So, if you shoot your own baby dead, NBD, nothing to see here; it was an accident.

Yet, and rightfully so, a man who "squoze" his 6 week old's head in the crook of his arm is arrested.

http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/issaquah…

Hmm. Something fucked up here. Like that Lund, Sweden judge who ruled that, though the evidence showed the man violently raped the woman, the man didn't INTEND to rape her, so NBD, nothing to see here.

http://www.thelocal.se/20140114/swedish-…

By that logic, every defendant ever can just claim the consequences of their actions were not their intent and so they are therefore not guilty: the father who "squoze" his baby's head only intended to stop his crying, not to injure or possibly kill him, so NBD, nothing to see here. Why, then, was he arrested? Indeed, why arrest anyone who does not admit to desiring the result of their actions?

Logic fail all over the place.

Goldy - Good post and I completely agree with your statements. That gun clearly did not make that family safer. It didn't protect them from an outside intruder, a crazed rapist or a mass-murdering lunatic. Instead that gun killed one of their family members - a defenseless three year old. The fact that it is considered and "accident" and charges have not been filed says a huge amount about where it happened - Arkansas.

If the South wants to secede - I say let 'em go. Saw them off and set the entire South afloat.

Guns don't make homes safer in the aggregate, either:

"Homes with guns are a dozen times more likely to have household members or guests killed or injured by the weapon than by an intruder."
http://www.examiner.com/articl...

Whatever happened to Manslaughter charges?

Seems to me the message here is: "Want to kill your child and get away with it? Claim it was an accident with a gun involved. The NRA has got your back."

I agree with it being negligent rather than accidental, accidental implies a mechanical problem with the firearm. Negligence is failing to follow firearms safety rules, with tragic consequences in this case. We need to teach mandatory firearms safety at the grade school level and above.

In other armed citizen news:
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article…

@1 I recognize your sarcasm, but this does confuse a lot of people. the simple answer is "mens rea"--a negligent act, by definition, has no required element of intent to prove and state law-usually court precedent-determined whether an intentional crime should require the intent to cause the actual, or similar injury as the the injury that actually occurred or whether the intent to act is sufficient and having intentionally acted the person is responsible for the resulting injury without regard to the likelihood of that act causing the resulting injury. states can come down anywhere on the spectrum on these issues. Still, by definition, a negligence is not an accusation that the injury was an outcome sought by the accused.

I look forward to hearing about reports of the daily traffic negligence that results in gridlock and bike-running-redlight negligence.

Because cars are built to be killing machines only, and are as unregulated as guns.

Never mind.

@2
You're an ass. So we saw off the south, set them afloat, and then a kid is killed by a gun. Then it won't bother you. You are nimby pamby famby weak sauce.

Guns. America. The problem with guns in America is Americans. I would propose getting rid of one or the other.

Collectively, there is so much wrong with Americans, that I don't see how they (collectively) can be trusted to own easily-triggered means of destruction. America has a large faction of people who are stupid, ill-educated, fantasizing, emotional, substance-abusing, paranoid, self-centered, bad-tempered hysterics. They shoot trick-or-treaters, accident victims, anyone who startles them, makes them feel bad or triggers their xenophobia. They're careless, foolish, and drunk half of the time.

If we ever got invaded by a foreign army, you'd be in more danger from your idiot armed neighbors.

statistically, there's like one of these a week. it won't change in our lifetimes, because of the phenomenal saturation of guns in the population. and as long as it's some dumbfuck killing his own progeny, it's darwin in action.

there's just nothing left to say.

"At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'd just like to point out that this handgun that was purchased online a month ago (a Christmas present perhaps?) did not make this family safer."

Goldy, you are the only one making the blanket statement that guns make you safer.
You have been corrected on this issue many times.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
"There is a difference between arguing the blanket statement that guns make us safer and arguing that guns can be used to defend one's self against death, serious bodily harm or tyranny."

And now the dad can make a tidy sum by selling the gun into the grey market of confirmed kill weapons.

@12: Correction? That's rich, coming from the guy who erroneously claims, in the face of all the evidence brought to bear against him, that there is not a positive correlation between rates of gun ownership and suicide. (See this if you want the latest in f.u and his disgraceful and embarrassing lies.)
Explain this

@7

Actually you just made the argument FOR gun control. Thanks.

In the US we regulate cars (have to show that you know how to drive, have to have a license, have to wear seat belts) and bikes (have to wear a helmet, can't ride on certain streets/ highways) more than we regulate guns.

@11 You are wrong. Things will definitely change in our lifetime.

Look at how, in our lifetime smoking has changed (if you born in the 1970s such as myself). People use to smoke on airplanes, in hospitals, etc etc. Now smoking is banned in most bars.

Plus we are increasingly becoming a more urbanized country while at the same time gun ownership is dwindling (as in proportion of American who own guns).

Sometime within the next ten years the Democrats will retake the House while also having a Democratic president. At that point sane gun laws will finally pass nationwide.

Also, I believe that the Supreme Court will ultimately reverse it's misguided "Heller V DC" decision. It may in ten years or it may be in twenty but it will happen.

@14
My internet stalker who makes thinly veiled suggestions that I kill myself, as I have posted before,
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…

Japan and England demonstrate that your claims are invalid.

It was you, my internet stalker who makes thinly veiled suggestions that I kill myself, who tried to imply negative suicides.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…
"This doesn't mean that the number you added was negative,"

And then you used the phrase "negative correlation" incorrectly. A negative correlation in this context means that as gun ownership goes up, suicides go down.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…
"There is no such thing as a negative suicide, but there is such thing as a negative correlation."

I have an internet stalker.
And my internet stalker likes to make thinly veiled suggestions that I kill myself.

@12: Or three year olds. Don't forget three year olds! God knows they are a menace.

More Cascadian PIG and his GUN FETISH DEATH CULT.

I love how the fuck concedes negligence. Boy howdy!

@16: Watching you try to debate some one stratospherically smarter than you is delicious.

So, an idiot an Arkansas kills his kid with a gun, and that is an argument against guns. Fair enough...
Now how about all the children killed by swimming pools? Is a guaranteed right to a swimming pool anywhere in the Constitution? No. Can people survive and live healthy lives without swimming pools? Yes. So why not articles on the evils of swimming pools?
Swimming pools actually cause MORE accidental child deaths than guns. So why doesn't the Stranger ever talk about that? Could it be because they don't want to offend their left-wing echo chamber audience who don't ever want to hear a different opinion? No, couldn't be...

@20 Because equating swimming pools and guns is stupid.

Well, Mr. Goldstein, I completely agree with your post.

Nothing more to add, other than I applaud your restraint in making your point.

@20: you must be new here to trot out the fucking swimming pool arugment. please fuck right off back whence you came.

@15: i'd like to be wrong, but my cynicism regarding progress in america is as high as it's ever been.

@20, Derp…swimming pools are not designed and built solely to kill. See argument re: cars.

@22

Ack. Sorry to respond to my own post, but I misread your post, Goldy. I do agree with #12. You are the only one who is making the claim that guns don't make you safer. Keep whipping that dead strawman.

On your negligence point, I do agree, though. Well said.

@20:

Swimming pools, like automobiles, hot dogs, stairs or plastic bags (all of which are causes of accidental child deaths) are not designed for the specific intention of killing another person. Yet, if a parent were to utilize any of these in an unsafe manner resulting in their child's death, they would still have a reasonably high probability of being charged with some form of negligence. But, for some strange reason, people who stupidly handle firearms or leave them lying around in a manner that results in their child's death, all too often get a free pass, because "accident".

Only one thing can help: more guns I say! More guns! More guns! More guns!

@28:

You'd think 310,000,000 guns would be enough for us 'murkins, but apparently we won't all be safe until we have at least another 100,000,000 or or 200,000,000 more in circulation.

@29: But didn't you hear? These guns don't make us safer! They don't want to be accused of saying that because it's obviously false! They just have to have them anyways, and we can't stop them.

@31, I don't think anyone here is saying that the father should face no legal consequences.

@27
If you're implying the issue here is this idiot wasn't charged, than I agree 100%. An idiot who leaves a loaded gun around should be charged with criminally negligent homicide. My question is, if this had happened in the case of a pool, and not a gun, would this be a story?

And as for the "guns are designed to kill people" argument, look at it this way: what if a kid found and played with his father's katana and cut himself in the neck and bled to death? Would that be the same? After all, swords, unlike guns, were invented for the sole purpose of killing people (hunting rifles are called "hunting rifles" for a reason. I've never heard of a "hunting sword")

Something tells me that if this kid in far away Arkansas had died as a result of a sword, bow and arrow, butterfly knife or some other weapon this would not be in the Stranger.

Maybe the Stranger could run a story on how Mexican farmers are using guns including the *gasp!* AR-15 to defend their communities from the Cartels because the government has proven incapable of doing so? I doubt it. The last thing the Stranger wants to do is show a story of citizens with guns defending themselves. Better to wait for the police I suppose...

@23
When in doubt, don't use logic or reason, just CURSE THEM OUT! Way to go! Nothing says "superior argument" like not arguing but simply using profanity.

What @6 said. Negligence is not criminal (you can sue someone to pay you damages caused by negligence, though, as O.J. Simpson found out). Crime requires intent or, as a minimum, recklessness. (This may have been the result of reckless behavior.)

@33 Making the argument that guns were invented to kill animals, not people, doesn't really help your point. They were still invented to efficiently kill something. Swimming pools and cars were not invented to kill anything...therefore, the comparison doesn't hold up.

And as for the sword argument: I think you're incorrect that a story like that wouldn't get coverage. A child dying because its parents left something out that is intended to harm people and is clearly dangerous to that child? That's worthy of news coverage regardless of what the object is. And frankly, it would get coverage just because it would be so unusual to hear about a child dying because he played with a katana.

Which, of course, brings up part of the problem with guns, and part of what Goldy is trying to point out. A child getting killed because of a gun in the house is a terribly common story. Maybe that wouldn't be the case if we changed how we deal with and talk about guns in our culture.

And, by the way, we're talking about American gun culture here. If more of the story comes out and it turns out that this three year old's dad kept a gun in the house because he was constantly being attacked by members of a drug cartel, then maybe we'll all reconsider how we feel about it...

@38

No, guns don't kill that many children in America. Swimming pools, again, kill more children. If this is about what kills children, than let's talk about that.

And I never said guns were invented to kill animals. All I said was that some guns were designed not for killing people, but for hunters to shoot deer with, while no sword has ever been made for the purpose of anything but to kill humans. Hence, swords are more of a "man-killing device" than guns.

As for the "guns in America" topic, it is tired. Russia has nowhere near the "gun culture" America has, has ten times the gun control laws, and yet it has significantly more gun violence than America does.

If idiots leave anything dangerous around a kid, be it power tools, guns, knives, or, most common of all, household poisons, they are guilty of child neglect. To pick on only the story about guns shows a clear bias.

@33 nope it is still a stupid argument.

I just can't imagine a situation in which I'm cleaning my pool and it goes off and drowns the neighbor's kid.

Just can't figure out how I'd conceal carry my pool.

Can't figure out how I'd grab my pool and chase someone out of my house.

Really just find your point stupid.

@39 - Wait, what is your problem with a clear bias? A concealed bias might be an issue on some topics, but how does that affect the argument?

Most sexual assault does not occur in the military. And yet, sexual assault in the military is a hugely important issue. Would it make any sense to tell people that more sexual assault happens in the cities than in the military, and singling out stories regarding the military is showing a clear bias?

@10 "America has a large faction of people who are stupid, ill-educated, fantasizing, emotional, substance-abusing, paranoid, self-centered, bad-tempered hysterics."

To be fair, France has them too, except they're a bit less ill-educated because we're mostly "religious"-education free.

If there were as many guns in France as in America, there would be a lot more deaths here too. No geographical human group is collectively less hysteric than another (except religious fanaticists, who are always worse in theocracies, like the US).

@39,
don't you know, on SLOG an accidental gun death of a child is at least 6x worse than the accidental death of a kid who explored the neighborhood and died in a pool.

@39 Okay, I still don't see why it matters if a gun was intended to kill a deer or a human...it's still made to kill something. Pools are intended for relaxation, fun, and exercize, power tools are intended for building/cutting/cleaning/etc, household knives are intended for cooking, and household poisons are intended for cleaning and things like that. Guns are intended for killing. So, an argument that compares guns to the things mentioned has to take their intended uses into consideration.

If you install a swimming pool for the sake of having somewhere to cool off and relax, and your child drowns in it because you failed to put up a safety fence, then you are a negligent parent. If you buy a gun for the sake of shooting a burglar who comes into the house, and your child accidentally kills himself with it, then you are also a negligent parent. But the distinction is that the pool was made for relaxation and tragically killed a child (and the parents deserve the consequences for it), whereas the gun was made to kill something, and it did exactly what it was intended to do. That's why it's important to consider these things separately.

@42 Maybe you're making my point better than I am. I was trying to say something about stupid people having lots of guns available not being a good situation.

@43 So you don't see any ethical or emotional difference between a murder and an accident? You think manslaughter and first degree murder should have the same penalty?

You know, the actual number of kids shot every year pretty consistently hovers around the 100 mark (at least if you're ethical about not including teenaged gang-bangers in that number). While I agree that 100 dead kids a year is 100 too many, in a country of 310,000,000 people, it's pretty fucking ridiculous to get too worked-up about such an incredibly tiny number. I can think of literally thousands of things that are more important.

@47: That's far more Americans than are killed by acts of terrorism in a typical year. And yet we're plenty willing to make an effort to stop that from happening, but we can't impose some amount of oversight so that gun owners will be more responsible about how they store their weapons? Nuts.

No, you can't cite one example of a ridiculously overblown over-reaction in support of another. Neither one are valid.

@47 Care to provide a source for this "100 kids shot per year" stat? A quick google search pulled up a study from October that found 500 kids died in hospitals after gunshots in 2009. Is that enough? How high would the number have to get before you consider it a worthy problem for public discussion?

I suspect that if your child was shot and killed then you would not feel that it was "pretty fucking ridiculous" to get worked up.

The point is that these deaths are easily preventable. We need to be doing everything we can to prevent them.

Let's sum it up this way. It is not the object that is responsible. It is how the object is used. There are many ways to die or be killed. So many unnecessary deaths. So many warnings ignored. The wheel is still round and it won't get any rounder no matter how much you discuss it. If people would do what they "should" do or are "supposed" to do or are "warned" to do or are "trained" to do and so on.....injuries and deaths would not happen (or at the very least not happen as much).

Ignorance can be fixed stupid is forever!