The mother who was shot and killed by her two year-old toddler, who pulled the gun out of mom’s purse while they were shopping in Wal-Mart, has been pretty well discussed in the comments. Here’s one thing some of you might have missed — this isn’t the first time that it’s happened this year:
In November, a woman in Oklahoma was fatally shot by her three-year-old with a semi-automatic handgun. Police said it appeared the child picked up the gun while his mother was changing a one-year-old’s diaper.
That’s from The Guardian, which sent out a breaking news alert when this story broke yesterday, probably because the ‘Murica factor of a two-year-old killing his mother with her concealed weapon in a Wal-Mart was pure clickbait for Brits who already think we’re a bunch of gun-toting hillbillies.
I hate to knock the relatives of someone involved in a tragedy, but this comment by the victim’s father-in-law encapsulates the attitude that will lead to many more incidents like these:
“She was not the least bit irresponsible,” he said. “She was taken much too soon.”
If a two-year-old can get hold of your gun and discharge it, you’re being irresponsible. The “taken” part makes it sound like it was just another unavoidable “act of God”, which it wasn’t. It was a completely avoidable consequence of open carry culture. You just don’t need to carry a gun in your purse to protect yourself in the Hayden, Idaho Wal-Mart.
Villago Delenda Est
They’re not very wrong.
The comment by the father-in-law proves it.
Vile ammosexual fucktard.
Violet
Made these suggestions in the previous thread:
and:
Current attempts to push back against the gun lobby aren’t working. What will?
Sherparick
We are a bunch of gun-toting Hillbillies.
There is a story linked from this Kos diary entry from the Spokane, WA TV station that basically uses the incident as a “teaching point” for the correct balance of keeping your firearm “instantly accessible” to “protect” you and your family while making sure “it always stays in the right hands.” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/30/1354773/-Gun-Owner-Shot-and-Killed-by-Two-Year-Old
Violet
Isn’t Idaho basically the epicenter of the white supremacists and gun nuts?
CNY Orange
Um,
Nuclear research scientist? This woman was definitely not a hillbillie.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I remarked on this in the last thread but it bears repeating. I’m a shooter. Only at ranges because carry, in California, is illegal. Thank God.
But anyhow, at the range I don’t carry my weapons in the loaded, chambered, safety off position it would require for a child to be able to fire a gun easily. (Position C1) It’s too easy for the fucking thing to go off if you’re bumped, drop it, fumble it, or anything like that. I carry C3 (loaded, safety off, no bullet in chamber) until I’m at the line and ready to fire. It takes a half-second longer to fire, but avoids the potential for all kinds of horror.
Can’t shoot it if there’s nothing in the chamber.
This and many other firearm deaths are the direct result of flawed training methodologies (when there is any training at all, which there usually is not), methodologies put together by people who were not military or cops, but bedroom commandos, who think that a half-second advantage will guarantee them a win. I got news for them. If you’re not fully combat trained, a half-second won’t matter because you’ll still be standing in shock with your mouth open. And if you are combat-trained, you’ll have seen the situation coming and have probably just left the scene a while ago, never having drawn your gun in the first place.
ETA: WRT the father in law’s comment. I’m sorry, no two ways about it. If you’re carrying your gun in C1 in a public place and put it down next to a child, you are the walking definition of irresponsible.
Villago Delenda Est
@CNY Orange: No. She has the fucking hillbilly mentality of the open carry swine.
Hunter Gathers
@CNY Orange:
Since when does an advanced degree = intelligence? You could have several doctorates and still be dumber than a bag of hammers. Which this woman obviously was.
Violet
@CNY Orange:
Indeed she is not. More:
Also:
Merry fucking Christmas.
Just Some Fuckhead
She’s in a better place now, wrapped in gun-humping Jesus’s arms.
Alison
@Violet: Her husband, Colt.
HER HUSBAND, COLT.
Are his brothers named Smith and Wesson?
KG
Since the Venn diagram of gun nuts and tea party a-holes has a pretty solid overlap, I guess this is related: John McCain has declared war on Arizona tea partiers within the state GOP hierarchy. (warning: politico link)
Basically, he’s going after the assholes who censured him last year:
I’ve really enjoyed visiting Arizona over the last few years. But it was a culture shock for me when I walked into a supermarket and they had a “leave your guns in your car” sign on the front door.
Violet
@Alison: I don’t know but this part:
reminded me of that ridiculous “My Parents Open Carry” book.
Villago Delenda Est
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I wish you would stop citing COMMON FUCKING SENSE in the vain hope that these gun fetish idiots will pay the slightest fucking attention to it, because they won’t, because they are obviously so enthralled by the Hollywood notion of gunplay that they can’t possibly understand what happens in reality (“it sounded like firecrackers”).
FSM help me, the main problem is that these people often (as in this case) have bred so that natural selection has been bypassed and the stupid is passed on.
You are absolutely on target, so to speak, about the very obvious lack of training for these pistol packin’ pukeheads.
Joey Maloney
“Colt”? Really? Really??
Myfriendtheteacher actually taught 3 brothers who were named Colt, Winchester, and Remington.
Betty Cracker
Thank god the kid didn’t shoot an innocent bystander who wasn’t dumb enough to leave a loaded gun within a toddler’s reach.
Violet
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I’d much rather the kid and dog shoot the gun owner. They’re the ones at fault for leaving their gun accessible. Shooting someone else would be the real tragedy.
Amir Khalid
@Violet:
Let me remind you of this company that makes rifles for children. Its website has taken down the photo gallery of children brandishing its products, but still bears the slogan QUALITY FIREARMS FOR AMERICA’S YOUTH.
HeartlandLiberal
I am assuming it was a semi, and the safety was off. I simply cannot imagine a two year old grabbing a revolver and pulling the trigger. Seriously unlikely.
So yes, if that was the case, I would say irresponsible. Not sure why we cannot require licensing to carry that requires several hours of required training with a test at the end. Or would that be too much of a burden and infringe our precious freedoms and bodily fluids? Sort of like having to pass a test to drive a car? Oh, wait. we do have to be licensed to drive a car. How can that be, in the land of the freedumbz?
I am licensed for conceal carry, normally I carry a small five round Charter Arms 38. No safety on such a gun. But I sure as hell leave the chamber lined up with the hammer empty, which is pretty safe. I could throw the gun on concrete and it would not go off accidentally.
Violet
@Amir Khalid: So maybe it really was the two-year-old’s own gun? Or maybe it belonged to one of the other kids. Hmmm…the plot thickens.
different-church-lady
If those women had been armed they’d still be alive today!
Uh… wait a minute…
Rob
Ok, somehow the kid was unsupervised long enough to get into the pocketbook…and then rummage around…and then pull the gun out…and then, of all of the directions to shoot, somehow shoots and kills the mother. Not just shoots the gun, not just somehow hits Mom with a bullet, but actually shoots once and kills her!
Meanwhile there are reports every day of police firing many, many, many times and finally hitting what they’re aiming at.
Cervantes
@Hunter Gathers:
Not that it matters now, but she had a bachelor’s degree.
Starfish
Have you guys ever met the parents of toddlers? They are not dumb. They are sleep deprived and have trouble focusing and making decisions due to sleep deprivation. You guys get an alarm clock that goes off every 4-6 hours without any rhyme or reason and let me know how good your judgment is. It’s an irresponsible society that would make parents feel the need to carry all of the time.
wmd
There’s a hard problem that we don’t address when discussing guns:
People are scared. They feel the gun protects them from their fears; regardless of the lack of grounding for the fear or the totemic quality of their belief that guns protect them.
A mother in an Idaho Walmart has an extremely low chance of needing a gun to protect herself. Hell a young black male living in an area with racist violent police is unlikely to need a gun to protect himself (in the latter case it may increase his peril).
If the fear persists the gun culture will as well. I don’t see an easy way to dial down the fear though.
constitutional mistermix
@Violet:
That might explain (not excuse) why the kid got hold of it. She might not have realized that the new purse made it easier for her toddler to grab the gun.
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: The only thing that can stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.
Maybe I should rethink the birthday presents I’m getting for my niece and nephew (they turn three in a few days). Books and marble-run toys are so passe. They really could use their very own pocket derringers.
burnspbesq
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Not much to add to that, except to note that in every photo I’ve ever seen of an open carry activist in a public place, they seem oblivious to the fact that they’re being photographed. Nice situational awareness, fella. If that iPhone were a Glock, you’d be dead.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
She had a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
Citizen_X
Because if there is one place that implies imminent, constant danger, it’s Hayden, Idaho.
Botsplainer
Dunno what everybody is carping about-gun nut gets waxed by her own pistol, husband now has to struggle to make ends meet, won’t have enough to buy more guns.
Win-win.
Wonder what he’ll do with the pistol of the deceased.
Dave
@Hunter Gathers: She may well have been intelligent and a generally wonderful human being; don’t know never met her and don’t need to attack her. That said carrying in that manner with children around is a deeply dumb act so in that area she was being a dumbass. I’m still sorry for her and her family and friends that she died from that and especially for her kids that were there for that. And one that probably occurred because of the absolute idiotic attitudes that exist towards guns, safety, and crime.
There are likely a number of toxic themes that go into it. The treatment of guns as fetish devices, the stupidity that pretends we are all safer when awash in them, peoples feeling that violent crime is rampant and out of control when it’s fairly low )probably driven by media and the way our brains work) so many things and as long as so many feel the need to have guns treat them as talismans instead of dangerous tools made for killing and feel the need to carry to Walmart in their little town with probably little violent crime these things will continue to happen.
Lolis
I wonder if this family is Mormon. Lots of Mormons are becoming more into the rightwing gun culture cesspool.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Villago Delenda Est: lol sorry.
I don’t cite it for their benefit because there is no benefit to lecturing the gun humpers. As Sanders said, it’s like lecturing a table.
I cite it for the benefit of Juicers who may not be aware that there is a method and protocol for dealing with firearms in a safe manner (the military does a damn fine job under most circumstances, save for the weird insistence that base housing is not subject to the rules) and to demonstrate that these idiots routinely ignore literally every single rule of safe gun handling that exists while claiming that they know how to do it right.
They do not.
Hunter Gathers
@Cervantes: Her bachelor’s degree is more advanced than my associate’s degree, so there.
Kristin
One of the people I follow on Twitter searched for tweets by people who received guns for Christmas, and then RT’d them. There were tons of them, and the people treated the guns like they were toys or status symbols. Like wearing a pair of Jordans, or having the latest game console.
sparrow
@CNY Orange: Interesting. I had admittedly assumed that she was of lower-than average intelligence, as that would account for the stupidity of allowing your 2 year old access to a loaded gun, and the paranoid delusions that would lead you to think carrying a loaded gun into an Idaho walmart was even necessary. Apparently even halfway intelligent people can be brainwashed racists. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, given ample historical evidence that some of the smartest male scientists over the past few centuries were complete mouthbreathing morons when it came to women…
Violet
@constitutional mistermix: I think the writing is unclear. Is it the gun or the purse that was the Christmas present from her husband?
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Good point there, Betty.
Dave
@Villago Delenda Est: That is what drives me nuts the fantasy world and attitudes of so many towards dangerous objects. The culture that says I’m a sheep a victim waiting to happen if I’m not carrying especially since pretty sure statistically it works out the opposite. I’ve been preached to by idiots that have never been in danger about how I need a plan to kill everyone I meet. I hate that and am not nice when people tell me that. I don’t usually play the veteran card but that’s a comment that ensures I will whip it out especially if I know the person has had a super safe life in surburbia. I wish they would just carry a bean bag and yell magic missile if they need to throw it instead it would be safer for everyone all around.
KG
@Starfish:
that’s the thing though, parents don’t need to carry all of the time. Nobody needs to carry all of the time. We don’t live in the wild west where there are robber gangs and Indian warriors out to kill you as you move from town to town. Hell, you don’t even need a gun in most major urban areas in this country. As wmd said, this is about fear – and I’m not sure there’s anyway to address it because it is a completely irrational fear.
TFinSF
@Starfish:
Wut?
It was sleep deprivation that made her accidentally carry a gun in her purse? Every day?
I see — this is snark. Well done!
CONGRATULATIONS!
@burnspbesq: Right on point. Carrying a gun does nothing to insure your safety. Knowing your surroundings and paying attention to what is happening will.
constitutional mistermix
@Violet: It sounds like the purse to me, but you’re right, not clear. I just assumed purse because it sounds like they already had a shitload of guns. But can you ever have enough guns? Apparently not.
Howard Beale IV
I would still like to see how many the stats as to how many crimes have actually been stopped by the concealed carry crowd vs the number of lives lost by use of the firearms in all situations.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
Violet
@constitutional mistermix: Maybe she got a gun and a purse for Christmas. Generous husband!
Cervantes
@Violet:
Purse.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Villago Delenda Est:
A guy was shot to death by his former gang buddies across the street from my old apartment. It did NOT sound a fucking thing like firecrackers to me, possibly because I grew up around guns. It sounded like a goddamned gun, and I hit the floor before I could consciously think about it.
And yet I still felt zero need to run out and buy a gun. The poor SOB tried to leave gang life and was murdered for it once they managed to track him down to his new job, but that didn’t mean that my safety was any less. I would have been a lot more worried if it had been a robbery instead of an assassination.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer: That will probably be a engagement gift to next wife, who’ll more-than-likely be named Ms. Siggy Sauer.
Trentrunner
Black men need to start to open carry across America.
I have a feeling we’d start to see some restrictions legislated.
Paul in KY
@Dave: Feel sorry for the poor kid, who’ll one day learn they accidently killed their mother.
srv
You just can’t make up this shit anymore.
The older I get, everything looks like a Monty Python script. Gun-totin Hillbilly Rocket Scientist gun downed by toddler with Christmas present from husband Colt.
Paul in KY
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I like your excellent gun safety posts.
Tommy
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I just don’t get it. I am not a gun owner nor user. Most people I know are. They are so anal about gun safety, as it seems you are. A loaded gun in a purse that a child to get to would NEVER be done. It just makes no sense to me.
slag
@KG: The one thing that has always distinguished wingers to me is how out of line with reality their risk assessment and risk management systems and strategies are.
In every single way imaginable, from the places wingers live to the people they associate with to the products they buy, their lives are pervaded by a deeply flawed understanding and appreciation of risk.
No science can penetrate the fear barrier.
Paul in KY
Happy New Year Juicers! Off work & off to responsibly party.
Haydnseek
@Cervantes: The two are not mutually exclusive.
Dave
@Paul in KY: I do more than anyone else involved I feel sorry for the kid and the other children that were there. I understand but don’t like the harsher comments towards people that are well victims of their own stupidity (outside of harsh comments on the stupidity of their action; she was a dumbass in this acting on a dumbass and toxic belief it doesn’t mean she was otherwise dumb or terrible though she might have been as well) and the bad beliefs of the culture they swim in. It does always amaze me when friends and family make comments after that act like the gun is just there because guns should always just be there and so the death was like some natural disaster. That’s how invested people are in the gun culture that their spouse or child is dead and they still reflexively defend the all mighty gun.
Amir Khalid
@Joey Maloney:
By any chance, did they have twin brothers named Heckler and Koch?
Dave
@slag: This just this upding and all that.
catclub
@Trentrunner:
I agree that it would probably work. I also am not a black man. This brings up the ‘who will bell the cat problem’. Any black man who realizes this may lead to better conditions for all will also realize that those black men openly carrying will be in extraordinary danger of being shot. Are you volunteering?
Denali
When are the innocent bystanders going to get angry enough to put a stop to people carrying loaded guns everywhere – our children are at risk, basically we are all at risk, because of this practice. It is a practice like drunk driving and secondhand smoke that endangers the public. Why do we stand for it?
catclub
@slag: I agree. Now how to figure out how to make money off of them!
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
As I’m sure people are sick of me mentioning, I grew up around guns. My dad was an actual responsible gun owner, in that he kept everything locked up in a room that only he had a key to and only brought those guns out when he was taking them to the range or on a hunting trip. He would not have let me fool around with a gun any more than he would have let me fool around with his table saw.
A gun is a tool. Did these parents leave a plugged-in jigsaw laying around the house for their kids to play with? Hell, I’ll bet they never even left a hammer or a chef’s knife within reach. But it was A-OK to keep a loaded gun within a toddler’s reach because a gun is less dangerous than a hammer, amirite?
Cervantes
@Haydnseek:
No, they certainly are not — but one is a fact and the other is … well, you tell me.
srv
@Joey Maloney: I always thought Cal was short for Caliber.
MazeDancer
People who have no professional or rational need to do so carry guns because it makes them feel good to do so. Feel powerful, superior, in control, having a hidden equalizer, something like that.
“They loved it” was the quote about these two. They carried guns every day of their lives because they loved it.
Fear is involved, yes. But really, don’t people just love their guns? Love them. Love the feeling they get from having the guns hidden in their purse, ready to fire.
You can’t take people from their love unless everyone around them comes to understand that love is crazy and harmful. Like happened with cigarettes.
But there doesn’t seem to be anything horrid enough to change the gun love.
Kay
I don’t know what to think anymore.
You start to get that they simply don’t care about the risk to other people, and then you think “well, when their own family members get hurt that will change” and then that doesn’t matter either.
A member of Congress was shot in the face and still nothing happened, so it isn’t a matter of the powerful feeling insulated and unaffected.
Beats me. I’m out of ideas. I guess we all just hope the unarmed who aren’t part of this just somehow stay out of the line of fire.
Gin & Tonic
@KG: Hell, I lived in NYC during its, uhm, exciting period in the 70’s and 80’s, and never felt the need to own a gun. This woman lived in fucking rural Idaho and carried *all the time*.
KG
@slag: I noticed it a lot more post-9/11. But yeah, it’s just a complete failure to recognize what is and isn’t actually a dangerous situation. It’s just something I can’t wrap my head around.
Villago Delenda Est
@wmd:
Superstition. Stevie Wonder has a song about that.
The fear machine works very well for the bottom line of the merchants of death. The NRA is their megaphone for selling fear, and the product of Colt, Smith and Wesson, and Remington.
The merchants of death. Wipe them out. All of them.
Marc
Or to keep a loaded gun someplace where your toddler can find it, in a room where you also change your infant’s diapers.
The only silver lining in these awful stories? At least the shootings didn’t go the other way around.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Trentrunner: Black men should not have to be the sacrificial lambs to enact gun control legislation. Hundreds, at a minimum, would die.
Find a better way.
catclub
@Joey Maloney:
So at least one gunhumper was not firing blanks.
Villago Delenda Est
@MazeDancer:
They love their guns more than they love their own children.
This sometimes seems like a mental health issue.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
Suppose we could measure the prevalence of “gun culture” in rural Idaho, would the answer surprise you?
Tommy
@Denali: I don’t know why we stand for it. I live in a very rural area where guns and hunting are a way of life. When it is deer season I often see dead deers in the beds of trucks. You can get a conceal carry permit where I live and not sure I’ve once seen a person in public with a gun. In fact I know I have not. It doesn’t seem anybody seems to have the need to take a gun with them to the local grocery store.
KG
@catclub: five words: high tech home security systems.
ETA: they probably don’t even have to be hooked up to anything, they just need to look and feel high tech.
Guy
@burnspbesq:
They are not oblivious. Being seen and photographed is the point. One of the stated goals of the open carry movement is to habituate the general public to guns everywhere. Those who do not want to attract attention carry concealed.
trollhattan
@Howard Beale IV:
All of them, Katie.
Per the gun-humpers millyuns of crimes are averted annually due to the diligent gun-wielding of Patriot Gun Wielders. And who’s to argue, since the Lamestream Media refuses to report it. What’s a few dead addlepated moms in the bigger scheme of things?
Thank God that poor kid will only grow up with the knowledge but not the memory she shot mommy dead. The poor Uzi girl isn’t that lucky.
Villago Delenda Est
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Seriously, I do appreciate your posts.
As most of you know, I too am a veteran, and this shit drives me fucking insane. The sort of crap that happened in Hayden the other day would result in UCMJ charges for violation of the most basic of firearms safety protocols if it happened on a military installation.
trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Same to you, sir! Now make good use of that three-hour head start.
Tommy
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): I grew up the same as you. Dad has a lot of guns but I couldn’t get anywhere near them. He also had a workshop. He liked to build stuff. As a young kid he’d never leave a table saw in the kitchen I could get my hands on. I agree a gun is a tool. But it is a tool you need to know how to use.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Exactly right. Sad, but right.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes:
Nonsequitur. The license means nothing. She was still a gun fetishist who thought that carrying a gun around would protect her.
Her obvious fatal error.
Arclite
Hellooooo. Grizzly bears?
=P
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Guy:
I fully realize that this reveals me as an evil person, but you have now made me want to go down to the next open carry rally with a paintball gun and start shooting idiots in the back. I may end getting shot for reals for my trouble, but maybe one or two of them might realize that open carry doesn’t mean jack shit for your safety if you have no situational awareness.
But let’s call “open carry” what it really is — legal indecent exposure. These guys know they’d be arrested for walking around with no pants on waggling their dicks at people, so they open carry instead. And, no, I’m not saying that about all gun owners. Just the guys/gals who insist that they should be allowed to show off their penis substitutes in public, at any time, wherever they want. Maybe we need to bring codpieces back into fashion to fulfill the same need so these assholes can leave the deadly weapons at home.
Tree With Water
Three years old? I thought in Oklahoma a person was eligible for the death penalty at that age if charged, tried, and convicted. Maybe there’s hope for the state after all.
Villago Delenda Est
@Arclite: Tigers.
I have tiger repelling rocks for sale. Cheap!
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve been to two different VA facilities and Ft Gordon in the last month and GO GUND ALLOWED are plastered all over.
Gopher2b
Yeah but all the gun lovers are putting blue light bulbs outside their houses so the shooting of innocent cops, first graders, etc should stop any day now.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@wmd:
Decommission Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC for a start.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
First read that as “tiger-rappelling,” which sounds like a perfect X-Games addition.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
Well, I just have to harp on this yet again.
We need to start openly questioning the very existence of a “right” to own a deadly weapon.
Politically impossible at the moment, but we need to put them on the defensive, force people to discuss and imagine a world in which the 2nd Amendment no longer exists, and guns are like cars, where any responsible adult can get one, after passing a test and registering it.
The first step in any political movement is to get people to envision a different world, and make that vision safe and reassuring.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Paul in KY: Thank you. I have been shooting since I was a child. Everyone who taught me was military-trained. I take gun ownership very, very seriously. People die or are maimed in ways that are so horrific that they can never go out in public again if you do not. I cannot have that on my conscience.
As for posting, I think it’s important that, if you’re going to participate in this “debate”, that you are able to speak from a position of real authority – i.e. you know your shit about firearms inside and out. Anti-gun folks start off at a serious disadvantage because they usually know nothing about guns. I’m trying to change that, one post or conversation at a time.
The pro-gun folks, as it turns out, don’t speak from a position of legitimate authority. They have usurped it by virtue of knowing a minimal amount more than their opponents. But that’s all it takes for the lazy media to report their position as gospel truth.
If you want real gun control in this country, it’s going to take decades of working the refs and a lot of homework. At the moment our side is simply not up for the task and not interested in doing the hard work. This is a tough truth, but it is truth. I’m hoping to see this change, but it won’t be changed to my satisfaction in my lifetime. I accept that and do what I can.
Redshift
@Marc:
There are plenty of those, too, sadly. David Waldman chronicles this stuff on Twitter, culled from news reports. There’s no shortage of adults unintentionally shooting their kids.
slag
@KG: I had a friend who was so reflexively afraid of cars making right turns into her car as she was driving that she would immediately swerve away from them, sometimes into the lane next to her. It was an incredibly difficult problem to correct because it was so instinctual.
Her completely reactionary risk assessment and management skills while driving were simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, not to mention highly analogous to the life skills of a typical rightwinger.
hilts
This whole fucking family is nuts:
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@trollhattan:
I have to admit, my first question upon reading that story is if the father is going to face any charges for hitting his teenage son in the head with a baseball bat. It sounds like the son who shot the dad was defending his brother.
In short, that is one fucked-up, abusive family. Going to juvie and getting a ton of therapy may be the best thing for that poor kid.
David Koch
The only way to stop a bad 2-year with a gun is a good 2-year old with a gun
Amir Khalid
@Starfish:
Most parents of toddlers, even in America, know better than to carry guns where the toddlers can get at them. I’m sure this applies to the many people among the Juicitariat whose children are, or have been, toddlers.
slag
@catclub: Just take a look at how Faux News advertisers are doing it, and Bob’s your uncle.
RosiesDad
The Tree of Liberty does need to be watered. Thank her for her sacrifice to God and Country.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
The non sequitur (if any) was yours: that colorful statement about the “fucking hillbilly mentality of the open carry swine.”
Starfish
@Amir Khalid: I was trying to say that a person with a new gun might put a purse down next to a toddler without remembering that her brand new gun was in it.
Though it is obvious that you don’t leave guns within reach of a child, a person carrying a new weapon may not have figured out the best way to carry it yet.
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est:
The story of Abraham and Isaac seems to indicate that your god will sometimes require you to sacrifice your children.
There is no gun, but gun…
gogol's wife
@Starfish:
Then they are not a responsible gun owner, are they?
Elizabelle
From the AP story on Veronica Rutledge death by armed toddler son:
Like they always do.
gogol's wife
I am really sick of this. Aren’t WE the majority? Why do we have to be held hostage for the gun fetish of these nuts? I know, the answer is the willful misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. So what do we do about it?
nastybrutishntall
@catclub: I occasionally fantasize that some black philanthropist (yo, Jay-Z!) is going to sponsor black gun clubs and shooting ranges in inner city neighborhoods and classes on carrying rights and organizing armed marches, like the rednecks do. But all it will do is get a lot of black folks killed by “accident” in “self-defense”. And a lot of white grand juries will be convened to make sure nothing at all happens because of it.
I’m beyond the point where I think America will learn. After the Civil War II: Electric Red & Blue, if there’s an America left, there might be a change of heart in these apocalyptic jerk-offs. But I doubt anything will teach them anything till then, since their minds are already made up.
Tommy
My state is anal about guns. We require what we call a Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card. I know the gun rights people will say the Constitution says they have a “right.” Maybe they understand the English language better than I do, but not my read.
Make people register their guns. Maybe once a decade or so pass a safety course. Heck I’d pay for it with tax dollars.
The government isn’t coming away to take away your fucking guns.
I often joke I don’t care if you buy a tank, much less all the guns you want. I just want one or two safeguards you are not crazy. You have some way to operate them in a safe manner.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish: I read an article at WaPo that said the woman had always carried a gun around but that carrying it in the purse was a new thing — her husband gave her a special gun purse for Christmas to make toting the weapon around more comfortable. So she probably did just forget that her purse was loaded with death.
The article also said that the woman was at Wal-Mart with a bunch of other children. It’s just luck the toddler didn’t kill one of them or himself by accident instead of his own mom. What a senseless waste.
Redshift
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. I don’t need to be able to take a car apart to be allowed to participate in a “debate” that street racing is dangerous and should be illegal. Anti-gun folks start out at a serious disadvantage because gun nuts are looking for an excuse to dismiss them, and lack of knowledge that only gun enthusiasts (nutty and not) have is just a tool to do that. It allows you to debate in a certain way, but knowledge of the danger and harm is what is actually necessary to participate in the real debate.
The real debate going on now is whether any constraints on guns at all are permissible or will do any good. Once we can agree on that, then technical knowledge may be relevant in deciding how best to do that. Until then, requirements for “authority” are a BS distraction to keep people one step removed from even talking about the real issues.
I’m not against having things explained to avoid making dumb mistakes. But saying you can’t debate this unless you know firearms inside and out is actively counterproductive. This affects thousands of people who don’t know guns. You don’t need to know anything about guns to get shot.
Villago Delenda Est
@hilts:
Well, the classes didn’t prevent this incident. No evidence that the classes made a speck of difference. The fact that she married into a family of gun fetishists contributed to it, though.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy:
by a gun owner who understood how and why to carry a gun.
Never mind that no one (non LEO) fucking needs to be armed in this country. As I tried to tell someone who keeps a loaded handgun on the bedroom nightstand, no one is going to break in your house and kill you. Anyone who is likely to kill you in your house lives there. Actually, I’m not sure it’s out when her husband it at home, but they’re both RWNJs so I wouldn’t be surprised. They’d best secure it when the son who lives with them gets out of prison for looking at illegal pictures. He’ll not be permitted to own firearms, even once he’s off the registry.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: Nice try at avoiding my point.
FAIL.
Your contraian bullshit is every bit as tedious as the twits at Slate.
Lavocat
To see Darwinian natural selection at work in real-time, visit a Walmart near you. Yee-hah!
Amir Khalid
@Starfish:
A gun within reach of a toddler is a more present danger than a hypothetical attacker. If there’s any risk of the former, the remedy is — obviously — not to carry a gun. I cannot imagine a good, safe way to carry a gun around small children.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Starfish: If you cannot remember that you are carrying a loaded and live gun, and know at all times precisely where it is, then you should never be allowed to own one.
And that is not an unreasonable demand to make of a gun owner.
SiubhanDuinne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I am horrified at the suggestion that it would be okay to appeal to their racism if it resulted in stronger gun laws. “Let us not do evil so that good may come.” I don’t know the answer either, but I am pretty sure that further treating black people as disposable is not it.
raven
@Redshift: And every time so fucking idiot like Tweety rages against guns and has no idea what he is talking about it sets any chance of change back because the gun people just laugh and say, righftully, these people have no idea what they are talking about. So rage on with the snarky, pithy blog posts and watch NOTHING change.
mellowjohn
@Cervantes:
that’s what he said.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s because there is no answer.
PurpleGirl
A bit of obscure history: The Winchester Mystery House. Mrs. Sarah Winchester bought a partially built farmhouse when she moved to California. Until she died she had rooms added, redone, torn down, over and again. Doors opened onto walls, staircases went nowhere, there were miles of hallways, some secret. At some point in her life, probably after her husband’s death and a seance she had held, she became convinced that she was being haunted by evil spirits, especially the spirits of people killed by the Winchester rifles her husband’s company made.
Maybe she was just psychopathic but maybe she was haunted by the spirits of killed by Winchester rifles.
pluege
clearly the father-in-law has no idea what “responsible” means
Tommy
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Years ago when I lived in DC I was the victim of a lot of crime. I talked to people I knew and respected. Gun owners about buying a gun. They all said the same thing. Maybe some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. You buy that gun, it will most likely be used against you.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Redshift: My point has nothing to do with the gun nuts – who could give a fuck about what you or I have to say or think about the subject. My point has everything to do with the media.
They are lazy and want someone with plausible authority to write their shit for them. Fine. The NRA and GOA currently are performing that job for the media.
Somebody else needs to take over that job. Somebody who doesn’t have a vested interest in making sure there’s a gun in every American home. And that person needs to be more credible than the NRA about guns.
Gopher2b
@hilts:
Res ipsa loquitur, dude.
Betty Cracker
@nastybrutishntall: I can certainly understand the appeal of the idea of arming minorities to cram the largely white 2nd amendment fetishists’ gun rights babble back down their throats But it would only compound gun-related tragedies, both for the reasons you cite and because gun owners in general are more likely to kill each other in domestic violence incidents, use their guns to commit suicide, fall victim to firearms accidents, allow their guns to fall into criminals’ hands, etc.
kc
Could have been worse. At least the kid didn’t shoot herself.
Pogonip
@Kristin: What does RT’d mean?
pluege
@Hunter Gathers:
Amen.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
A driving licence doesn’t get a motorist off the hook if their lack of care causes an accident; it certifies that they should have known better. Same thing here.
Redshift
@gogol’s wife:
As with so many issues, it’s about intensity. We are the majority on this, but we’re not single-issue voters who will turn against an otherwise good legislator who doesn’t to the line.
I think we need to start naming and shaming gun manufacturers, and stop letting them hide behind the NRA smokescreen. In the tobacco wars, nobody treated the Tobacco Institute as the source of the problem, they called out CEOs of the tobacco companies and showed how they were making millions off of death. Ignore the NRA, and stop going along with the pretense that it’s a membership organization when it’s actually just a lobbying arm of the gun manufacturers.
Elizabelle
@Pogonip: Guessing “retweeted.”
gnomedad
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Why not have the safety on also? Just wondering.
pluege
@kc:
how would you like to grow up without your mother and know that it was because you shot her? The kid (a boy BTW) is going to be seriously damaged unless everyone he knows is really really good making up and carrying a good lie. I’m not saying he’d be better off dead, but boy that is one huge bag of crap to carry for a lifetime. But at least he has the NRA to thank.
MomSense
@Violet:
I said in an earlier thread that I have a friend who has been joking for years about starting the Militant Feminists With Guns Association MFWGA and the NAACPWG to see if these responsible gun owning organizations cause people to rethink gun control.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Do you suppose that if we allowed them to wear strap-ons–big, lurid purple ones–in public they wouldn’t feel the need to carry guns?
Redshift
@raven: Righhht. Because if Tweety was a gun expert and spoke knowledgeably about guns the “gun people” would jump right on board and support gun control.
Unless you have a plausible scenario for what would move things forward, declaring that this “sets any chance of change back” is pretty ludicrous.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Redshift: This is actually a really good idea, and an angle I’d not thought of before. Congress will have to be forced to have the hearings, a great deal of prep will have to be done to insure that those for gun control don’t come off like clueless idiots – which they have up to now. The NRA MUST be excluded from the hearings wholly. But a room full of firearms CEOs having to answer some tough, smart, relevant questions could move the window. And that’s what has to happen.
I still maintain no real progress will be made on this for decades but this is a good goal to work towards. A very good goal. The media will have to be worked for several years to prepare, but they are manipulable and this can be done.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: I owned a .22 rifle for target shooting. At one point I figured out that I hadn’t renewed my permit and had lost some of the paperwork from the NYPD under a pile of paper. I decided to put it in safekeeping with the NYPD. One reason was that the friend who I went shooting with had told me, if you point it at someone you have to be prepared to shoot to kill. I didn’t think I could so the rifle had to go. Safekeeping was the way to do it — the NYPD would keep it for me for three years and if I didn’t retrieve it, after three years they would destroy it.
ETA: I stopped target shooting when my friends moved to Florida and I no longer had access to the Westchester range.
Tiny Tim
Toddlers’ brains work strangely, but they’re smart in their own weird way. Of course the toddler had seen the gun before, of course the toddler had seen that mommy loved her gun, of course the toddler had seen mommy put the precious in her purse. The toddler was trying to find mommy’s toy and impress mommy by playing with it.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@gnomedad: Safeties don’t work. There are thousands of dead and injured people who can testify to that fact.
schrodinger's cat
Why does anyone need a concealed weapon?
Botsplainer
Am watching the Twilight Zone marathon on SyFy. I’m always pleased by the nuance in the scripts.
Had a big night last night – 25th anniversary. Great meal, nice hotel, glorious gifting. Tired though. Gonna stay in, I think. Watch some episodes of Marco Polo, drink some, rent The Equalizer.
pluege
this points up the problem even with background checks (which are way better than no background checks) – you cannot protect against stupid. Every gun owner, even the most responsible is not immune to stupid, or moments of irrational anger, and forget the many that are neither responsible or in even modest control of their anger. Big, big problem with having armed people everywhere. There will be unnecessary bloodshed – it is unavoidable with that condition.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
Let me refine that idea a bit: make it compulsory for anyone carrying a gun (not related to their job) to also wear a big lurid purple strap-on. With bright-orange stripes.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed-
The image of black men carrying weapons around Walmart, striking fear into the right wingers DOES have a grim satisfaction.
But the sad fact is that right now, in 2014 in America there is a de facto ban on black people carrying guns, in virtually every state. We have witnessed black men shot dead simply for holding a toy gun, or none at all.
I suspect this is yet another reason why there are very few black gun humpers- they know damn well that the “Tyrannical State” feared by the gun nuts has a black man as its face.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
WalMarts are apparently very dangerous places.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodinger’s cat: They don’t.
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
If that were Arizona the state would require the PD to sell and not destroy that poor innocent rifle (pbuh).
Redshift
@CONGRATULATIONS!: From what I’ve seen, the media never discuss the details of guns, and I see no evidence that they’re seeking out people with that knowledge to present the anti-gun case. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Another example: MADD didn’t generate a movement for stricter drunk driving laws by demonstrating themselves to be experts in the physiology of alcohol. They focused on the harm, and the momentum from that focus drove the changes.
Baud
@Botsplainer:
Congratulations! And my condolences to the missus.
;-)
schrodinger's cat
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude): Wasn’t a black child holding a toy guy gun in a park was gunned down by the police recently? What chance do you think a black male who is an adult have?
Betty Cracker
@CONGRATULATIONS!: They don’t always work, and they’re typically very easy to disengage (by design), but in my non-expert opinion, having the safety on is better than having no safeguard at all. It might have prevented the tragedy currently under discussion. Or maybe not. Like I said, they’re easy to click off.
gnomedad
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Wow, I had no clue. Again, thanks for the education. Is it intrinsically difficult to make a reliable safety? Or perhaps it’s considered false reassurance?
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: I was in one just a couple of days ago. Husband kitteh had ordered something from Walmart.com and had to pick it up at the store. It is a depressing place.
gnomedad
@Amir Khalid:
Apparently so; people get shot by their own kids there.
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: glorious gifting
So that, uhm, communication issue from a while back blew over? Glad to hear.
mai naem mobile
@Alison: Not Smith and Wesson but they did name their son Ruger.
I.know i shouldn’t make jokes about this but jeezus that kid mist must have been having one heck of a tantrum to shoot his mommy. And,oh yeah, she was a fucking moron to leave a loaded gun anywhere near her toddler. Its fucking Idaho, not Detroit or South LA.
PurpleGirl
@trollhattan: One of the good things about NYC. I don’t know how many people use the program but I learned of it when I initially applied for the permit. I didn’t want to get into selling the rifle, so safekeeping it was.
Patricia Kayden
@Starfish: No, it’s the fault of the idiots who choose to carry loaded guns in their purses which are made accessible to toddlers. It’s not society’s fault. I don’t own a gun (and will never own a gun). If it were up to me, gun ownership here would be the same as gun ownership in Canada (where I grew up). It’s not, so I point and shake my head whenever predictable tragedies like these occur.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat:
I live in a rural area and Wal-mart is the only large store that isn’t a 60+ mile round trip. To say it is depressing is an understatement. Now I don’t mind the longer trip to buy cloths or this or that. But only a 8 miles round trip to go to Wal-mart to get food. What I do.
The people working there seem so unhappy.
Redshift
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I agree that there are a lot of those, but they’re not everyone. It’s not just a matter of making sure the idiots are trained and follow the rules (well, possibly if failing to follow the rules made them lose their guns.) If you follow the GunFail list, there are plenty of people who clearly know the rules, and are absolutely certain they followed them, except obviously they didn’t, or they wouldn’t be in the news.
People make mistakes. We all have all sorts of things where we knew the rules and intended to follow them, but made a mistake or got distracted or got pissed off or whatever. Humans are like that. It’s just that with most things, if that happens, no one dies.
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
Once worked in a steel mill where one day, some Seattle PD detectives showed up with a couple cardboard boxes of guns (evidence, no longer needed) which they watched as the shift foreman tossed them into the furnace. My most satisfying gun moment.
Redshift
@CONGRATULATIONS!: And just to be clear, I definitely agree that people who are going to testify should be knowledgeable enough to handle any crap that is thrown at them.
trollhattan
@gnomedad:
Implies that a gun avec safety is somehow less safe than one sans. Utterly sans logic.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: I live in a small town too, and while there are grocery stores, there are no nearby department stores except Walmart. I pass a Walmart and a Sam’s Club less than half way on my 40-mile round trip to Target and/or Costco. No fucking way will I shop at the Walton Temple of Greed. I realize my stand against Walmart is quixotic, gasoline-wasting, etc., but that’s where I choose to draw the line.
Raya
@Tiny Tim: Oh, God. So true. So sad. I have a two-year-old, and anytime anything “bad” happens to him (he falls, or bumps his head, or just feels sad for some reason) he heads straight to mommy for a comforting hug. I can’t stop thinking about how terrifying this moment must have been for the poor kid, and how his first reflex was probably to call for the mommy he just killed….
CONGRATULATIONS!
@gnomedad: I consider it false reassurance but your first question strikes to the heart of the problem.
If, for whatever, reason, I need to use a gun (not just target shooting) I need to use it NOW and I need it to work. I can either make a safety that will work 100% of the time, or a gun that will shoot 100% of the time. One or the other.
A cop/soldier (the target market for gun makers as they account for most of their sales) is not going to be very happy with a gun that will not shoot 100% of the time when they need it to. In fact, they will not buy them.
As a result, safeties are shitty, easy to defeat, and largely useless. And they always will be.
Botsplainer
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah, it got pretty dicey for a bit (aided by major missteps from me), but that passed and all is well.
It was nice – she’s headed for Myanmar on Friday, and will be way out of touch for me for two solid weeks. We’re assuming that I’ll hear from her in Hong Kong before her flight to Yanggon, and won’t hear from her but once or twice.
Tiny Tim
I agree that “gun safety” (safety on, locking it up where the kids can’t get it) is in opposition to “gun as self-defense tool,” but the real point is nobody needs a fucking gun as a self-defense tool.
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: I should be a better person but I am not. I knew when I posted that comment somebody would call me out (not saying you did BTW). But what I do.
feebog
I keep wondering what scenario these people are thinking of with their concealed carry bullshit. Let’s say she encountered someone holding up one of the cashiers in the Walmart. Is she going to pull out her gun and start blazing away? With her two year old right next to her? With dozens of other customers running around in panic? It is all just so stupid and unrealistic. Google up Tyler Texas Courthouse shootout and see what happened to the gunslinger in that incident (hint, a hand gun is no match for an assault rifle).
Marc
@Redshift: I know. At least in this case the dumbass who left an unsecured gun around kids is the one who paid the price.
chopper
@Villago Delenda Est:
Aha, but you used the term ‘open’ instead of ‘concealed’! Fatal error!
kc
From the WaPo article:
Idaho must be really dangerous.
Calouste
@kc: Of course it is, it’s got all these idiots with guns.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: Walmart is just my particular hobbyhorse; I swore it off for eternity after watching Walmart move into multiple small towns and destroy local shopkeepers, and my resolve to avoid it only increased after I read that statistic about how the Walton heirs’ wealth equals the combined wealth of the bottom 40% of Americans. I also hate that those Walton ticks expect us taxpayers to subsidize their greed by covering their wage slaves under Medicaid and food stamp programs. But I’m a bad liberal on tons of other issues (I waste gallons of gas riding around in boats, for example). We all draw the line in different places, I guess.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@kc: Fuck, I’ll say. I live 20 miles from the Mexican border and have been in a combat zone twice and never felt it necessary or prudent to carry a gun with me.
It’s probably the grizzlies. If there’s one thing I learned from Colbert, it’s that those fuckers are dangerous.
JPL
@Marc: The toddler might be able to accept that, but the child will be told the mommy was a responsible gun owner.
Kay
@hilts:
Would he feel that way if she did something irresponsible while driving and someone was hurt? That it is out of bounds to ask if she was going 70 in a 35? That it’s some reflection on him if he taught her to drive?
The gun enthusiasts should stop looking at everyone else and examine their own feelings about guns. Why can’t anyone talk about this in the same way we talk about other safety/tragedy scenarios? Everyone in that store was at risk. Anyone could have been hurt.
Dave
@Tiny Tim: I wouldn’t say nobody there are probably a few situations where someone actually would be better off carrying but the point stands 99.99% of people that carry guns for safety are probably less safe than if they didn’t have the gun.
Karen in GA
@Rob:
Maybe police departments should be made up of two-year-olds. Like it is in NYC.
Couldn’t resist.
Dave
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Right it boggles my mind the poor risk assessments that people make to feel safe or powerful etc.
kc
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Bear pepper spray, baby!
Woodrowfan
@Citizen_X:
are you kidding? I heard a woman just got shot in a supermarket there…oh, wait….
Karen in GA
@Dave: What gets me is that having a firearm makes it more likely that you or someone in your household will be injured or killed. I wonder if gun-owning parents allow people to smoke around their kids? Or do they worry that second-hand smoke might hurt the kid?
Mnemosyne
@Karen in GA:
Like I said above, I seriously doubt that these parents left kitchen knives or hammers laying around the house, but it was A-OK to have a loaded gun readily accessible to a toddler.
phoebes-in-santa fe
I wonder if she was allowed to take her gun to work with her? She worked in a science lab of some sort. And if she wasn’t allowed to take her gun, what did she do with it? Leave a loaded gun in her car?
Steve from Antioch
Well there is one data point suggesting that concealed carry classes should feature better safety education.
Dave
@Karen in GA: I know this and they may know this but they don’t believe it. It’s not truthy. I hate it. Like a few here I’m a vet four tours etc. It pisses me off immensley when people whose most dangerous life experience was walking through the bad (read black or brown section of town regardless of actual crime rate) tell me how I have to be when PTSD and hyper-vigilance etc are things I’m trying to leave behind.
Again though you can’t reason someone out of a religious belief and for a certain subset of people that’s what guns and the culture around them has become. I enjoy shooting but not enough to own a gun and I will not go to a range with people unless I really know them well and know they are safe and keep their delusions of badassitude to larping or video games. To digress though guns aren’t dangerous tools to people they are magical items promising safety and power. And as long as they promise that no actual risk analysis will matter.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
Jeebus. Her husband is named after a gun.
Wait until we find out the (2 year old) shooter’s name is Derringer or Sig.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Gun enthusiasts have a siege mentality about their precious 2nd amendment rights (god only knows why since their rights are demonstrably more secure than people’s right to vote, etc). Consequently, there’s no logic to how they respond. I’ve noticed that phenomenon among many groups that are highly focused on / invested in a certain issue.
Southern Beale
Along those lines, here’s my recap of the Tennessee Gun Report from 2014 — our top 10 greatest hits (pun intended).
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@feebog:
It’s probably “An Armed Society is a Polite Society” rather than her thinking that she’ll stop someone from shooting up the place. It reminds me of the arguments before Kennesaw’s mandatory gun ownership law was enacted. You know, the “no criminal would dare rob or threaten anyone here because they know they’d get shot if they tried!” kinda thing.
And a feeling of power – “I won’t be a victim!”. Trouble is, the statistics say that for every frail grandma or young mother who protects her home with her pink derringer from a drug-crazed robber, there are dozens who die in accidents or as a result from an argument with a family member or at their own hand in a fit of depression…
IOW, too often a concealed carry firearm is a talisman. The desire to have it not based on any rational need.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dave
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Yep Talisman and fetish object keep coming up for me because I can’t think of a better description for the space guns occupy in the hardcore gun peoples minds (fetish in both the original religious meaning and the sexual one I think both apply.)
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
Perhaps part of that education could include the fact that a Wal-Mart located in a town of 11,000 people is an unlikely place to need your concealed weapon when you also have four children in tow. But I know you always want people to be locked, loaded, and ready to
ejaculateshoot at any moment, so to you, having a loaded gun readily available to a toddler is just one of those unavoidable accidents that no one could have predicted would go badly.ETA: Population of the entire county she lived in? 45,000. Clearly a hotbed of crime that required a handgun at the ready for every trip to Wal-Mart. I can see the rationale for having a gun in the home if law enforcement would be more than 30 minutes away, but at the fucking Wal-Mart? When you have four kids with you?
Southern Beale
BTW, Washington Post had a good story on the Idaho tragedy. You can read it here. Don’t read the comments, unless you have brain bleach handy.
Of note:
Well, we see how well THAT worked out for her. Her father in law is pissed that Veronica’s death is being used by gun control advocates, yet seems extremely clueless as to why:
Yeah, that’s the fucking point. If even the most responsible EVAH is killed because of a gun, maybe just maybe there’s no way to make them completely safe and you should leave your fucking gun at home. Especially since,
So if you don’t really need one for personal safety, you’re only doing it out of habit or some bizarre culture you belong to, maybe it’s you who are fucked up, not the rest of us who think you need to leave the damn guns at home.
Tired of feeling sorry for these people. Really, I am.
Elizabelle
A tidbit from The Guardian’s story on successful (and dead) nuclear scientist Rutledge.
Don’t look at guns. Look at this family that’s experienced a tragedy. — Mayor Loomis
And it astounds me that in 2014 Idaho’s legislature forced Idaho colleges to allow concealed guns on campus. I guess Virginia Tech and all the other school and university shootings were also tragic accidents.
Southern Beale
@Elizabelle:
Yes, let’s look at how well that Idaho guns-on-campus thing worked:
Slow clap.
Karen in GA
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Speaking of Kennesaw, how’s that law working out for them?
Hint: it’s not exactly one of the safest communities in the country. So gun ownership doesn’t seem to make a damned bit of difference.
Southern Beale
@Mnemosyne:
See my link. They don’t carry because they NEED to. They do it because that’s just what they do. “Respect the culture.”
As Charlie Pierce said after a Kentucky child shot himself to death with “My First Rifle,” your culture is fucked up.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
No, see, the answer is to make sure that everyone has a gun that they carry with them at all times, and then fatal accidents will be so common that no one will notice any more!
/gun nut
trollhattan
@Calouste: @kc:
Exactly. Most of my in-laws and a few friends live in the…whatever you call that which is beyond the burbs but not quite Ted Kazinski’s cabin and we live in an urban, mid-size city. Nice, quiet graffiti-free neighborhood but still, in an actual city. Each exurban at some point lets slip that they simply don’t want to live surrounded by all the troubles we are apparently fending off
dailyhourly. Given the chance I’m happy to let them know that despite my love of the countryside and especially the woods, that that’s exactly why I’ll never move there–too many lunatics and that includes the county sheriffs who are supposedly there to protect me from the misanthrope hordes.And yeah, they’re all armed, but not to the point of strappin’ iron or presumably, keeping Nancy Reagan’s itty-bitty gun in the glovebox.
No thank you.
gogol's wife
@Redshift:
Right. I have no interest in guns or in spending any time learning about them. They kill people, and they’re too easy to get in this country. Enough said.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
Either you have no idea what “contrarian” means or you’re just, er, openly slinging words at random now. Either way, carry on. It’s no skin off my back.
jonas
What exactly did this lady think she was “protecting” herself against? Are there a lot of random carjackings and attempted kidnappings in Idaho and Oklahoma? It seems like the people most obsessed with this open-carry business live in relatively safe, rural or suburban areas with negligible levels of violent crime.
As people have been pointing out, gun owners are far more likely to be the victims of their own guns than they are of anyone else’s.
Southern Beale
@Mnemosyne:
Which is why it’s up to us to scream and holler whenever this happens, no matter what people say.
carolus
I’m gonna call BS on the notion gun safeties are useless. Are they perfect? No. But the idea that Joe SixPack is going to engage in an OK Corral shootout at a moment’s notice is also ludicrous. The weapon’s safety is sort of the last “are you sure?” measure.
One of the common gun nut tactics to deflect the issue away from gun violence is to call into question an opponent’s gun knowledge. A commenter upthread got it right: one doesn’t need to know cylinder compression ratios on cars to understand street racing is a bad idea.
Training is another bugaboo. Anyone–anyone–can become a ‘certified’ gun trainer. All you need is money and a bit of time. In reality, the requirements to become a Mary Kay cosmetics consultant are several magnitudes greater than becoming an NRA certified trainer.
Violet
@Redshift:
Agree that following the way tobacco was targeted is perhaps a good model. What tactics were used? Holding the manufactuers responsible is a good start, but didn’t they get the laws written to protect themselves?
bemused
I wonder how her young nieces, nephews with her are going to feel about guns after witnessing her death.
Southern Beale
This is exactly right. I’ve run into this more times than I can count. After Sandy Hook I was attending a Moms Demand Action event at Sens. Alexander and Corker’s office and a Fox News reporter — who admitted he’s an Iraq war vet with PTSD who love his guns — challenged our group on gun control, asked us to define what a “semi-automatic weapon” is.
Like it fucking matters. As my husband said at the time, anything that can mow down 20 kids in 5 minutes should be banned. Period.
mellowjohn
@Trentrunner:
from Wikipedia:
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Holy shit, that’s quite the CV and actually explains a lot. Have found that scientists and engineers whose fields don’t require them to study risk management frequently use specious constructs when doing risk management for themselves. i.e., they begin with a conclusion and work backwards (see, also: climate change).
The minute the first gun enters the home, that home becomes less safe. Am certain it’s orders of magnitude less safe when that gun is on or near the person outside of the home.
Southern Beale
@jonas:
Again, she didn’t. It’s just the gun culture. You carry everywhere because that’s what you do. Crime is really low in Idaho, it’s not like they’re in downtown Baghdad or something. But the Red State culture is to be armed at all times. The culture is fucked up.
Elizabelle
@Southern Beale:
From your Reuters story on the prof shooting himself in the foot during chemistry lab:
So begins the arms race.
I think some of the police brutality can be traced back to their being afraid of the US populace, too many of whom carry firearms. Of course, poorly performing police are most brutal and disrespectful with people of color, who may carry less than conservative white gun culture enthusiasts. Who tend to get a pass.
I think Darren Wilson overreacted in Ferguson because he was afraid of Michael Brown, but no one wanted to say that.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Sort of.
Compare C with her concealed-carry permit and D with her driver’s license. How much can you reliably infer about C and D?
But this is a new point. As for my comment to which you responded, we can discuss it further if you wish. Just let me know.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Yes, because God forbid icky, dirty politics should ever enter the purely abstract realm of public safety laws.
Every single statute or regulation or rule is “political”. All of them.
Southern Beale
@mellowjohn:
Yes, gun humpers love to portray gun control advocates as racists because of this piece of history, but let’s see how well open carry works for black people. Let’s ask John Crawford III or Tamir Rice. Oh, wait. Never mind.
All that proves is that conservatives are racists.
hilts
Veronica Rutledge is one more example that book smart is a far cry from street smart.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/31/the-inside-story-of-how-an-idaho-toddler-shot-his-mom-at-wal-mart/
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/dec/31/toddler-shoots-kills-mother-in-north-idaho-wal/
Cervantes
@mellowjohn:
Really? Feel free to elaborate, thanks.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan:
Can you imagine being a parent who does not want your children around guns, and what a pariah you might become in Idaho, when you question other parents about how they lock up their guns (so your child can come over on a play date)?
trollhattan
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
She evidently once worked at INL and I guarantee was not allowed a gun on premises. A friend once worked there and security was pretty intense.
KG
@Karen in GA: it’s not one of the safest communities in the country, but it looks safer than Georgia as a whole by a pretty big amount and looks safer than the national averages – unless I’m reading those numbers wrong. Now, that could simply be due to the fact that it’s a smallish community.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I’d have to travel 30 miles round-trip to GET to a Walmart. Target is within walking distance and Costco is only about 2 miles away(I’ve walked there as well).
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Good friends left Idaho (the “liberal” bit around Boise) after giving it a shot (heh) for a few years because they were weary from biting their tongues nearly off just “getting along” socially. They waited until returning to California to begin a family. And that’s not even the Mormon part of the state.
raven
@Redshift: Let me know when shit changes.
Yatsuno
@Amir Khalid: OT: Selamat Tahun Baru!
hilts
@CNY Orange:
She wasn’t a hillbilly, she was simply batshit crazy.
trollhattan
@hilts:
Considering where she grew up she was most likely an ed-you-cated hillbilly. I see nothing to indicate she lived anywhere beyond rural Idaho.
Southern Beale
@trollhattan:
I Google’d her name and came across one of her scientific papers. Obviously an educated woman and one can argue that we lost a needed scientific mind. Unfortunately, she lived in a redneck culture where carrying guns is as normal as carrying a cell phone. And that, unfortunately, has its risks. Oh well.
By the way, remind me to stay the fuck away from Idaho.
trollhattan
@trollhattan:
Whoa, comment edit fail.
Howard Beale IV
@JPL: Unless the child gets homeschooled, the kids peers will be relentless teasers when they find out
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: No different than Nobel disease.
hilts
@Southern Beale:
Here’s proof that not everyone living in Idaho is a raving, drooling, fucking lunatic.
http://www.idahogreenparty.org
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Green-Party-of-Idaho/111845602202812
Elizabelle
@hilts:
@trollhattan:
Valedictorian. Scientist.
And to cap off her career: a Darwin Award.
LanceThruster
In the rough and ready survivalist mindset, this is the “Be prepared” Boy Scout motto at its laziest and most self-absorbed. The same person who is ‘packing’ in order to TCB should the need arise is unlikely to be carrying as much as a band-aid or alcohol swab to help a fellow human being in distress. The cell phone is thought of as a First Aid kit and is imagined to being able to call in Medi-vac choppers.
I see her fatal mistake as on par with having grenade pin come loose at a toddler’s pull. She went into imaginary combat that had the same forever consequences of real combat with the only one ‘vanquished’ being her this time…but it could have turned out even more horrific. Has her ‘sacrifice’ for freedumb moved the world any closer to making any of us safer?
Unlikely.
Still, as an firearms owner…with all the talk of ‘responsible’ owners and who should be allowed to even be in possession of a firearm, the various arms of the state are considered by default, ‘responsible’.
Howard Beale IV
@Southern Beale:
HELLO?!? Gun Control means your deceased daughter-in-law FAILED IN CONTROLLING HER OWN GUN FROM BEING FIRED FROM HER OWN SON, YOU SLACKJAWED NANOCEPHALIC MOUTHBREATHER.
(Sorry ’bout the all caps, but it had to be said.)
LanceThruster
In the rough and ready survivalist mindset, this is the “Be prepared” Boy Scout motto at its laziest and most self-absorbed. The same person who is ‘packing’ in order to TCB should the need arise is unlikely to be carrying as much as a band-aid or alcohol swab to help a fellow human being in distress. The cell phone is thought of as a First Aid kit and is imagined to being able to call in Medi-vac choppers.
I see her fatal mistake as on par with having grenade pin come loose at a toddler’s pull. She went into imaginary combat that had the same forever consequences of real combat with the only one ‘vanquished’ being her this time…but it could have turned out even more horrific. Has her ‘sacrifice’ for ‘freedumb’ moved the world any closer to making any of us safer?
Unlikely.
Still, as an firearms owner…with all the talk of ‘responsible’ owners and who should be allowed to even be in possession of a firearm, the various arms of the state are considered by default, ‘responsible’.
john fremont
@carolus: I’m a gun owner and I completely agree with this statement. I never heard any of my right winger coworkers hold back about healthcare reform over the last few years, and do you think they anything about the various subjects Richard Mayhew writes about here? To ask that question is to answer it.
Elizabelle
@Howard Beale IV:
I know. Rutledge Sr. is going overboard with the “responsible” gun owner claptrap.
He’d be just as amazed if Rutledge toddler killed or injured a few others before taking Mom out with a head shot.
Responsible gun owner Veronica entered the Walmart under her own power and left in a body bag. Killed by her own gun and her own tiny son.
I wonder if the Rutledges are thinking of suing. The purse manufacturer.
Kerry Reid
Look, the lady died — but look on the bright side: the GUNS are gonna be okay! (Glory to Gun in the Highest, and Gun to the People on Earth, A Mighty Fortress Is Our Gun, I Am The Gun Thy God — really, the ammosexuals might as well be honest about what matters most to them and make gun worship an official form of deism.)
Howard Beale IV
@Kerry Reid: The NRA Speaks.
Kerry Reid
Listening to an NPR report right now where some “family friend” is bleating about how “accidental discharge like this is highly unusual” and we need “to focus on the tragedy, not the politics.” Sorry, sir — horseshit. It is not NEARLY unusual enough, and when you make a decision to carry an unsecured weapon into a public place where a fucking TODDLER can get ahold of it (and may have ended up shooting someone to whom he is not related, not that killing your own mom isn’t a total fucking nightmare), then it’s a social and political problem, not a personal tragedy.
I really really really want to stop hearing this whole “oh, they’ve suffered enough” bullshit when a parent accidentally kills a kid or puts their kid on a shooting range where they blow apart an instructor who allows them to use a fully automatic setting or leaves a gun where your damn toddler can find it. If you get drunk and run someone over, you go to jail. If you get drunk on paranoia and feel the need to carry your gun where it’s accessible to others or you don’t have the goddamn sense to not let your kid handle powerful weapons, then I think jail time is warranted. You can spend a lot of quiet time there mourning your lack of sense. Frankly, I would rather see jail cells filled with irresponsible gun owners than weed dealers. No one dies when a bong goes off accidentally.
EthylEster
@Betty Cracker: I was thinking about this and decided that maybe the way that WalMart ends is when an innocent customer is off’ed next time and the family can sue the company into oblivion. Yeah, unlikely but a girl can dream.
pluky
@Starfish: If she hadn’t figured out the best way to carry it, she had no business carrying.
EthylEster
@Betty Cracker: Good on you, Betty, for driving past the WalMart. Interestingly, the first one I was ever in was in Tampa when I was helping my parents move into a retirement place. I was sent specifically there. It IS a depressing place to shop. I will never go to another if I have anything to say about it.
EthylEster
@trollhattan:
That be the sticks.
JCT
I’ll bet the NRA is keeping their mouth shut (for once) – they’ve been making a huge push over the last few years to sell firearms to women. All in the name of building a new customer base for their patrons the gun manufacturers. The interesting part, is that it is difficult for women to carry handguns comfortably on their person so now there are a wide range of concealed carry purses to make it “easier” for women to carry. Of course, this breaks one of the cardinal rules of carrying – the keeping control of the weapon part and this is the inevitable outcome. The whole thing is so ludicrous, on so many levels. Sure, sure, when confronted with this mythical event for which you “need” to carry your gun with a round chambered and the safety off – and it’s zippered away in your damn purse?
I couldn’t agree more with CONGRATULATIONS – this is what happens when these paranoid nutcases pursue their goal of an armed society. When “anyone” can own a gun in pursuit of this armed nirvana than all sorts of inattentive bozos will have guns. As has been well documented by #GUNFAIL over the past year.
Just a tragic waste, on so many levels.
rikyrah
the entire story was just sad and a waste. the level of stupidity from this woman was gigantic.
notoriousJRT
@Kay:
I honestly thought Sandy Hook would be the 2 X 4 that finally got the mule’s attention. I was so wrong. Wayne LaPierre got up and embarrassed himself (in my view), and he still has a job and a BIG soapbox. I donated to some gun-reform organizations today in the hope that we can someday turn the tide and reduce gun violence. It is the only way to channel my disgust in a more positive direction.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Fixed (unless I fucked up the tags)
Howard Beale IV
@EthylEster: That may happen if (and only if) The WalMart in questions posts a sign that says that firearms aren’t allowed on premises and some yahoo brings one in and starts shooting. Then again, maybe not.
Ruckus
@KG:
Even in the wild wild west not everyone carried a gun. Many towns didn’t allow anyone other than the sheriff or a deputy to carry a gun inside town limits. The whole idea that everyone was carrying and shooting each other is preposterous.
TriassicSands
Darwin Awards. That was my first thought — should be a guaranteed nomination. Will she win? It’s hard to say, because people will stop at nothing to remove themselves from this planet in absurdlly unnecessary ways.
Ruckus
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I beg to differ with you on safeties. Two points, first every semi auto weapon that I have had to carry had a safety that worked and was easy to release. You had to be familiar with the weapon but that should never be an issue with someone carrying a weapon. Second I have been paid to be an industrial designer (as part of my business) for decades and maybe it’s just seeing properly designed weapons but I’ve never seen a safety that wasn’t simple, would break under normal use/wear and tear, and could not be released when the need arose.
Maybe we need to regulate weapons, like we now do with cars if they are being so badly build that the one thing that can actually stop a discharge without operator knowledge is in fact useless. Or maybe we need better weapon education so that the old wives tale that safeties are useless or harmful can go away.
sw
The NRA used to be primarily a gun safety organization before they went all neo-nazi and threw in with the GOP and 2nd amendment absolutism. We could use the old NRA now. Not the twisted monster that took its place.
Steve from Antioch
@carolus: IIRC the NRA instructor certification for pistol lasts 8 hours and you have to score 90% or above on written and exercises. There’s also a shooting component at, I think, 15 yards where your maximum spread is 6 inches or so on an unmarked target. A prerequisite for that is finishing the Pistol introduction course which is also 8 hours.
@Ruckus: Most Sig Sauer pistols lack safeties. Very few revolvers of any make have safeties either.
mclaren
What on earth are you talking about? Of course you need to carry a gun in your purse to protect yourself in the Hayden, Idaho Wal-Mart.
You need that gun in your purse to protect yourself from 2-year-olds who’ve grabbed the guns from other womens’ purses and are firing at you!!!
In fact, a handgun isn’t enough. We need to allow concealed carry of full-auto belt-fed machine guns. Because once that toddler on Aisle 9 opens up on you with a Glock, you’re going to need to respond toot sweet, and with overwhelming firepower.
LanceThruster
@LanceThruster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veNeols-O18
Fred
So many comments I can’t read them all.
But here is something that has been bugging me about guns and self protection: The strategy of self protection is really based on intimidation of a potential attacker. This strategy presupposes that the guy who is going to gun you down in the street is a rational actor. I don’t know anybody who would gun people down in the street but I think the one thing that can be assumed about such a person is a lack of rationality.
A line from a song comes to mind:
“Crazy people walkin’ ’round with blood in their eye
Wild eyed pistol wavers who ain’t afraid to die”
At that point all you got is shoot first (making you the attacker) and pray you are the better shot.
So the guy carrying the gun for defense is pretty much as irrational as the would be attacker, irregardless of motives. That is what is the most scary about gun totters, almost all of them are irrational about guns. You know, kinda…nuts?
infovore
@carolus: Having made the mistake of reading some of the comments onnthe WaPo story, I now consider myself to have been reliably informed that the gun courses for concealed carry tell people to have a round chambered and the safety disengaged. After all, nothing stands between you and a Bad Guy but your lightning reflexes.
It does seem to me that many of these “the gun just went off” type “accidents” can only be explained by this: gun safeties are useless because the people who ought to be using them refuse to do so because that is what they’ve been taught.. Recognising this as a problem and solving it is left as an exercise for the American people.
evodevo
My gun collector husband says he thinks there are a few details missing from the narrative – what kind of pistol it was, and how a 2-yr-old could have enough hand strength to manage a 10-pound trigger pull or jack a shell into the chamber, are a couple. And who witnessed the event? Who got the gun away from the toddler?
What a freaking mess. Time for some sensible gun laws, and prosecutions for negligence.
Joey Giraud
@Fred:
Exactly true. Guns aren’t protection at all.
You can threaten to shoot at someone, or you can actually shoot at someone. Neither is protection.
Steel plates, Kevlar, running away, those are forms of protection. Guns can’t protect you.
The logic is so simple and obvious, the only way to pretend otherwise is to scream a lot, which is what gun nuts do best.
infovore
@evodevo:
My guess is the 2-yr-old didn’t need a lot of strength, because a round was already chambered.
Since this was inside a shop, there may be security camera footage.
The recoil may have sufficed.
One thing that stands out to me in this is the new purse. It is answer to the question as to what changed to make this happen: previously the victim may have carried her gun in a holster, which made it safe to leave her purse unattended for a short while (from the gun safety perspective). But now the gun was in her purse, while she had not yet acquired the habit of always keeping that purse with her
Admittedly all this is just speculation on my part.