Personally, I do not think the child can be held too accountable in this instance, as she had obviously not been properly educated in firearms safety.
The blame lies with two parties here:[ol]
[li]Her parents. If I knew my mother owned and carried a handgun on her person, my children would be taught from an early age to NEVER TOUCH. C’mon this one’s a no-brainer.[/li][*]The Grandmother: What sort of thought process does it take to put your handgun into your purse, put your purse and grandchild into a shopping cart, and leave them both unattended long enough for the child to go into the purse, remove the handgun, cock it, and fire it.[/ol]
A point that I knew was going to be made 30 seconds after posting.
Of course, from my POV there’s little difference between the two. I was raised in an area where if you thought it necessary to own gun, well, ok then, that’s your prerogative…but to bring a handgun out in public with you? Might as well carry around a leopard with you. It all stems back to a regionalism. I’d be no less boggled by a “Guns Allowed/Prohibited” sign then I would by a “Leopards Allowed/Prohibited” one.
Closer to my original point: Does the store have signs telling you not to simply drive your car into the building? After all, Sam’s Club has double-doors and wide aisles…you could easily do so without doing any harm?
To me a better example would be the signs at the golf course saying “No spikes in the club house.” There is obviously no law against wearing spikes inside, and you may well in fact be required to wear them on the golf course. But given that you are in a situation where (a) many people will be wearing spikes and (b) you don’t want them inside your club house, it makes perfect sense that you should inform people of that requirement.
Even though I would argue it is bloody obvious that you shouldn’t wear (metal) spikes onto a nice hardwood 19th hole floor.
Driving the car inside is illegal, as is walking the leopard (I believe). Carrying the gun isn’t, and so if you don’t want people to do it, it makes sense to ask them not to.
The whole signage requirement “Guns are not allowed on these premises” thing is probably one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in my life.
So they pass the whole conceal & carry thing which allows people to carry guns if they want by getting a permit. Well nobody real wants people out there carrying guns around except of course the people who are carrying them. So instead of making it law that guns are not allowed on private property unless there is a sign explicity allowing it (minimum amount of signage needed) they instead make it law that you “can” carry guns on private property unless there is a sing explicity “not” allowing it (literally thousands of signs). Now every theatre, store, office building, health club, bank, etc. etc. in Minneapolis has to have an ugly stupid sign on their front door. Retarded.
You know, I have been sitting wondering whether it is specifically illegal since writing that. I’m willing to bet that driving into a store even if no damage was caused would be considered reckless driving.
Makes sense to me. The first, until the 50s at least, would be someone who carried a gun on a daily basis, and the second… mmm. At least till after WWII. Maybe mid-50s. Hopewell, if I recall correctly, was a tramp steamer destination.
My hopes are with the child and her family, and my wish is that this incident causes magistrates to think twice before another incident like this happens, hopefully with mandatory training.
Me dad went grocery shopping in his '60s Mini once on a bet. At least, he claims it. Other people claim to remember it. I’m vaugely dubious, but I wasn’t there.
Now it seems to me that at that point I was commenting to mgibson’s post about quartz’s post, because of course mgibson was objecting, in his post to calling her stupid. I was just making a sarcastic comment to the effect that quartz’s post was a classic instance of “blame the victim.”
So when mgibson said this:
I responded:
“You said” implies that I think mgibson said what quartz originally said, and was sloppy writing on my part. Mgibson did not say the kid did a stupid thing. Sorry about that, mgibson.
As for the substance of mgibson’s post, it was confusing. Now he says he’s a gun nut, I have no idea what he means by that. To me, a gun nut is one of those guys who can never admit that guns in themselves are dangerous, and oppose any attempt to make reasonable attempts to limit the carnage that guns do. If that’s what mgibson’s confessing to, I have to wonder why he doesn’t fall in with Quartz’s blame the victim line. (To be fair to Quartz, he has attempted to back away from it to some extent, but even calliing it a stupid thing to do is, as has been pointed out, an unreasonable critique of the actions of a four year old.)
Are we all clear on who said what and what they meant now?
Apology accepted. I’ve done similar things in the past.
Gun nut is an inflammatory pejorative that is used in a very wide manner to describe a lot of gun owners. There is not a universal definition of gun nut that I’ve seen and even your own definition seems vague to me. I own several firearms and I even had a permit to carry at one point --though it has long expired and I never carried in public-- but I do support reasonable attempts to limit the damage people can do with firearms. The problem might be that people disagree on what constitutes “reasonable” efforts.
I met a woman who was going for her permit here in Texas. I got the impression the requirement was multiple classes…or maybe it’s such a long class that most opt to complete it in sections. I assume that the training is required, in part, to avoid incidents just like this.
