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.
They probably considered themselves responsible parents as well.
The point is what people claim to be and what people are, are different things.
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 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’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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
If only there were 2 guns in the car. This could have been prevented.
I don’t leave my carry gun around my adult GF or untrained friends…everything else is locked up. WTF
Not a gun owner myself, so curious, is your carry gun not always locked up when not on your person?
I live alone, so it only is if I am not around.
If I leave and the GF(untrained for the time being) is home, or if there is family or kids present, it is either on my person and safed, or locked up in a biometric safe.
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🤔
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.
I have a serious question here that I always get when I read news like this. As someone not from the US but having experience with guns through my military training, how is it that toddlers can even pull the trigger of a weapon?
When we had the training for the pistol it was difficult to pull the trigger. IIRC it was even stated that this was by design so that you can’t pull the trigger by accident.
Are there no regulations for such a thing in the US or are toddlers that strong to do it anyway?
In addition to what people are saying about trigger pull weight there are an unfortunate number of people that think reducing trigger pull weight to pointlessly low numbers is cool. If you’re a competition shooter it might be worth it to a point, but anyone leaving a handgun unsecured and accessible in a vehicle isn’t a person who takes firearms seriously.
There are a ton of different kinds of pistols, and all have varying types of trigger weight. If you trained in a EU military, you probably trained with something like a Beretta 92 or CZ 75, both of which have a double action/single action (“DA/SA”) design, where the long DA is a safety feature. After the first shot, the gun will be in SA mode, with a much lighter weight for easier follow-up shots. One can also put a DA/SA gun into SA mode by chambering a round and cocking the hammer. Most consider this to be an unsafe way to carry a pistol without a further manual safety (both the Beretta and CZ have one for carrying in this manner).
Glock is the most common pistol make in the US, and they use a striker fired design. A striker fired pistol is typically equipped with a medium-weight trigger - lighter than a DA pull, but not as light as a SA.
Because the toddler shot himself in the chest, he was also likely using his thumbs, rather than index finger on the trigger. I think a toddler would easily have the strength to pull a striker trigger, and definitely a SA.
Granted, this is now almost a decade now but I was trained with the HK P8 which, according to what I can find, has a trigger weight of 24N (SA) and 55N (DA)
This would be 2.4kg force or 5.6kg force needed for pulling the trigger.
But as you said, it would make sense that even this is easily overcome depending on how you pull the trigger and the thumbs would be stronger doing that, especially with both hands.
My American brain can only understand lbs, but converting it, 5.6kg = more than 12lbs, which is on the high end even for DA guns. I believe both the Sig 226 and CZ 75 are around 9-10lbs in DA. For comparison, Glocks have about a 6lb trigger pull, which would be barely heavier than your P8’s SA trigger weight.
There are mods that reduce the trigger pull. I had a friend with a 22 that brought a kit online to help him in shooting competitions.
I have seen that while doing a bit of research that the strength needed can be lower for shooting competition which also makes sense but there you have a trained person in a controlled environment for a very specific purpose.
Or they bought it so their toddler can shoot himself easier with their gun.
Highspeed man-children making it a hair-trigger so they can fight off an assault squad of gangsters.
Parents of the year going to take gun heat while they were just lining up ways to kill the kid.
It’s a state by state thing but, yeah there are states like NY has safe storage laws, transporting loaded firearms laws amoung many many more but NY is one of the more strict states for gun regulation. Idk what the GA laws are like but generally the deep south is very unregulated.
'Murica.
