Gilt-y" of child endangerment.

I agree.

Gilt got off easy. Too easy, in my opinion.


A Florida woman whose 4-year-old shot her as they rode in her pickup truck will avoid prosecution and any jail time if she satisfies a number of conditions.

Under a deferred prosecution agreement announced Friday by the state attorney's office in Sanford, 31-year-old Jamie Lynn Gilt agreed to complete a gun safety course, install a mounted holster in her vehicle and provide proof of safe storage of firearms in her home.

If Gilt complies with the agreement, prosecutors say they'll dismiss the unsafe storage of a firearm charge.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-mom-...ing-truck/

[HairOfTheDog]

Over in Kansas City..........it's another story.

The man whose baby daughter found his gun and shot herself to death while he was sleeping is being prosecuted for second degree murder, child endangerment, and other charges.

The baby's mother and the 24-year-old father's family say he adored his daughter, he's torn up, and he shouldn't be prosecuted for murder. He's already suffering immeasurably, they say.

The prosecutor begs to differ. "This homicide was 100 percent preventable," Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said. "This is tragic. We must do a better job of protecting our most vulnerable, our children." http://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/chil...r-shooting

[Duchess]

So the pretty white girl gets off while the black dude will do time in prison. Sounds fair to me.

[HairOfTheDog]

The more I learn about the Sandy Hook families' suit against the manufacturer, the more I think the families might actually win. I don't think it's highly likely, but not as unlikely as I once did.



The suit alleges that Bushmaster and Remington ads like ^ that one target insecure young males who think owning assault rifles makes them appear more masculine and powerful, thus creating a public safety risk.

The case and strategy is being compared to tobacco manufacturers and marketers who pushed their products with disregard for public health. The tobacco companies were sometimes held liable for the illness/death attributed to smoking once the tobacco companies' internal marketing plans and strategies were revealed.

The NRA and the manufacturers have been fighting to have the Sandy Hook suit thrown out on various grounds, without success. Yesterday, they got dealt another legal blow. The judge ruled in favor of the families' attorneys being given access to the manufacturer's internal marketing docs.

Story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sand...f378958cdd

[Duchess]

Another little kid has been killed with a gun. This is the 7^th one who has shot and killed either themselves or a parent since April 20. That's only 3 weeks!

The handgun was under a pillow in her grandmother's Detroit bedroom when the five-year-old girl came upon it, police said Wednesday.

The girl, who was with two younger children, was playing with the weapon when it discharged about midnight, according to police. She was fatally wounded, the latest in a spate of shootings by children across the nation.

Her grandmother, who was cooking downstairs at the time of the shooting, was later questioned by police and released, said Detroit Police Officer Jennifer Moreno. The investigation into the tragedy continues and no charges have been filed.

Story

[SIXFOOTERsez]

WTF? Midnight all 5, 4 and 1 yr olds should be in bed asleep, WTF ate they doing wandering around grandmas house?
Not to mention that she should have had her weapon secured

[Midwest Spy]

WTF? Midnight all 5, 4 and 1 yr olds should be in bed asleep, WTF ate they doing wandering around grandmas house?
Not to mention that she should have had her weapon secured

I agree with you Six.

Grandma is cooking after midnight and all the kids are awake?

Super shitty parenting (or grand parenting), or there's more to this story.

[BigMark]

She was making bath salts.

[Maggot]

Some idiot went nuts in Mass. last night he killed a few people in some apartment with a knife, stole their car, crashed it into a mall, went into a restaurant in the mall killed a guy, slashed a pregnant woman and got shot by an off duty Sherriff that was carrying. Nobody else had a gun it was Massachusetts.

[HairOfTheDog]

Will the worst mass shooting in the country's history finally result in bi-partisan cooperation in better controlling gun access?

Doubtful, in my opinion.



The NRA and its affiliate groups spent more than $27 million in outside expenditures (which includes super PACs and “dark money” funds given by non profits) during the 2014 election cycle.

When it comes to bankrolling candidates sympathetic to the gun lobby, candidate contributions from NRA-related PACs are 85 times larger than contributions from individual donors, according to the nonpartisan donations research group Open Secrets.

And while mass shootings shootings are regularly lamented as tragic events that demand change, they give a huge boost to the bottom line of gun and ammo manufacturers.

In a documentary released earlier this year, “Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, and the NRA,” filmmaker Robert Greenwald explores how the lucrative gun industry and the powerful gun lobby preserve profits by scuttling legislative efforts to address even the most common-sense gun law reforms.

“In any one of these tragedies, in any one of these incidents, take away the gun and look how different the situation is,” Greenwald previously told The Huffington Post.

Full story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/poli...945fedffa0

[Donovan]

They're already rolling out excuses why it's not a gun problem but a fill-in-the-blank problem. I'm sure there's a certain validity to blaming drugs or medicine or godlessness for mass shootings, but they forget one crucial point: it would damn near impossible for me to murder fifty to a hundred people in a few minutes by throwing pills and bibles at them.

[Maggot]

Or explosives

[Donovan]

See explosives are heavily regulated. Automatic rifles aren't . As somebody on FB pointed out, we are currently living in the only first world country where the single thing standing between a zealot and a mass shooting, is whether or not he wants to.

[Duchess]

They're already rolling out excuses why it's not a gun problem but a fill-in-the-blank problem.

They are making the rounds and saying exactly what you said. It's not a gun problem, in this case it's a terrorism problem and that's what people should be talking about instead of restricting guns and blahblahfuckingblah. Same shit, different tragedy.

[Donovan]

Except dude was born and raised USA. The ties to ISIS are tenuous and retroactive.

[Duchess]

dude was born and raised USA.

Funny the way no one is talking about that, not that I have seen anyway.

[Blindgreed1]

Or explosives

As I understand it, he had those too.