That this assumption goes against the manifest weight of evidence with respect to gun desgin and engineering. It’s quite possible that the witnesses reported the event this way, which would mean that the police report would contain it, which would mean that the wire services reporter did not make up the claim out of whole cloth – which, of course, no one is asserting anyway.
But a wire service reporter who had some expertise in firearms would know to be highly skeptical of that claim, and a reporter with no particular gun experience would not.
This is not a matter of ideology but of fact: it is extraordinarily unlikely that a modern firearm would fire upon being dropped. It’s not impossible, but Occam’s Razor suggests that this is not what happened.
Who were the witnesses? I can almost see the kid pulling it out if his pants or rearranging it inside and pulling the trigger shooting his foot and the fragments from the floor hitting the other kids.
No? It took me less than 90 seconds to find enough individual and different stories of elementary school children carrying a weapon into school to populate my reply up there.
The very fact that “it’s not as common as you might think” is considered to be a reasonable justification is appalling. You feel that way? So, that means that you’d have been quite comfortable stomping up to Kayla Rolland’s parents at her funeral howling about how very uncommon this kind of thing is and just what the hell are they so upset about, this kind of thing really is quite uncommon and rarely happens. You think that kind of statement is fair justification? Shame on you, as an adult with a brain, shame on you. You’ve been here a long time. We know you’re much smarter than to hide behind that kind of straw man statement.
If that’s the best defense you’ve got for this kind of event, you’ve got jack shit, pal.
I think he meant that it’s not as unusual as she thinks that someone can be anti-gun and still not think gun rights advocates encourage people to go around murdering each other.
Maybe that’s not what he meant - but that’s actually depressingly uncommon anyway.
I think A.D. meant that someone on the pro-gun-control side conceding that the NRA is not in favor of kids shooting each other is not that common. I think that is laying the martyr complex on thick, but your hysteria hasn’t really done anything to dispel it.
Also, the point you raise above is completely ludicrous. Of course we take into account probabilities of harm when deciding what safety measures to impose. That’s why we still have interstate highways even though they carry a certain amount of excess mortality in their train.
Maybe you should try reading a book or two before starting a thread like this in the future. As someone who supports a moderate amount of gun control, I certainly don’t think you’ve helped out our side very much with your arguments in this thread, which could charitably be described as “pretty shitty.”
Your argument is getting sloppier and sloppier. You accuse him of using a straw man, when you lead off your post with a nonsensical hypothetical about going to the funeral of some kid and “howling” at her parents?
Keep in mind the quoted student, like the victims, is probably a 5-6 year-old too. My guess, as I still haven’t read what the pistol was, is that the kid either tried to catch it as it fell, pulling the trigger (a la Plaxico Burress) or the kid pulled the trigger as he tried to pick up the pistol.
" It’s not as common as you think " read quite clearly that kids don’t shoot kids all that often.
If AirmanDoors was referring to the fact that it’s rare for people to believe that the NRA is 110% against small kids handling lethal weapons, well isn’t that pretty sad too?
Pipe? Dunno what you’re smoking. Probably gunpowder. Me? Not a damned thing. Poking fingers at me while you are denying the truth of all of those cites is just very very sad. Poke away dick. Doesn’t change the statistics. Plenty of young kids walking into schools and shooting people. Sometimes killing them.
If the NRA is 110% against kids shooting guns, please explain why the NRA has a youth program?
NRA’s Eddie Eagle program (the “if you see a gun, don’t touch it, tell an adult, etc”) is aimed at kindergarten through third grade. In other words, for young kids. This is about the age range they figure that a kid really shouldn’t be handling a gun at all.
Their youth programs are generally for kids ages ten and above.
Looks like two of the kids were hit in the foot and one in the lower leg. Sounds like one shot passing through multiple feet, not 3 shots. Sounds like it fired at floor level with the barrel horizontal. Would pretty much have had to have been cocked to do that…even an old SA with 6 loaded and hammer resting on a primer would have to fall barrel up to discharge.
Funny how a bunch of people chimed in to clarify your misconception, what with it being quite clear.
Yes. But… you seem to be missing that you’re part of the reason it makes it sad. You’re one of the people who aren’t rational, who actually think that because people disagree with you on the issue of gun rights, they actually want people to go out and shoot each other.
lol?
Do you think their program is THIS IS HOW YOU MURDER PEOPLE KIDS!!! ?
They teach safety and proper gun handling. Knowing how to safely use a gun is no more an incitement to violence as driving ed is about encourage people to run over people in their cars.
You are seriously extremely dense here and no one has come to your aid in this thread. Even people who favor gun control are saying “uhhh stfu please before you make us all seem retarded”, so I recommend some introspection.
No. I think based on this and other gun rights threads on the Dope that people who believe in gun rights own guns, keep guns in their house, shoot guns, enjoy showing guns to small children, like other people who like to shoot guns and are deeply excited by the use of guns. They like to shoot at targets and pictures of people and real people with guns filled with balls of paint. Social restraints stop most of them from actually going out and shooting other living people. I think they absolutely detest real situations like the one cited in my OP, as well as all of the other situations - all real, none fictional- cited in my other posts by link. They detest the school shootings because people get upset when small kids shoot at other small kids because it chips away at their belief that everyone should be allowed to shoot guns.
I believe you will be extremely hard pressed to find the pro-gun posters in here coming back to say, " By gum, I am pro-gun rights but I don’t own one. Wouldn’t have one in the house. Don’t go shooting guns for any reason. "
Can we have that “plenty” in terms of something that might actually matter, like “incidents per 100,000 children per year”, or are we just going to pretend that six cites is a lot in a nation with 38 million children in primary school every year? I guarantee you more kids die in swimming pools.
Interestingly the NRA’s youth programs correspond pretty closely (I found a cite saying ages 10-19) with the legal ages to begin hunting in most states. I wonder why you might want to have a firearm instruction and safety program for people legally allowed to use weapons. [stunned sarcasm]That doesn’t make ANY sense [/stunned sarcasm]
Twisted my arm. Admittedly it’s a bit more complex than your sentence made it to be, but it’s mostly accurate.
ahem
By gum. I am pro-gun rights, but I don’t own one. Wouldn’t have one in the house. Don’t go shooting guns for any reason.
This is mostly because I know myself well enough to know that I would very likely do something stupid with it if I had it. I’ve enough problems having an air horn in the house and not pressing the button to see how loud it would be (something I’m currently struggling against. It’s about three feet away.) More likely than not I would do something stupid to see what would happen and injure myself. Also living in a very low crime are and having no real interest in hunting means that there isn’t even a reason for me to have one.
All that said, just because I don’t own a gun and don’t feel the need to, why should I go forcing my own decision on everyone else? Just because I’m an idiot chimpanzee doesn’t mean that there aren’t responsible gun owners out there who can handle firearms with far more responsibility than I am capable of. So yeah. I think I fit your criteria. By gum.
I don’t know from guns, so maybe this scenario doesn’t make sense, but I could see the kid taking the gun out to show his friend, fumbling it, and accidentally pulling the trigger while trying to keep his grip on it. That could easily be misreported as the gun discharging when it was dropped. Alternatively, the kid might have been showing it off, accidentally pulled the trigger, then dropped it in shock, and the eyewitnesses (who are all little kids, and one teacher who almost certainly wasn’t looking directly at the gun while all this was going on) getting the order of events confused, and thinking that the gun fired after it was dropped, and not before.