Her boyfriend was driving and hit another car at the time the gun went off, so there was at least a witness to the accident if not the circumstances leading up to it. If this was a planned murder it must have been a pretty shitty plan. Besides, if she was right handed it seems unlikely he could have pulled off a bullet wound to the right side of her head from the driver’s seat.
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Buy a hovercraft! Problem solved!
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I realize there are some states that assume we all spring from Zeus’ brow fully loaded and locked, but for the sane ones an eight hour safety class is usually required before you get your gun permit.
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Guns have consequences. Never point them at anything important encase they should go off. A hole in the sofa is much better than a hole in the head.
You can buy ant poison without toxicology exam, a drain cleaner without a hazmat license, a screwdriver and copper wire without electrician paperwork, a ladder without demonstrating safety skills/knowledge for work in heights.
And that’s not just in the US, that’s prevalent situation in the entire world. Quick, somebody call the UN to rectify this dangerous situation! Think of the children, or whatever!
Guns rank quite low on the list of things that can kill you. Unless you’re in a war zone. And there you are usually better off when you have something to shoot back with.
But guns don’t kill people. It’s the people that’s working here…
But if you point ant cleaner, drain poison, hazmat drivers or screw wires at someone’s face, and squeeze it a bit, you’re not going to destroy their brain.
But anyways it’s ok, cos Darwin…
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What about nail guns? Not a firearm per se, but fits the apparent requirement of point-click death capability. (Google “nail gun death”.)
Also, what’s a hazmat driver? Someone who drives a hazmat truck? These things have formidable kinetic energy when they are speeding and aimed towards your face…
OK, I Googled it. The first result was a reasonably comprehensive study of nail gun injuries commissioned by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2002. On page 14 it includes a list of all available data on known nail gun related deaths during the eleven year period from 1990 to 2001. There were five.
Statistically speaking, that’s around the number of Americans who will die of gunshot wounds in the next 90 minutes.
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The Second Amendment should only apply to me.
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It was good enough for Claudine Longet, it’s good enough for me.
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Not so. As far as I know, all of the state tests required to purchase a handgun go over basic handgun safety and whatnot. The one I had to pass in CA certainly did. That’s not to say that the testing isn’t woefully idiotic and simple. CA has pretty stringent regulation, and the test I took could have been passed by anyone who could read and had the capacity to retain the simplest of information for more than a few minutes. Now, proficiency testing on the other hand…
Rifles and shotguns on the other hand are a different story…
It may be worth pointing out that all of those items have a specific use and just happen to also be able to be dangerous. A gun is designed solely to shoot a projectile at people/targets/animals/people. So it doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable to want people buying a gun to take a class or two so they can learn some safety rules.
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I’m completely onboard with the spirit of your post, but one thing that’s different is that none of those other things have thousands upon thousands of tv shows and movies showing people looking cool while using them. I’m not sure I can even think of a law that would prevent these stupid accidents, but it’s very frustrating to see people handling firearms according to what they’ve seen on tv.
Owning a gun -is- the competency test. Unfortunately.
Teleshopping shows try rather hard, though.
It’s similar with computers and pretty much everything else shown on TV. People are silly. What can we do about it…
Oh, another datapoint. Car chases! And car driving in general.
Or into free space, see celebratory gunfire. Or into all other sorts of objects. I am not sure if the definition of target type should be included in the definition of a generic gun; too many variants in both theory and practice.
May be a good idea but no short course will do much good. The safety culture has to be way more generic than just guns-related and has to start much earlier (before kindergarten, perhaps). People should think about what they are doing, and think two or more steps ahead.
it was also a rather off-the-cuff example. Still, these things can be dangerous. I saw even an xray of a skull of someone murdered by a nail gun. It looked like an inverted hedgehog.
The risk of a gun is still rather low in comparison with other risks. If you subtract the gang-related inner-city problems, generally avoidable by avoiding the areas, it shrinks even further. Then subtract suicides, where the means are fungible, and you get even less panic-worthy numbers.
I guess Missouri isn’t one of the sane ones, but then I guess we already knew that…
there are 4 basic and simple rules. These were taught in: Boy Scouts, Civilian Marksmanship Program, Hunting Safety Programs, Armed Forces training, and by ANY parent who cared about their kids.
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
4 … SIMPLE … RULES.
this was not an accident. Accident implies blamelessness. and I am sorry, there is blame to go around. She bought the gun, loaded it, then was swinging it around in a car with her finger on the trigger.
It reminds me of the iconic photo of our US Senator Dianne Feinstein waving a rifle at a crowd with her booger picker on the BANG switch… ya just dont DO that. EVER
yes guns are dangerous- so is knowledge. if you use either with a bit of sense, they can be safe and good. But let any jackass go whumpus-bat-crap-insane? and someone is gonna get hurt.
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Just stop it. Please. This idiot killed herself, but she could have just as easily killed someone else. It’s just our good luck she took herself out. What, Mister Math, are the odds that YOUR fall will kill someone else? Do falling people EVER kill others? Yes, it happens, but the statistic you are using for your argument is the WRONG statistic. Also, please provide details for your fall statistic. What type of fall? Fall from ladder? Fall from roof? If you are using a generic “fall” statistic, it might include elderly people. They die from falling over while standing. The broken hip is enough to kill them.
What are the odds of being killed by someone else’s fall vs being killed by someone else’s gun?
Concern trolley is concerned.
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