Just read this article (in summary – someone is showing off his gun collection, one goes off, and shoots a pregnant woman in the head). The article notes that “Police are still investigating the incident, but believe it was an accidental shooting, according to the Tampa Bay Times”.
And the author asks (as I do) “how is this not manslaughter?”.
Are accidental shootings typically just ignored by police, if they are determined to be genuine accidents? If so, why? And if so, should new laws be crafted that specifically target such irresponsibility?
The author of the article proposes something like this:
“Responsible means that whatever happens with your gun is your fault. Period. You accidentally discharge it and no-one gets hurt? How’s this: big fine, confiscate the weapon involved, lose the right to bear arms for a year for the first incident, forever if you repeat. Someone gets hurt or dies? Jail. Civil liability. Loss of gun rights for life. That’s responsibility.”
On the face of it, it sounds reasonable to me. “Loss of gun rights” for serially irresponsible gun owners, while it seems reasonable, might actually be unconstitutional, though, if I understand it correctly. Thoughts?
Some years ago, California passes such a law.
Didn’t take long for the first case to occur.
(From memory)
Grandfather kills grandson (toddler, young child) in accidental shooting.
DA decides not to prosecute “He’s suffered enough”.
In the case of the OP’s blog link, the author does not provide any explanation of lack of legal action. The difference may lie with the District Attorny’s discretionary powers in deciding to charge or not. Get a different DA in there, and you may have had charges filed.
Some states already have laws to this effect, wherein a gun owner can be criminally liable for the misuse of his firearms by children, if they are not safely stored, even if no one was hurt. Here’s New Hampshire’s statute, as an example.
Essentially, he’s proposing that accidentally discharging a firearm be made a felony, with (as with most felonies in most states) the attendant loss of the civil right to bear arms. I can see a few issues with this: if the discharge wasn’t otherwise illegal (close to a road, for instance) and no one and no property were struck by the bullet, how would one go about proving that it was an accidental discharge? Would it be a defense to claim that one intended to fire the weapon?
Here’s another, also in Florida, in which a woman accidentally shot her boyfriend with a firearm that she was unaware that he had loaded; she was charged with manslaughter.
Reading thru the article seems to suggest that there might be more to the story than a simple accident. The brother of the victim said they argued a lot, and a neighbor said he heard arguing before the shooting (other witnesses disagree). And the shooter had been smoking marijuana before the incident.
And the circumstances indicate that it was not the kind of accident where you drop the gun and it goes off.
Deliberately pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger goes a bit beyond “accidental”, IMnon-lawyerO. Likewise for this one.
I don’t know the circumstances of the case in the OP, but pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger strikes me as rather different from leaving it unattended.
If the fear of killing oneself or another person isn’t enough to scare someone into being a more responsible gun-owner, I don’t see how jail time would be a better deterent.
Unless gun-owners were subjected to inspection. I don’t speed on the highway not because I’m safety-minded, but because I don’t want to see blue lights in my rearview mirror. Maybe if permitted gun owners knew that at any time, the authorities might drop in on them to see if their weapons are properly secured, you’d see more people being more responsible. But this isn’t really a practical solution.
Proving negligence is far more difficult then people realize. This is well documented in just the charge and conviction rates of a far more common form of driving while texting which is just as dangerous of a behavior. Both should be gross negligence and lead to a manslaughter conviction but the burden of proof is difficult and expensive to take to court.
But in almost every state in the nation the case in the OP is 3rd degree murder or manslaughter by gross negligence. The acts by themselves are criminal recklessness are criminal endangerment…but proving that in court is also not easy.
Within the last few years, I’ve come to believe that many “it just went off/I didn’t know it was loaded” injury and death accidents were actually “accidents;” that is, thinly disguised, often premeditated, homicides.
As a gun owner and RKBA supporter, I have zero problem with some form of prosecution of AD’s/ND’s that lead to injury or death.
As far as increased costs, this is one thing I don’t get. Other than upkeep, our courthouses are already paid for. Our judges, bailiffs, clerks, etc., are also already paid for (their salaries already accounted for in the budgets). Same with DAs and ADAs.
So other than the incarceration costs (in the event of a successful prosecution), which hit a different budget line, where’s the “additional costs” coming from to prosecute people for firearm negligence?
Details are a bit light, but I’m presuming that the trigger was pulled on the revolver that killed the woman, Katherine Hoover, in the case the OP referred to. The various articles, like this one, just refer to the gun discharging while the owner was showing it to Mrs. Hoover and her husband. Barring some freak occurance like the sear breaking with the hammer back and letting the hammer fall, it’s a very safe bet that the trigger was accidentally pulled, so that case is of a kind with the other two I cited.
Slam-fires (which happened to me once with an SKS, a pretty terrifying experience, luckily the rifle was pointed safely downrange), parts breakage, and such do happen, but far more often these cases involve either an inadvertant trigger pull, or a deliberate trigger pull with a mistaken belief that the weapon is unloaded.
I don’t know that we need a law specifically covering negligence for firearms owners resulting in injuries or death. Shouldn’t this be covered over the general laws on negligence?
We don’t have a law against shooting people to death. We have a law against murder. It’s just as illegal to kill someone with a knife as with a gun, as it should be.
If a person accidentally shoots a toddler is this worse than if they accidentally drop the toddler off of a balcony? Assuming both cases were clear negligence, does it matter the method?
It was a cop. Who insisted his wife go hunting with him, even though she doesn’t hunt. She brings their dog. He shoots her as soon as they get in the woods. He even had a buddy come with him to act as a witness to back up his story that he thought the dog was a deer so he shot the wife.
I tend to agree. The current laws in regards to negligence, depraved indifference, etc., etc. see adequate enough to me. There really aren’t all that many deaths due to accidental firearm discharges per year. What would narrowly tailored laws regarding firearms and negligence accomplish?
I for one would be OK with the idea of treating “I dropped the gun on a cement floor and it went off” or “my hand slipped and I inadvertantly pulled the trigger” differently from pointing a gun at someone and deliberately pulling the trigger in the mistaken belief that it is unloaded. I can see the first two being an accident. The last isn’t an accident. That’s the problem with stupidity - it is something people do on purpose.
An inadvertent trigger pull that results in someone being shot is also negligent and, to my mind, deserving of manslaughter charges, since it can only happen when the firearm is pointed at another person. I’d agree that a dropped firearm is a mere accident, though. Technology is mooting that issue, though, with the array of passive safety features on today’s firearms, particularly handguns.
DAs and ADAs and judges and bailiffs and clerks aren’t just sitting around wasting time while they wait for a case. If you prosecute additional cases of firearms negligence, then either you are not prosecuting some other cases, or you are hiring more ADAs, judges, etc., for the increased caseload.