Every gun owner thinks they’re a responsible gun owner.
Loaded gun in a car door pocket? I don’t think these people considered themselves responsible gun owners.
No, I think they did. That’s the problem.
They probably considered themselves responsible parents as well.
The point is what people claim to be and what people are, are different things.
What they claim and what they believe.
It’s terrifyingly common where i live, though people who do it think it’s common sense self-protection.
Here’s a story for you. I’ve only really held a gun once, at a camp riflery range (very small calibers). I still end up doing a fair amount of gun research for understanding gun debates / safety practices, research for fiction where characters have to talk about guns, etc.
I have had to correct other Reddit users that are gun owners, about the workings of basic single-action revolvers, in a very deep/long thread. I briefly doubted myself and checked my own sources, and yes, I was correct and the gun owner was persisting off the idea I was wrong. I’m sure there’s some responsible owners out there, but the fact there are so many bull-headed idiots about their guns, who still say they’re responsible, should scare anyone.
The specific topic, if you’re interested, was on the situation where an old-style revolver is loaded and cocked by an inexperienced user, who then wants to safely decock/unload the gun without firing it (at that point, the cylinder is locked so basic approaches won’t work). Feel free to look it up - the approach needed there is pretty damn stupid.
I don’t handle guns, I just like westerns and play too many video games:
Don’t you have to hold the hammer while you pull the trigger to decock it? The trigger unlocks it, but because you’re holding the hammer it doesn’t strike the shell?
So in order to safely disarm you have to pull the trigger, which sure sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Exactly right. It’s possible there are some newer revolver models that have fixed that quirk of design, but that’s been true of all the ones I looked up YouTube videos on.
Yeah, modern ones have a decocker to fix that problem. I’ve never looked up how they work exactly. I do know that some revolvers also have a little piece that comes up to block the hammer from striking.
The historic design is certainly unsafe, but in those days, guns were rare and expensive enough that if you had one, you were already going to be trained on it. (Also, compared to a semi-auto pistol slide spring, revolver hammer springs are surprisingly weak. The only time I’ve had to do it, in a safety class, I was using so much force to hold the hammer up, I didn’t realize I had to let off to let it down.)
I had a girlfriends father insist on taking the whole family to the gun range as a “fun day out thing”. Not my thing, but why say no to new experience? Besides her dad had always openly carried so it was clearly something HE was into, so being invited to family time with him felt like a kindness
But oh joy, was I thankful that a gun instructor was there, literally everything her dad said was corrected. From hand placement, to how to load to how to stand. The guy nearly kicked dad off the range at one point for having a loaded gun facing his kid.
Thankfully I never had to suffer his company since we broke up later, but it was a very eye opening experince. Being INTO guns definitely does not correlate with safe usage.
These people also left their 2 year old in the car by himself while they shopped.
These people are fucking morons, gun or no gun.
Agreed. There are plenty of morons among the gun owners who consider themselves responsible gun owners.
I wonder what percentage actually are.
Whatever it is, it’s probably at least 25% less than the NRA claim.
Sure, sure, but not every gun owner leaves their gun loaded and unsecured in a car with their unsupervised young child.
And yet these ones did. And considered themselves responsible the entire time.
I guarantee you they don’t think that way now.
I actually know someone something similar happened to and even years later half the house was basically a shrine to the kid.
Yup. But until that toddler’s corpse was found, they considered themselves to be responsible gun owners.
And gun nuts counted them as responsible by default until that instant as well.
I’m not. Safety ALWAYS OFF now fuck off I’ve got shit to do.
The gun hatting equivalent of both sides 😂🤣🤣🤣
82M owners. The numbers aren’t in your favor.
Assuming you mean the US:
The highest number of gun violence deaths of any developed country 😂🤣🤣🤣
The highest number of children killed as well 😂🤣🤣🤣
The number one killer of children being guns 😂🤣🤣🤣
Yeah, the numbers are definitely NOT in our favor 🤦
How does any of that relate to most gun owners being responsible people? Folks really suck with trying to ignore the absolute numbers and try to use relative comparisons to serve as justification.
The VAST majority of gun owners are responsible and never experience anything like this. Using parents who left their toddler in the car buying fireworks at night is an absurd representation of your average gun owner. Gun owners like this are the exception and the numbers aren’t hard, you’re talking about less than a hundredth of the percent of the population.
Most people are responsible drivers. Doesn’t change that we enforce speed limits.
Most people are responsible drivers.
While this may be true, it’s still safe to drive as though everyone is a dangerous stupid lunatic. Not everyone lets you know by owning an Altima.
I completely agree. Thank you for agreeing on the responsibility. Can you find a single statement in this thread where I state anything about the laws or enforcement? My point is simple and limited and you and this entire thread have thrown the entire gun debate team at me.
Gun violence should be reduced, national consistent laws should be put in place, background checks should be consistent and thorough.
Most gun owners are responsible.
These are not mutually exclusive ideas.
Yeah sure I agree with all that. Frankly, and saying this as a former rural Appalachian Republican who owned firearms, I think we should go the UK route and effectively ban them altogether. I think I can make a compelling argument that they (a) do not make people safer, (b) do not defend against tyranny, and therefore (c) yield an overall net-negative to society. To me the crux of the issue isn’t the “responsible” gun-owners, but rather the ones who do fall through the cracks; for there are enough of them who have a serious impact of our nation’s bottom-line.
The fact that the number one killer of children in the US is guns?
You are asking me how that fact relates to responsible gun ownership?
Think really hard about how those children were killed by those guns, and maybe you can figure it out.
The children who died by guns are either:
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Killing themselves, meaning that an irresponsible gun owner gave that child access to a gun, either deliberately or not deliberately. Irresponsible!
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Being killed by the owner of the gun. This one should be self explanatory. It’s irresponsible to use the gun you own to kill a child.
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Killed by someone with access to someone else’s gun. Again, whoever owned this gun was irresponsible enough to allow their weapon to be accessed by someone else to kill children.
You can’t be this naive.
No it’s not relevant to the argument that most gun owners are responsible. Well it is, only in the sense that it proves it. Even the worst country in the world is overwhelmingly responsible even you consider population size.
I think you misunderstand.
It’s not important that many gun owners don’t end up allowing their guns to be used to kill children. Your argument is miniscule, inconsequential, and not helpful to the sickness in the US society.
It is important, tantamount, and very relevant that because the US has so many guns, that the leading cause of death to children are the guns.
Idgaf about most gun owners, I care about reducing the number of children being killed.
Why don’t you care about reducing the number of children killed by guns?
No, I think you misunderstand and want to turn this into a debate about guns when I made a simple statement. Most gun owners are responsible. Most gun owners never experience gun violence because of irresponsible gun owners. To say our imply most gun owners are irresponsible is a lie.
If you didn’t give a fuck about him owners you shouldn’t have run your mouth with false information to my very simple and scooped statement which has nothing to do with the point you are trying to make.
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And right up until yesterday you would have said the same thing about these idiots while fighting tooth and nail to let them keep their guns.
All gun owners are presumed responsible right up until something like this happens.
And right up until yesterday you would have said the same thing about these idiots while fighting tooth and nail to let them keep their guns.
What makes you think they still don’t?
No, I would have said I didn’t have a clue about these individuals. I would take as many bets as you’d offer on a randomized selection of gun owners. I take that bet all day.
How does any of that relate to most gun owners being responsible people?
Or irresponsible people who haven’t encountered consequences yet.
Potentially, but that implies leaving guns around outside of safes around kids isn’t all that dangerous considering the high number of gun owner and guns.
I don’t believe that’s the case. I think it is more likely a few idiots cause a majority of the pain and loss of life.
I have no data on this but anecdotally I can honestly say I despite being around idiots and gun owners in rural country with my now trump loving mother, that I have not met 1 single person even remotely close to dumb enough to leave a 2 year old in a car in the summer of GA, unbuckled and free to roam the car, that has a unlocked loaded gun.
I understand the challenge with using personal experience, but in the absence of any real data, this is what I have to work with.
They very deliberately said “think they are”, not “are”.
And they would be correct in both thinking they are, and actually being correct in their gun safety habits.
Nope. Most gunthusiasts aren’t anywhere near as responsible as they think they are.
This classic Jim Jeffries bit comes to mind, especially the part about the self defense pretense.
Oh, well if a comedian says so then the numbers MUST BE WRONG!
Fun fact: most good comedians are actually highly intelligent. It takes a lot of creativity, psychological insight and often knowledge to consistently make people laugh about stuff they didn’t necessary consider fertile ground for hilarity.
Thinking comedians are less informed than your average Republican congressclown from Rifle, Colorado or the 1st district of Texas says a lot about a person, none of it good.
Also, what numbers are you even talking about? Arrest statistics? Convictions? Things originating in Wayne LaPierre’s ass?
I agree many if most are smart. But smart means different things and does not mean anyone should take him seriously from a bit. So unless Jeff, is rattling off a statistic that even implies through a causational link, that shows any evidence of 40M irresponsible gun owners then I’m not sure I care about his comedy routine not that it would disprove my point in any way.
Dangerous idiots are in abundant supply.
The numbers really don’t support any meaningful mass of irresponsible gun owners. The challenge is that the consequences of those few are typically life.
You either have greater faith in the percentage of humanity that is responsible than is warranted, or your standards for responsibility are where I would expect considering your sealioning about your stupid toys.
👌👍
It’s unclear if the parents – identified by family as Sam Odums and Laileighauna Parks – will face charges in the incident.
The owner absolutely should be charged. Clearly the gun was unsecured.
Also, it was over 90°F in Douglas, GA. You don’t leave a fucking toddler in your car with that kind of heat.
Even if the AC was left on, I’d have never left my kid in the car alone at 2. So many ways that can go wrong.
You don’t leave your phone out in the car… your fuckin kid?
Guns kept in a car usually aren’t required to be locked up if the car itself is locked. There’s not much point having a gun in the car if you have to ask the carjacker to wait nicely while you fetch your gun from its locked container.
Fuck is wrong with you.
Seriously. Might as well lock your toddler in your gun safe at that point. I don’t see what difference the wheels make.
I was just quoting the actual laws… As a concealed carry permit holder it’s a pretty important responsibility to know how/where it’s legal to store your loaded handgun.
I hope it’s also important to know how/where to store your loaded handgun so toddlers can’t get to it.
Rule 1: Don’t have kids.
Rule 2: Don’t allow kids in your car or home.
Cool, cool. Now quote us some child endangerment laws.
Agreed - that’s probably the easier way to charge the father in this case. Focus on child endangerment, reckless abandonment, etc. I’m just saying a gun charge probably isn’t the best path to conviction in this case.
You’re exceptionally bad faithing this whole comment section, you that right?
I haven’t made any arguments to “bad faith”. I just saw OP saying the father should face gun charges, and that’s a topic I know a bit about, so I thought I’d chime in with a quick fact check. I never said the father wasn’t a piece of shit or that he shouldn’t go to jail.
No, you weren’t, you wrote your comment completely ignoring the actual context.
Regardless of that, carjacking and the ability for anyone to stop one, is not going to yield great results if someone is already pointing a gun at you. No one is really prepared to deal with opposing one; the best thing to do is just get out and get to safety.
Most carjackers don’t use guns.
A knife or a gun is equally efficient at intimidating and damaging someone. You aren’t going to have the time or awareness to draw a gun before they stab you.
Guns kept in a car usually aren’t required to be locked up if the car itself is locked.
This varies widely from state to state, with different requirements for loaded vs unloaded, concealed carry permits, and accessibility requirements.
There’s not much point having a gun in the car if you have to ask the carjacker to wait nicely while you fetch your gun from its locked container.
So use a quick-access safe mounted in the vehicle or get a concealed carry license and keep it secured in a holster with you. No excuse for leaving it accessible to a child.
Agreed. Was just stating what the law is.
Agreed. Was just stating what the law is.
Yea but what you actually mean by that is:
Agreed. Was just stating what
themy local state law is.Its important, because people should know that their local state laws around this may be different.
It really doesn’t vary that much by state.
You can check all 50 individually from page 1 of this document - https://handgunlaw.us/documents/USRVCarCarry-1.pdf
Here’s the breakdown for the most populous states, which would cover most people in the US. This also includes the most restrictive states in terms of gun laws like NY and CA, so most will be more permissive than this.
California: Prohibits carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle unless it is in a locked container or the trunk. Concealed carry permit holders must adhere to these rules.
Texas: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
Florida: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
New York: Generally restrictive. In New York City, it is prohibited to have a loaded firearm in a vehicle. In other parts of the state, a permit is required, and rules can be strict.
Pennsylvania: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
Illinois: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
Ohio: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
Georgia: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
North Carolina: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
Michigan: Allows permit holders to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle.
Good to know actually. Appreciate the breakdown.
You shouldnt be allowed to guns at all, especially not unsecured in a car. If your toddler then shoots itself with the gun you definitely should face charges.
Agreed. I was just quoting the actual law. I store loaded guns unsecured in my car and home, but I live alone and don’t have kids or allow kids in my car or home. Obviously the situation would be different if I did.
Even when unattended? I wouldn’t do that even if it was legal. It’s a great way to get your car broken into to steal the gun.
And I wouldn’t leave a gun unattended around a two-year-old in any case.
Guns kept in a car usually aren’t required to be locked up if the car itself is locked.
Common sense requires it if there is a chance you’ll be leaving a toddler alone with it.
Agreed. Unfortunately the law and common sense don’t always align. Maybe the father could be charged with reckless endangerment or some sort of neglect - I’m only saying there probably isn’t a direct firearm storage statute that was violated here.
Edit: Sadly, it’d probably be easier to charge him for leaving the kid in the car based on how hot it was, with the gun storage issue maybe as an aggravating factor.
I get your point, but the only person in the car was a 2 year old. Surely you don’t expect the 2 year old to stop a car jacker with the gun, so it should be locked while no one is operating the vehicle, at least?
that sentence got more American with every word
Maybe the kid killed himself so he wouldn’t have to slowly die of heat stroke because his idiot parents left him alone in a car (edit: WITH A LOADED GUN WHAT THE FUCK) in a Walmart parking lot.
It’s too easy to make a baby. It’s really a problem.
"You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog. You need a license to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father. " - Keanu Reeves as Tod Higgins, Parenthood (1989).
beautifully put, Keanu
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I hear taking candy from them is easy too. I’m too scared to try though.
Plus, now we’re not allowed to abort them even if we know we don’t have the mental, emotional, or financial capacity to take care of them, and it looks like they are trying to make contraceptives illegal again, so I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more and more stories like this.
Yeah it hurts the future generations the most. More adults that need therapy, but don’t get it and hurt others.
Unfortunately, we need lots-a them
No, the fuck, we do not
Why exactly? There is enough people on the planet.
Emergency rations.
that sounds like a modest proposal
Modest? That sounds like an excellent proposal!
Because demographics.
If there won’t be enough children, there won’t be anyone to sustain the economy as we retire.
Not only will this make us work to death, but also the decreased productivity and natural death will generally tank the economy down very badly.
Maybe we need to rethink economics in a way they don’t require an endless growth of the population like we’re a cancer to the earth. Maybe Bezos could pay a bit more than 1.1% in taxes, an extra 1% would free a cool couple of billion for retirement. And so could Musk, and same with the companies, a bit from Amazon, a bit from Microsoft, and the rest of S&P500…
I’m all for a bit of population decline. The system needs to crash to get rebalanced.
“Everyone needs to keep breeding so my ponzi scheem style retirement savings will still work”
Plan to die at your job like the rest of us.
Worst thing is, even though population grows, the retirement age does aswell.
Having more people now just mean higher expectations from the generation after them. It is just a temporary fix thate current generation hopes to throw onto the next and hopefully die before it all gets fucked.
A positive feedback loop (and this is not meant in a positive way).
If only there were a way to like… Import millions of people who could prop up a declining population.
But… But… We don’t want those people…
[clutches pearls]
Fuck. The. Economy.
We can’t keep doing this to the planet. The system is broken. We need a smaller human population regardless of the effect on the economy.
Think of how affordable housing would be. Cities would suck (look at how long Detroit has taken to recover from losing something like 2/3 of its population) but suburbs would thrive.
Thinly veiled white supremacist bullshit. I wonder what demographic you’re referring to? Hmmmmm…
Wasn’t planning to respond to the negativity wave, but white supremacism? Huh?
I guess some Muricans are so oversensitive on the issue they see racism in everything. I come from a country that barely has any black/hispanic population at all (simply historically), and same with any sort of supremacism - we don’t have racial aspect as a cornerstone of our culture, and I can barely see any intersection here.
Do you mean I supposedly suggest for white people specifically to get more babies to ethnically cleanse the world or something? Because I never said or meant that, and couldn’t care less about people of which race or origin improve the reproduction rates.
Every word of that sentence made it worse. Flip those patents straight to heck
Forkin’ A
For everyone focusing on the toddler alone in a hot car part. This was a fireworks stand. So they were probably 10 to 20 feet away. We can hope they opened the windows, which would make it roughly the same temp as where they were. So let’s refocus on the gun please.
Let’s focus on how pissed they look in that photo.
On a side note, your user name. What is modern medicine not?
Not modern. Still the dark age of poisoning people to make them better. And lots of trial and error.
No vaccines for you, eh?
Not OP, so can’t comment on the vaccine part but the “modern medicine isn’t modern” is actually a cute analysis. When it comes the healing major woulds, even ones inflicted intentionally like during surgery, we don’t actually know how to heal the body. We know how to clean the wound. We know how to remove malignant tissue. But we don’t actually know how to heal the wound. The best we’ve got is “keep it clean and let the body do it’s thing”. To OPs “poison” point, when it comes to things like antibiotics, those are really just other stuff in nature that we found out kills stuff inside us. It also kills stuff we don’t want to kill inside us, which sounds kind of poisony. Chemotherapy and radiation treatment are similar - just dose this person with this stuff and hope the thing we’re trying to kill dies before the person does.
Surprisingly vaccines are probably the most “modern” example we have of medicine, especially the RNA stuff.
Your acute analysis.
You too
This isn’t a vaccine thing. They are certainly talking about things like antidepressants that we can see do work but don’t have really any clue how or why and can’t come up with something that doesn’t have bonkers life changing side effects.
mRNA vaccines are precision engineering and are where the future of medicine is. They do one thing in a targeted way and do it well.
The question of whether we need to be armed to be capable of defending ourselves against tyrannical governments coming for our lives should have come after the question of whether we are capable of defending ourselves against ourselves.
The question of whether we need to be armed to be capable of defending ourselves against tyrannical governments coming for our lives
Also that wasn’t what the second amendment was about. It was about not wanting a standing army because it gave the federal government too much power, and James Madison believed state militias would be sufficient to defend the nation.
And that’s why, to this day, Congress has to pass the NDAA every year. It’s not just the military budget, it’s also the law making the military exist. We don’t technically have a standing army.
I hate every single part about this headline.
Im sorry, what?
Also what? The grandmother started a gofundme to pay for the funeral costs, so ‘the parents can grieve’?
Idiots or not they still grieve.
Yeah I definitely don’t get the “what” factor in that.
Funerals aren’t free and they might not have the money for it, so not having to pay for it would take some burden off them. Yes, they did something incredibly stupid but they’ve already paid an incalculable price for it.
Yeah, i get that, was a knee jerk to just such a messed up story.
I mean though there is idiot and then… well. Like a loaded cocked gun in the car… with a toddler alone? Like even just leaving the kid in the car alone is bad, but then there are so many more layers.
Oh yeah, everything about it is stupid, no question about that, but 🤷
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Hopefully they spend some time reflecting on every one of their stupid choices that led to this outcome.
Imagine walking back to your car to get your kid and seeing the scene in Pulp Fiction…yikes
Leaving an unsecured and loaded weapon in a car with an unsupervised toddler? Sorry for the kid, but the parents fully deserve to see this.
“Holy shit! The consequences of my actions?! That’s unpossible!”
The ONLY ONLY ONLY LITERALLY ONLY way to have Prevented this was if the Toddler killed the Gun before the Gun was able to be used to Kill the Toddler! There’s LITERALLY NO OTHER WAY this could have been prevented! Either that or make it Illegal for BLACK PEOPLE to have a Gun!
-Not Racist Republicans!
The only one who can stop a bad toddler with a gun, is a good toddler with a gun
~Republicans, probably
Baby with a gun – TomSka
If only there were 2 guns in the car. This could have been prevented.
As an advocate of the 2nd amendment who thinks gun regulations need to be more strict assessing theental health of anyone purchasing a gun, I find it very hard to believe parents who leave a child in a hot car with a loaded gun to both go into a store to shop could pass any test of their fucking mental stability. This had to be premeditated whether they can prove it legally. Someone else in the thread said it was 90F when this happened so when you add it all up, a toddler was left out if their carseat, with a loaded gun, in either a running vehicle the kid could’ve kicked into gear accidently or in a vehicle that wasn’t running on a fucking 90 degree day. Way too many cognizant decisions were made to not charge them with 1st degree murder.
As a non-American, it’s crazy to me that there (apparently) aren’t any safe storage laws enforced. Would it really infringe people’s gun rights to require that all firearms may only be in a safe, in your hands, or on your person (in a holster, sling, etc.)?
About half of US states have safe storage laws. You can probably guess which ones. Surprisingly, both Texas and Florida are both on this list, though, so credit where it’s due.
The enforcement of those laws is another story, though. And to be fair, enforcement can be difficult. You can always charge them with a safe storage violation after an incident happens and police/EMS/etc enter the home legally, but otherwise, nobody is coming into your home to ensure that you’re locking up your guns properly. It’s illegal without a warrant, and surprise safety checks aren’t something you can issue a warrant for.
Of course, charging them after the fact means they’ll regret it… but it won’t prevent anyone from doing the same. After all, such bad accidents only ever happen to other people.
So much WTF. Leaving a toddler alone in the car in the middle of Summer with an unsecured loaded firearm in car.
I feel bad for the kid. The only silver lining here is that the parents are keeping their stupidity out of the gene pool.
Sorry for the kid, but 2A is more important than that. /s
Our children are the price of freedom.
Sadly, that’s one little soldier who left too early.
