Not Entertainment

[ZatarRufus]

Just saw this in the Google news list for Indiana:

WTHR - ‎1 hour ago‎
Entertainment News from AP Indianapolis - Metro Police say a three-year-old girl was shot in the head on the city's west side.

Has the state of society really come to this? How long until the movie The Running Man is not fiction?

[LennyLen]

Has the state of society really come to this?

No. It looks like the story was just incorrectly classified. It now shows up under News rather than Entrainment on the WTHR site. Mistakes do happen.

[kandrathe]

Just saw this in the Google news list for Indiana:

WTHR - ‎1 hour ago‎
Entertainment News from AP Indianapolis - Metro Police say a three-year-old girl was shot in the head on the city's west side.

Has the state of society really come to this? How long until the movie The Running Man is not fiction?

I read up on that case, and it appears to be an accidental shooting where another child got hold of a gun (ostensibly there was drug dealing/using in that house). It's taken us a couple hundred years to learn that guns and children are really not a safe combination. Of course, drug dealing/use and child rearing are never very safe either.

[attachment=27]

But, to be fair, it wasn't too long ago that young boys were recruited to various jobs in the world's armed forces. My oldest boy will be 10 this fall, and is far too young emotionally to be introduced to *real* firearms yet. Through cub scouts, he's getting some exposure to safely handling bb guns, which he loves. I'll be waiting for a few years before getting them through firearms safety training. The bb gun is enough of a danger to emphasize good range rules and to develop safety awareness. Even with their play plastic guns I insist that they never point it at anything they wouldn't intend to kill.

Mind you... They won't have access to them... But, around here in sportsman's country, learning about safety even with his friends stuff is well worth the minor investment.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Mind you... They won't have access to them... But, around here in sportsman's country, learning about safety even with his friends stuff is well worth the minor investment.

Gun safety is like first aid. The little time it takes to learn it is worth the lives it saves. And, no, 'just avoid guns' is not enough -- that's like 'chastity only' sex education.

--Pete

[LennyLen]

And, no, 'just avoid guns' is not enough -- that's like 'chastity only' sex education.

There is a bit of a difference however. Sex has universal appeal, guns don't. I don't actually know anybody who owns a gun. However the only people I know who don't have sex are children.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I don't actually know anybody who owns a gun.

Do you know CPR? If not, why? If you do, have you ever had to use it?

--Pete

[Jester]

I don't actually know anybody who owns a gun.

Do you know CPR? If not, why? If you do, have you ever had to use it?

Everyone's got a heart. Not everyone has a gun, or lives around guns. I'll learn gun safety when it becomes even remotely likely that I'll need it. At the moment, it would be less valuable than learning boat safety, electrical safety, food safety, defensive driving, and about a hundred other things.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

Everyone's got a heart. Not everyone has a gun, or lives around guns. I'll learn gun safety when it becomes even remotely likely that I'll need it. At the moment, it would be less valuable than learning boat safety, electrical safety, food safety, defensive driving, and about a hundred other things.

Yes, I agree. My kids have learned boating safety, and are on their way to becoming advanced swimmers. They've learned about avoiding electricity, at least by the age when they learned how to foil the outlet covers. I've taught them respect for power tools, and chainsaws. Both my sons have their individualized pairs of safety goggles if they even want to hang around when I'm working on projects. I've worked hard to cultivate a healthy respect for things that might kill them, even seemingly mundane stuff like not wearing their bike helmets or seat belts.

But, from my own demented childhood, I realize there will be another time soon, when I can expect them to believe themselves invincible. I recall about 13 was the age when my friends and I dug a tunnel from the barn to the chicken coop, which caved in without killing us. We built ramps to jump our bicycles over drainage ditches like Evel Knievel, we researched and built a Tesla coil, and a laser microphone to listen in on the secret conversations of a particularly pretty young neighbor girl we all had a crush on.

[LennyLen]

Hi,

I don't actually know anybody who owns a gun.

Do you know CPR? If not, why? If you do, have you ever had to use it?

--Pete

You missed my point, which is that avoiding guns is a valid solution. Maybe not in America, but not every country is as gun crazy. Avoiding sex however, is a lot more difficult.

As for your CPR question, I was a surf life guard for many years (and a few of them as the patrol captain), so yes, I had to get certified for resuscitation practices regularly. I haven't needed to use CPR yet, however.

[Crusader]

Just saw this in the Google news list for Indiana:

WTHR - ‎1 hour ago‎
Entertainment News from AP Indianapolis - Metro Police say a three-year-old girl was shot in the head on the city's west side.

Has the state of society really come to this? How long until the movie The Running Man is not fiction?

I read up on that case, and it appears to be an accidental shooting where another child got hold of a gun (ostensibly there was drug dealing/using in that house). It's taken us a couple hundred years to learn that guns and children are really not a safe combination. Of course, drug dealing/use and child rearing are never very safe either.

Nor is allowing everyone to have guns. Why is a drug addict allowed to own a gun? Recipe for disaster if you ask me.

Over here in The Netherlands if you want to own a gun, you need to be free of criminal record, your background and family is checked and you are constantly screened. I suspect the local 'secret police' (sorta like a FBI/CIA/NSA in one) also checks you out. You also have to be a member of a registered firearms club for a year prior to applying. You have to complete a theoretical exam, do a practical exam in a firearms club and you have to show a proof of good behavior yearly. Finally you have to store your gun in a special environment (armored and locked I think). Only then are you allowed to have a permit to own a weapon over here, which is also registered.

Relatively few incidents with firearms here compared to the USA. If an incident with a firearm occurs here it's big news. Heavy (military grade) weapon incidents are almost unheard of. (the kind with Assault rifles, (sub) machine guns, etc).

[Nystul]

Nor is allowing everyone to have guns. Why is a drug addict allowed to own a gun? Recipe for disaster if you ask me.

The reports don't say who the gun was registered to. Given all that we do know, it is quite likely that it was purchased illegally. Nevertheless if the adults were drilled as kids in gun safety, they wouldn't leave a loaded handgun sitting in plain sight with children playing nearby. Then again, they are stupid enough to get mixed up with cocaine so maybe they would.

[ZatarRufus]

If an incident with a firearm occurs here it's big news.

Unfortunately it is an every day occurance in the US. What really stuck a cord with me is that the news agency had the gall to post it as Entertainment. But, as LennyLen pointed out, this was simply a mistake and they quickly corrected its classification.

[kandrathe]

Nor is allowing everyone to have guns. Why is a drug addict allowed to own a gun? Recipe for disaster if you ask me.

The reports don't say who the gun was registered to. Given all that we do know, it is quite likely that it was purchased illegally. Nevertheless if the adults were drilled as kids in gun safety, they wouldn't leave a loaded handgun sitting in plain sight with children playing nearby. Then again, they are stupid enough to get mixed up with cocaine so maybe they would.

If you want drugs, you can find drugs. If you want illegal weapons (machine guns, hand grenades, land mines), you can find them on the black market as well. As you've seen on the news... It's pretty easy to smuggle whatever you want across our southern border. They probably don't have that problem in the Netherlands, although, I'm sure even there, it is still easy enough for the criminal element to get whatever weapons they want. The difference is that people in the Netherlands accept the premise that they are the disarmed victims of crimes against their persons and property, and that gun ownership is merely for sport or hunting, not for killing people.

The philosophy of the 2nd amendment has always been to reasonably eliminate the differential in power between those that are armed, versus those who are unarmed. We give people the equal right to defend their lives, their property, and their families lives from anyone who would use illegal force to take that away from them (including a tyrannical government). Unfortunately, there is no intelligence test for reproduction, and stupid people will do stupid things with drugs, and guns, whether or not they are illegal. I would guess that she had the gun available to defend herself, which is ok. But, she endangered her child by leaving loaded weapons around, which is not ok. They might just have easily died by od'ing on her drugs laying around.

We've evolved into a culture which is loath to assign responsibility for negative outcomes to people's poor decisions. It's societies fault for permitting people to own guns, not her fault for choosing to own one, and leave it loaded where her kids can get to it.

[--Pete]

Hi,

It's pretty easy to smuggle whatever you want across our southern border.

It's even easier across our Northern border. But "No True Canadian" wants to move South. And it's a lot farther from Colombia to Canada -- not to mention, the USA is in the way.

The philosophy of the 2nd amendment has always been to reasonably eliminate the differential in power between those that are armed, versus those who are unarmed.

Wow! I'm impressed. Here we've had at least a eighty year national debate on that very subject, and you've solved it in one sentence. I hereby nominate you as the replacement for the Supreme Court.

Or maybe not.

We give people the right to defend themselves, their property, and their families.

Or we assure an armed citizenry to limit the raw power of the government. Or we want a rapid response force in case there's a 'Indian uprising' or a Canadian invasion. Or we want to insure that such national dishes such as possum pie and squirrel stew continue to exist. Or we want a quick and personal way to settle disputes. Or a brazilian other interpretations used to defend both 'gun rights' and 'gun control'.

Unfortunately, there is no intelligence test for reproduction, and stupid people will do stupid things with drugs, and guns, whether or not they are illegal.

Darwin would be pleased. Stupidity is the only predator we've not been able to put on the endangered species list.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Unfortunately, there is no intelligence test for reproduction, and stupid people will do stupid things with drugs, and guns, whether or not they are illegal.

Darwin would be pleased. Stupidity is the only predator we've not been able to put on the endangered species list.

Yes. You can probably look at almost every accidental death, and find some underlying amount of recklessness, or stupidity in the cause. Unfortunately, the victim is often not the perpetrator of the stupidity.

ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/...able18.pdf

[--Pete]

Hi,

Unfortunately, the victim is often not the perpetrator of the stupidity.

ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/...able18.pdf

Nice link. Couple of things jump out: suicide is over 1/2 the total gun related deaths. Banning guns will probably not make much of a difference here, there still will be ropes, highway overpasses, exhaust fumes, etc. Then there's the fact that cars are much deadlier than guns. Seeing as how guns are meant to be deadly and cars aren't, maybe there's a lesson to be learned -- perhaps about drinking and driving, perhaps about actually needing to know how to drive before being issued a license, perhaps both.

Natural selection doesn't say that the inferior *always* get culled and the superior *never* get culled. It just says that the inferior get culled more often than the superior. Indeed, in terms of evolution, that is the definition of inferior and superior.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Nice link. Couple of things jump out: suicide is over 1/2 the total gun related deaths. Banning guns will probably not make much of a difference here, there still will be ropes, highway overpasses, exhaust fumes, etc. Then there's the fact that cars are much deadlier than guns. Seeing as how guns are meant to be deadly and cars aren't, maybe there's a lesson to be learned -- perhaps about drinking and driving, perhaps about actually needing to know how to drive before being issued a license, perhaps both.

I've read in other places that over half of all vehicle accidents involve some level of intoxication. It should be possible for vehicle computers to sense when someone is driving erratically, and unsafely.

Natural selection doesn't say that the inferior *always* get culled and the superior *never* get culled. It just says that the inferior get culled more often than the superior. Indeed, in terms of evolution, that is the definition of inferior and superior.

At least it is a serious warning about the dangers of choosing to hang out with stupid people, or counseling your children on hanging out with stupid people.

[ShadowHM]

people in the Netherlands accept the premise that they are the disarmed victims of crimes against their persons and property, and that gun ownership is merely for sport or hunting, not for killing people.

ORLY? How helpful of you to slip that little 'and' in there.
Furthermore, I am not from the Netherlands, but I would not be a 'disarmed victim' of crime - even if I had been held up at knife or gun point. Disarmed implies that somebody forced me to not own a gun. And, oddly enough, I do think that gun ownership is for hunting or target practice.

We've evolved into a culture which is loath to assign responsibility for negative outcomes to people's poor decisions. It's societies fault for permitting people to own guns, not her fault for choosing to own one, and leave it loaded where her kids can get to it.

And at the same time your culture clings to the 'we really really need our guns' meme, with all those differing rationale's offered, depending on who is doing the 'splaining this time.

Rationality isn't part of any culture, is it?

[--Pete]

Hi,

I've read in other places that over half of all vehicle accidents involve some level of intoxication. It should be possible for vehicle computers to sense when someone is driving erratically, and unsafely.

It should be possible for cops to sense that, too. And objective determination (urinalysis, preferably) should lead to permanent loss of license.

At least it is a serious warning about the dangers of choosing to hang out with stupid people, or counseling your children on hanging out with stupid people.

Just how is hanging around with stupid people different from being stupid? Birds of a feather and all that.

--Pete

[--Pete]

Hi,

And at the same time your culture clings to the 'we really really need our guns' meme, with all those differing rationale's offered, depending on who is doing the 'splaining this time.

Haven't we been around this Maypole before? Two things:

First, I say this without anger, without rancor, and without malice, but if you are not a citizen of the USA, then you really have no say in the matter. And to judge the nation on the basis of extremists on either side is both insulting to the majority and wrong.

Second, the Second Amendment still stands in all of its ambiguous glory. Anyone with strong pro or anti gun feelings should strive to get it repealed and a new, unambiguous amendment passed in its place. As it stands, under one interpretation, all gun control laws are unconstitutional. The other interpretation is even more ludicrous -- aren't armies normally armed? Why would the founding fathers feel that we needed an amendment just to arm our armies (i.e., militia)?

Of course, until things get extreme, nothing will change except the heat of the arguments. We need a (maybe few) cycle of the supreme court throwing out all gun control laws, followed by legislatures at all levels passing new ones to create the chaos out of which a new, and hopefully better, basis will be built. Unfortunately, the one complex sentence of the original will probably be replaced by a thousand page, equally complex and equally obscure document. And if recent history is any indicator, when the dust settles, part of the law will be that every person will have to own a gun or pay an annual fine for not doing so.

Bah!

--Pete