Realistically, you couldn’t hold firearms owners to a stricter standard than police are held to, and even they have the occasional [del]accidental[/del] negligent discharge.
My law would make police prosecutable for negligence if their weapon was stolen and subsequently used in a crime, or by a child (for anything). Same as civilians. I’m not addressing accidental discharge.
These aren’t media reports, which, along with debating if a dead man said something or not, seems to be the main theme of the thread, but I found the following reactions by gun enthusiasts amusing.
In a discussion of Stephen King’s latest book, durper Patch is annoyed to the point of dropping the f bomb over errors in gun trivia. I agree that it harms the suspension of disbelief when factual errors occur, but the overestimation of the importance of details about guns is common to a subset of gun enthusiasts that I call gun nerds. Also, Patch seems to be unaware of the concept of unreliable characters or narration. I’m a little surprised he reads fiction at all.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16746732&postcount=46
In a Reddit thread about vigilantes battling cartels in Mexico, (presumably) American gun enthusiasts greet the news with “FINALLY! What could possibly go wrong?”, quote the 2nd Amendment (wtf?), and ignore any Mexican commentators with reservations about vigilantism or observing that it’s more like cartel vs. cartel than good guys and bad guys.
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1pm7y9/we_are_not_scared_of_the_cartels_they_have_guns/
But see, here’s the thing: the police already bitch and complain that they have to justify themselves to Monday-morning quarterbacks about every use of force. At some point a proposal to tighten standards even further would result in bitter opposition from the police unions, who have enough political power to make imposing such standards an iffy proposition at best.
What it comes down to is this: the police are the Men With The Guns, and they know it. In the wake of the civil rights era the good ole’ boys club reformed just enough to forestall civil insurrection, but they’re not going to give an inch more than they have to.
Maybe not yours but Zeriel certainly seems ready to charge negligent gun owners with a capital crime.
To what extent? Are they vicariously liable for the crime committed by that stolen gun so if its used to commit a capital crime, you would be charged with a capital crime?
As a self professed gun nerd, I can suspend disbelief but I certainly notice when the good guys fire about 30 rounds from a pistol without reloading. I also notice when I can’t identify a gun in a movie and more often than not they are props of guns that don’t exist in real life.
Well, this has to be included.
I was struck by how blase the police spokesman was about the shooting.
The problem wasn’t somebody using lethal force to counter a prank, it’s that he tried to kill or maim somebody on someone else’s property. He then calls it a random thing. Finding a twenty in an old jacket is a random thing. A cat coughing up a hairball is a random thing. Getting shot by some guy who is aiming at you is, I dunno, IANAL, assault? If the kid was the shooter and the old fellow got “peppered pretty good” I don’t think Guess would be downplaying the event like this.
Farris did indeed get charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, so looks like the system is taking it seriously, even if the police spokesman doesn’t seem to be.
I see no SDMB mention yet of the recent shooting death of Renisha McBride in Michigan. I guess the insane Stand-Your-Ground Shoot-Fleeing-Trespassers-in-the-Back American culture has gotten to the point where new incidents, however egregious, are just more of the same.
Ms McBride knocked on a door seeking help after an accident, so of course the homeowner had to point a loaded shotgun at her and “accidentally” :rolleyes: pull the trigger. This isn’t in dispute so, given the death penalty for trespassing, police and prosecutors would be happy to let the matter drop.
The issue of racism has reared its head however. Perhaps the unnamed homeowner would have been less likely to accidentally pull the trigger were Ms McBride not Black. I was disconcerted to learn this is impossible: the killer never even saw his victim:
He never saw her before she was shot. 
Isn’t firing blind below the standards even in SYG states?
I’m happy to learn that the NRA is reaching out to Blacks.
I can easily believe that a nervous person with a gun who didn’t know to keep their booger finger off the trigger could have inadvertently shot. I don’t know that that is what happened but I don’t know that it isn’t either.
I’m happy to stipulate that the killer never saw his victim, and that the trigger pulling was accidental.
But that just confirms, at least based on this (and many other examples), that America’s gun-craze has gone too far.
By all accounts there are fewer Americans with guns than there have been in the past. Largely as the result of the urbanization of America (probably). People act like gun violence is relatively high compared to the past. I’m pretty sure this is not the case (gun deaths used ot be higher when guns sales were half of what they are now). So either America’s gun craze has always been on the far side or you’re just noticing it more now.
Pure stupidity at work, here.
Hooters. Nice touch.
Clearly, what was needed in this situation was more guns. If only more people had been armed, they could have shot back at the ones who were firing.
I wonder, if you wanted to mercilessly denigrate peoples’ negligent use of power tools, how many incidents a week could be dug up. Clearly the Great Unwashed can’t be trusted with circular saws and nail guns. Only licensed professional carpenters should be entrusted with these dangerous items.
False equivalency. Don’t pretend a circular saw can kill as many people as fast as an assault weapon.
It’s okay - you can just say “gun”.
But yes, it’s a ridiculous equivalence (as are the usual ones involving cars, swimming pools, toasters etc). For starters, you can’t disarm a shooter by unplugging his extension cord.
I’ll worry about saws and nail guns when they start killing folks from more than a mile away.