Boy, 11, asks girl, 8, to see her puppies. She declines. He shoots and kills her

Stand your ground, man. If you asked to see her puppies, it’s your right to see them. Do not back down. That’s not the 'murican way.

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The two golden talking points of the NRA and co are fundamentally at odds - “responsible gun ownership” precludes the guns being any use at all for “self defence”, keeping guns usably accessible for “self defence” precludes keeping those guns “responsibly”.

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You can’t. That’s the problem I can’t get around. This girl is dead for two reasons. 1) The boy shot her 2) His parents/guardians had guns and ammunition he could get to . That’s it - plain and simple. Assuming he had the legal right to have the gun in the first place, why he wanted it (hunting, protection, etc) is not a concern of the courts. The parents IMHO are more responsible for her death. You want to have deadly weapons around then when something happens with them due to your negligence then you suffer the consequences. It’s called adulthood.

Here’s a great read on a different gun death. A two year old - that’s right, a TWO year old, shot her own mother at a Walmart. And the woman’s father-in-law claims she was a responsible gun owner, and is upset people are using her death in a gun-debate context.

Yeah let’s all arm ourselves 24/7. What could be safer. Goddammit.

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About the only thing that could make this more tragic than it already is would be for the boy to be prosecuted as an adult.

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I’m not really seeing the humor in this situation. Whether it was intentional or not, can you imagine being him for the rest of your life?

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Opening sentence from Washington Post article: Veronica Rutledge and her husband loved everything about guns.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand my own country’s gun culture.

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at which time the judge may decide whether he should be tried as a juvenile or as an adult

He’s 11. He can be sentenced as an adult. Lock him behind bars for 20? 25? years and he will be a 30-something knowing nothing about the life outside the prison. He will thrive!

I don’t understand the US gun culture, but I’m disgusted by your prison system.

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Yeah, this is probably going to fuck him up mentally later in life. 11 year olds get swept up in an emotion and quickly do irrational stuff all the damn time. It’s insane that he’s getting charged and his parents who’s incompetence allowed the gun to get in his hands at the age of 11 don’t appear to be getting charged . It’s also maddening that the gun was there in the first place, but it’s the U.S., so I can’t say it’s surprising.

This is the inevitable result of U.S. gun culture. I’m just surprised I haven’t heard this scenario more often.

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This should win some sort of award for “most easily preventable tragedy”.

I have no guns. But there is stuff in my garage - power saws, chisels, knives, hammers - which could kill and which are not accessible to children.

But also there are no films on television in which the good guys kill the bad guys with hammers, saws etc., John Wayne didn’t arm himself with a mattock (an extremely dangerous short range weapon), and there is no National Sledgehammer Association constantly telling people that the only solution to a bad guy with a sledgehammer is a good guy with a sledgehammer. Which means impressionable children are far less likely to believe that the answer to interpersonal problems is to pick up a blunt instrument.

My growing belief is that it is not guns that are the problem but the glorification of them and their presentation - by the NRA - as the solution to a wide range of social problems. The problem then runs up against the First Amendment, which would prevent the passing of a law banning the promotion of the use of guns.
Of course, the First Amendment is largely dead except for the rights of corporations to infict advertising on you and to coerce politicians. But in this case that won’t help since that is exactly how the NRA operates.

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My parents have a couple handguns. My father is convinced he needs it for protection (which is bullshit - he doesn’t, but I can’t decide that for him). Next time we visit, I’m going to demand that they be unloaded, locked up, and ammunition be kept at a friends house or something. a) I don’t want my kids finding them somehow (rare) b) I don’t want him to hear a sound downstairs – e.g. my kid sleepwalking on the porch or something – him coming downstairs, seeing a door open, and going all Miami Vice on a 7 year old. This shit happens, folks.

Edit: he has done most of that already … locked, hidden … I don’t think he offsites the ammunition, though. He is a responsible gun owner … it’s not like he leaves handguns in his purse while shopping at Walmart.

I swear I’d be the worlds worst gun owner. I can barely hold on to my keys, wallet, and phone.

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Do chainsaws count?

Someone’s gotta say it: the girl flaunted her puppies in front of him, and then turned him down and even LAUGHED when he said he wanted to get a closer look.

This situation is part of more than one twisted, depraved cultural norm in the U.S.

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I hope this is a joke but I can’t tell.

Edit: I get the comment now. Not a joke - a comment gender rules/expectations. Got it. Sorry. I’m kind of fuming and not thinking clearly.

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Exactly what I was thinking. Not only do we have insane gun fetish culture in the US, we have a boy who was very, very likely raised either explicitly, or tacitly, to believe that females do not have agency to deny him his desires.

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While this is almost certainly true, I have a feeling that he would have done the same thing were the puppy owner a male.

And why aren’t his parents being charged with some form of negligent homicide, here? I mean, ok, America doesn’t seem to have any system in place to ensure that gun owners actually keep their guns responsibly (which I would love to figure out how to do, never mind seeing it actually implemented)… But surely there MUST be some law on the books to punish gun owners when something so utterly stupid and preventable as this happens? And if there’s not, I really hope that gun advocates don’t oppose such a law being put into place. Because we constantly hear from gun advocates that guns aren’t dangerous when they’re owned by responsible owners… So surely they must be in favour of punishing the irresponsible owners?

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I can’t speak for everyone, but my take is that any “humor” in this discussion has more to do with “shaking head in disbelief at the batspit crazy gun culture in the U.S.” along with sarcasm about said culture and the helplessness to do anything about it.

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Only because you’re not listening. It is depressingly common.

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Here’s another one

4 year old shoots 6 year old neighbor with gun the 4yo’s father left laying around. They were playing with it- thing went off and killed the 6yo. Father/owner of gun gets 3 years in prison.

This is why I do not want a gun. One mistake and you or someone else could be dead. I know myself well enough, and I don’t feel like anyone is going to break in and rob me or anything. I am not a hunter, nor do I want to exercise a right just because it is my right. Will take my chances unarmed, thank you.

Edit: yes the same is true of a car. One mistake and I’m dead. But a car – where I’m choosing to live – is a necessity and doesn’t exist solely to kill or threaten others.

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They know what they are doing, they don’t have the same empathetic knowledge of consequences that adults do. Kids know when they’re doing things wrong, like stealing from other kids, but we don’t punish them along the same lines because kids are incredibly short-sighted and haven’t fully developed a sense of empathy. This is why you can’t really diagnose someone with psychopathy until they’re an adult. There’s fallacious reasoning in the idea that the act itself can fully define the level of culpability of the person perpetrating it.

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Worse yet, the father-in-law says:

“They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case,” he said. “… I brought my son up around guns, and he has extensive experience shooting it. And Veronica had had hand gun classes; they’re both licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.”

Such bullshit. Leaving a loaded handgun where a momentarily-unsupervised two-year-old can find it and shoot someone with it is the very height of irresponsibility, no matter how much ‘experience’ you have.

In fact, I’d suggest that it’s MORE irresponsible for a well-trained gun-handler to do such a thing, because they don’t have ignorance and lack of forethought as an ‘excuse.’.

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