Oscar Pisstorius shot and killed his girlfriend, supposedly believing she was a burglar. I hope they string him up and hang him. I don’t care if it’s a ‘mistake.’ You are not allowed to make mistakes like that. With gun ownership comes responsibility–the responsibility to not shoot innocent people. It’s that simple. Saying it’s a mistake is not good enough.
As a society we should not accept that it’s possible to shoot someone by accident. You can’t shoot someone by accident. Having a gun means you’ve already taken several deliberate steps towards shooting someone, it’s just now a matter of finally taking the final step of pulling the trigger.
My figure may no longer be updated but more than 50% of all shooting incidences (during peace time) were accidental discharges, many of these being self-inflicted.
The latest is that there’s some question regarding the “thought she was a burglar” scenario, as the police have been to his residence before to settle domestic disputes.
Leaving that aside, the idea of “shooting someone by accident” is probably not applicable. “Accident” implies a lack of intent; as it also implies some sort of unavoidable quirk of fate, the term “accidental shooting” in references to when person A did not intend to fire a gun at person B (e.g. “I didn’t know it was loaded”) has fallen out of favor, and has been replaced with “negligent discharge,” which instead implies that person A did not exhibit due diligence with regard to firearm safety, the first rule of which is “never point a gun at anything you don’t want to kill.” Incidents like that are not murder, but an argument could be made that they amount to manslaughter, i.e. feloniously bad judgment.
In the present case, if he really did think she was a burglar, then he did intend to kill her; he pointed the gun at her and deliberately pulled the trigger. That’s no accident.
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In the present case, if he really did think she was a burglar, then he did intend to kill her; he pointed the gun at her and deliberately pulled the trigger. That’s no accident.
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Hey, it worked for Ty Cobb’s mother.
“Amanda Cobb…had been arrested on charges of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of Cobb’s father, William Herschel Cobb. Amanda Cobb said she thought her husband was an intruder trying to enter their house through the bedroom window when she shot him twice. But there had been rumors in town that William suspected his wife of infidelity and had unexpectedly returned home late that fateful evening, when she believed him to be out of town. During her trial the following year, prosecutors carefully questioned Amanda Cobb about ambiguities over the time that had lapsed between shots, but she was ultimately acquitted.”
Maybe Pistorius can try the I-was-sleepwalking-and-didn’t-know-what-I-was-doing defense.
“Intent” is a key element of our justice system because it distinguishes accidents from deliberate acts. The end result is the same (someone is harmed or dead), but we mete out punishment completely differently based on the degree of the crime. As it should be.
I, personally, know a fellow who killed his best friend when he drove his car into a parked truck. His friend, the passenger, was killed instantly. The driver didn’t serve any jail time, in part because the victim’s mother pleaded with the judge to spare him because she knew that it was an accident.
Had he gotten into a fight with the same friend and bashed his head in with a baseball bat, I daresay that he’d have gone to jail AND lost the good will of the victim’s mother.
It’s still unclear what happened in the Pistorius case. If it truly was a tragedy involving mistaken identity, then he’ll have to live with the guilt of killing someone he loved, and orphaning her children. If he killed her out of rage, then he’ll have a lot of time to ponder the error of his ways while sitting in his jail cell.
True, but you’re legally allowed to harm, or even kill someone, if you’re in reasonable fear for your life. It’s called justifiable homicide aka self-defense.
If you accidentally shoot someone, you should face the exact same penalty as if you had done it intentionally. Gun ownership is a serious responsibility, and ‘whoops’ shouldn’t be a mitigating factor.
Last year a man stabbed another family member to death thinking that it was an intruder.
With knife ownership comes responsibility–the responsibility to not stab innocent people. It’s that simple. Saying it’s a mistake is not good enough.
We clearly need stronger knife control laws.
Seriously though, with respect to the OP’s linked story, I personally don’t believe the “by accident” part of his story and I think we should focus a lot more on that instead of focusing on what weapon was used. If it was a case of mistaken identity, a gun, knife, baseball bat, tire iron, or even a lamp can be a deadly weapon. The weapon used isn’t important to me. The fact that a woman is dead is what is important to me. I sincerely hope the focus on this case is on the determination of whether or not the “by accident” part of his story has any truth to it.
Any rants about gun control should probably go into one of the other few thousand threads we already have on that topic. We don’t need another one.
It wasn’t an gun control rant, but that you saw it as one says a lot about your attitude.
You had to go back a year to find a story about an ‘accidental stabbing’. I can think of two ‘accidental’ shootings within the last month, locally. One ended up with a guy blowing his friends head off during a Superbowl party, and the other one a toddler grabbed Dad’s gun off the bed, where he had set it down, and pulled the trigger as he pulled it towards himself. I don’t know the condition of the toddler.
It’s not a gun control rant, except in the sense of ‘control your fucking guns’…and take full responsibilty when you do something stupid and hurt someone with it. You wanna have guns? Fine with me. I do.
Edit: make that 3. In another case grampa shot his grandson as he was taking a gun out of his truck, so he could take it into a shop to get worked on or something.
There is no penalty for intentionally shooting a burgler. Therefore, if he shot her accidentially thinking she was a burgler, according to your reasoning there should be no penalty.
That’s certainly not a true statement 100% of the time.
It depends on where you live, but there are plenty of places where you can only shoot a burglar if you are defending yourself or a another person. Using deadly force to defend property is not justified.
I intentionally substituted the word knife in place of gun in the OP’s exact words to show that the OP doesn’t make as much sense if the weapon was different. The OP was very much focused on the gun and not so much on the crime.
I didn’t “have” to go back a year. I did a quick google search and that was the first result that came up. I didn’t do any further searching to find one that was more timely. The point was to show that an accidental stabbing is certainly possible, and therefore an accidental death by any weapon (gun, knife, baseball bat, lamp, broom handle, etc) is possible.
This story was being covered on the radio just as I arrived to work. Everything I heard has already been posted. I would like to add that I agree that an “accidental shooting” is a lot less accidental than a flower pot falling off a fire escape.