Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most depraved and sordid plays. It would be vastly improved by introducing more bloodshed and perhaps a disembowling.
Stranger
It depends. Was the girlfriend raised in a fundamentalist household to believe that she must be in subjection to all of her man’s wishes? If so, then no punishment other than taking her guns away.
Probably also 99.9%.
This tragedy happened because one of the rare people dumb enough to ask to be shot met one of the rare people dumb enough to say yes.
I don’t know. I’m still working on “the percentage of people who think an obviously made up number is accurate to some number of significant digits”. 
“I accidentally shot him!”
“‘Accidental’? You were aiming right at him!”
“I was aiming at the book! And I hit it! It’s not my fault the bullet didn’t stop!” :rolleyes:
Still, a lack of familiarity with terminal ballistics probably isn’t a crime. Does the question of “reasonable person”, as in “a reasonable person would have expected the bullet to go through the book”, figure into this?
According to the article, he did so (or, at least, she said that he said that he did so).
But, maybe the round that he test-fired was bad? Good enough to make it out of the gun, but with far less force than a normal one would have? So, no. Don’t test first. Just don’t do it.
Don’t point guns at things or people you want to remain living.
One of the articles said she was a foot away from the book. That’s really close. And I’m not familiar with guns, but isn’t .50 caliber a powerful round?
(Another story in the media today is of a group of Dutch teenagers on a trip to Spain. They were doing bungee jumping and one student was strapped in when the Spanish-speaking guide told her, “No jump” because the harness hadn’t been secured yet. She heard this as, “Now jump” and did so.)
This reminded me of this old video; it’s been online since at least 2009.
For those who don’t want to click without knowing, it’s a guy wearing no shirt but wearing a bulletproof vest. His friend shoots him in the chest from about 5 feet away with a 9mm. It quickly becomes apparent to everyone that this was not a good idea, even tho the shootee is not killed.
I think a prosecutor could make the case that aiming a gun and firing at a person’t chest was willful but you’re right. Either way she belongs in prison.
Donald Trump’s “The Truths I Have Told.”
There’s going to be a lot of pressure on Youtube to start taking down stunts that are extremely dangerous. For example: https://youtu.be/RHQbh9GqM2c?t=30s
I’m sure they can try to claim that she intended to kill him but everything so far points to the fact that she’s stupid and not murderous.
I’m unwilling to pay for this woman’s incarceration for her act of involuntary suicide.
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The .50 Action Express has roughly 40% greater kinetic energy than a full SAAMI spec .44 Remington Magnum. There is really no excuse here for not realizing that it would penetrate through a book, and anyone picking up a firearm and wielding it in a fashion so careless is by default criminally negligent. I can’t have much sympathy for either the shooter or her victim here, but the families and first responders have suffered trauma through their terminal stupidity. There should be sme appropriate and proportional response, but not having details about the principals or the specifics of the case I don’t feel that I or anyone else here can say what that penalty should be.
BTW, textile body armor, which is made of aramid and UHMWPE fiber, will only protect against a certain point pressure of impact, hence why sharp knives and rounds with high sectional density can penetrat Class IIa armor. Even if a round doesn’t penetrate it can do substantial blunt trauma unless a steel or ceramic trauma plate is inserted. Such armor will also break down over time and with exposure to body heat and sweat, hence buying used body armor is rarely a good deal. (I write from experience.) Unless you are promoting your own body armor product in which you have complete confidence, inviting someone to shoot you is foolish for both parties.
Stranger
I have a hard time believing that firing a live round at someone, even if the trick had worked, was legal.
Yeah, she should end up doing 18 months.
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the bullet is mightier than the book.
I always feel badly when people have to pay this high a price for stupidity. I really doubt either of these two had the cognitive capacity to make a better choice.
No doubt they were trying to reproduce teddy Roosevelt’s famous assassination attempt.
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I think people are getting too hung up on the gun thing. Quite simply she did something involving someone else that they both believed to be safe but wasn’t.
Were they both very stupid? Yes, but that isn’t usually a crime.
You miss the point. It’s wilfulness about causing death, not wilfulness about the specific actions taken.
If you willfully cause death, doesn’t that go beyond manslaughter and into murder?