Jesus, are you serious? The irony. My gods.
It’s cruel, and I would stop her from getting shot with one of those awful things if I could…but I don’t regret someone who uses them getting hit with one before they could use a hollow point bullet on someone else.
If only she had a “smart gun.”
Eh - I am not sure how big a tangerine is but it sounds like there is a bit of an exaggeration there. You can google gory pics including people who shot themselves in the hand or leg, and while the exit hole is bigger, it doesn’t leave “exploding” out of the body like in the movies. You will see some examples of larger exit wounds from hunting RIFLES because the bullets are so much bigger and moving so much faster.
Hollow points open up some in the body creating a large wound cavity. That is their main plus. The secondary plus is more of the energy is passed from the bullet to the target, so you are more likely to NOT have it pass through and keep going another mile down the road. So that is one reason why cops use them is to reduce the chances of it hitting someone else.
At any rate, they aren’t some horrible bizarre thing. They have been used for decades and they aren’t magic bullets that automatically make things dead.
All the more reason why her negligent handling of a loaded firearm that almost resulted in her death deserves punishment. The natural consequences of her neglect are not legal punishment. As has been noted before, we don’t simply let people who get drunk and into a solo injury collision of the hook because they got injured. Their actions endangered the general public and are punished through the courts. Same goes for armed robbers who get shot by police - they don’t get to plead their injury as “punishment enough.” Their injury was a forseeable consequence of their actions, as was the case here, with the negligent handling of a loaded, chambered and cocked handgun with no manual safety.
I think a lot of people (including many authors) don’t get that neither Glocks nor revolvers have manual safeties. I’ve lost count of the various characters in books the author wants to portray as knowledgeable and responsible by having set the safety on their Glock or revolver. 
Some people have speculated that the weapon was a Kimber, based on a January FB post. But be it a Kimber or a Springfield XD, both have a grip safety that must be squeezed at the same time as the trigger (the grip safety is one of the things that distinguishes the XD from a Glock). It is less likely that a 4 year-old would accidentally fire such a weapon. So I’m wondering if it wasn’t a different gun than either of those.
(Also, the XD is available with a thumb safety in .45)
Hey, at least this time she’ll just be facing a few months of jail time instead of a firing squad.
I guess it depends on what you believe the purpose of legal punishment is? There are situations where the natural consequences of a criminal act are so severe that they are surely punishment enough. I linked to one such in NZ in a post above. Personally I reckon this is another case in point. Given the choice of her injury and 6 months in prison, I’d go for the latter. It’s likely to be over faster.
Likewise, what is the function of imprisonment, really? If it’s only for retribution, then go ahead and chuck her in the slammer and “make her pay” if that’s what pleases you as a society. But I’d argue that imprisonment should be to keep society safe and be for re-education rather than retribution. In which case suspending her sentence and doing as @Mister44 suggested —having her teach Gun Safety classes as part of a community service order— would be poetic justice. And help reduce the USA’s depressingly high incarceration rate at the same time.
It’s really astounding how many of you are willing to make some glib “bitch had it coming” remark about someone you don’t agree with politically. Surely we can all look forward to your followup comments on articles about the hilarious rape or violent spousal abuse of conservative women.
Because surely it’s not blisteringly obvious hypocrisy when “we” do it…
No one used the “b” word here until you. And it’s a bit horrible to compare a near-tragic accident of her own creation with a crime like rape.
No one “asks” to be raped. That crime is always on the rapist. But gun enthusiasts including this woman never get tired of proclaiming “personal responsibility” as the key to preventing gun tragedies. If she’s not at fault here then who is?
That’s a cute little misdirect there Bill. Just because nobody “used the ‘b’ word” doesn’t mean that the spirit of these comments isn’t exactly the same, and if you apply the comments above to a situation that involves a woman being harmed by any other means I think you might be able to recognize that.
Nobody asks to have any horrible thing happen to them. This woman espouses “personal responsibility” and I’m sure we can all agree she failed at that concept when she lost control of her firearm. However this doesn’t in any way mean she deserves to be shot, and if you really need someone to explain this concept and the questionable morality necessary to celebrate the harm of a stranger whose politics don’t match your own then you really, really need to examine your personal compass.
If you’re comfortable calling for the death or violent injury of people whose politics you don’t agree with, and crassly, publicly celebrating when harm comes to them then at least have the conviction to be honest with yourself and everyone around you about your behavior.
She doesn’t look nearly as perky and trustworthy in her 2013 booking photo for shoplifting/grand theft.…
Still, charging the alleged $455 theft as a felony seems excessive. She managed to complete a felony pre-trial intervention, what ever that is, and get the charges dropped. And thank goodness for that. If not, she might have lost her rights to own guns to keep her safe. Where would this unemployed hero be now if not for her plethora of guns? Whew.
Hmm…yes, factually pointing out that nobody but you used that word is a “cute little misdirect.”
This woman isn’t a victim, she’s the perpetrator. She’s the one who’s negligent gun handling led to the discharge of her loaded, chambered and cocked weapon. We don’t call drunk drivers victims, even if they get injured in a crash caused by their negligence. Neither is this woman a “victim”. She’s the party who’s negligence is responsible for her injury, negligence that just as easily could have led to the death of her 4 year-old.
I have never seen any interpretation of the 2nd Amendment which makes negligence acceptable.
I suppose someone who survives a self-inflicted gunshot wound while committing robbery has also learned their lesson, too. Ha, but no. The irresponsible should be held accountable.
She’s lucky her negligence wasn’t lethal.
This time.
Which why it is completely inappropriate for you to compare what happened to her to rape or domestic violence.
Nobody is calling for this woman’s death or violent injury. It’s not about whether or not she “deserved” to be shot. It’s about who was responsible for it, and how her criminally negligent behavior could have cost the life of an innocent child.
That’s multiple crimes, though. There’s the robbery (aggravated by being under threat of violence), probable assault and negligence with a firearm. Which is probably illegally owned. The irresponsibility there is but one aspect and the criminal still needs to be held to account for the rest.
In Gilt’s case she’s merely stupid and has already suffered major consequences. Why not teach her to be less stupid rather than calling for her to be locked away, where she’s no use to anyone and is a burden on society?
I can’t believe I’m (sort of) arguing on her side … 
Where I live she wouldn’t have a firearms licence in the first place —most people don’t and her previous felony would make her unfit— and neither do the police routinely carry guns. And I like it that way.
And yet here you are taking me to task for calling out people who publicly celebrate the harm of a stranger based entirely on their opposing political beliefs. So again I’ve got to ask, is it really my wording that’s the problem or the way certain people are so willing to excuse this behavior when it’s motivated by politics? As the saying goes, don’t shoot the messenger.
When you compare a woman who was a victim of her own criminal negligence to a woman who was raped then yes, I very much do take issue with your wording and your sentiment.
Not. Comparable. At. All.
No need. It appears the messenger already arranged it.
Yes, you did “factually point out” something I said. However you seem to have deliberately gone out of your way to focus on my wording rather than the tasteless behavior that I was calling out. A suspicious person might presume that you’re defending that behavior by redirecting attention to the words I used to question it rather than addressing the behavior in any way.
Whether or not we agree that this woman did an incredibly dumb thing with a firearm isn’t really the question (because we plainly do). The question I’m raising here is what kind of moral backflips someone has to do in order to simultaneously decry guns for the harm that they can do while also celebrating the harm that they’ve done to people we don’t know, but have decided we don’t like for very facile reasons.
But by all means, continue focusing on that one tree in front of you rather than all the others behind it. Whatever helps you sleep at night.
You deliberately miss the point at a professional level. Good luck with all that.
But not, interestingly, malice of the aforethoughty kind.
Hmmm.
Not really, it’s a little piece of misogyny you introduced all on your own. Then you went on to compare this incident to rape, which is pretty telling as well, given this incident was the direct result of the mother’s negligence.
All in all you fucked up pretty badly with your expression of indignant outrage.
