Comments On: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison by Charles Mudede

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Victor1122 — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:29:52 -0700

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Posted by Victor1122

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

clashfan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:44:31 -0800

I've read of parents being charged for withholding medical care from their sick children, if the kid died from it. I doubt they got much (if any) jail time, but I think the prosecutor wanted to make an example of them. I've also read of parents charged when their kid was killed in a car accident and they didn't have him secured in a child safety seat. (The kid was sick, and Mom was holding him while Dad drove them to the pharmacy.)

I see no particular reason why this man can't be charged with something.
Posted by clashfan

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

dwightmoodyforgetsthings — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:48:43 -0800

@49- Insults, obfuscations, slander and attempts at misdirection don't hide the fact you called someone a liar for telling the truth.
Posted by dwightmoodyforgetsthings

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Drusilla — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 07:29:37 -0800

#38, as to why parents are not charged for accidental deaths while non-parents are...your chattel idea makes some sense, but I think perhaps it also has to do with empathy. The idea is that this guy killed his own child; his life is destroyed. No punishment could be worse than that, so why bother charging him? At least, this idea applies to white people.
This happened recently in Vermont. A young man decided to wake up his sleeping friend by pointing a gun at him and pulling the trigger. He thought it was a paintball gun; it was a rifle. Well, the friend died of course. The killer was only sentenced to a year in prison for the sort of empathetic reasoning described above.
It would be interesting to research what percent of "accidental," negligent deaths of children by parents result in criminal charges being filed, and to study the convictions and sentences. I'll bet you a thousand bucks that black parents get charged and convicted far more often than whites do. And I'm pretty sure that mothers who kill through negligence are treated far more harshly than fathers.

Posted by Drusilla

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Theodore Gorath — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 05:55:53 -0800

@45, 46:

I was responding to one person who stated that the NRA does not care about gun safety, and did not encourage people to check the chamber for bullets. I then linked to the NRA's website which proved the exact opposite. If you need to believe the NRA wants piles of dead babies everywhere, that is your business, but the rest of us have to live in the real world.

Bring up new and unrelated arguments and semantic distinctions if you want, but you are not even on topic anymore. Legislation and lobbying is a totally different issue. I am not in the NRA, I do not support the NRA, and I think they are a shitty organization for many of the reasons you mentioned. But telling lies about them does not advance the conversation, even if it makes you personally happy to demonize others.

Go back to defending and protecting pedophiles Dwight Moody, it is what you do best:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
Posted by Theodore Gorath

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

aureolaborealis — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:43:57 -0800

Oh, and @14: +1
Posted by aureolaborealis

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

aureolaborealis — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:42:10 -0800

@11, 21: Nice.

@19, 20, 27: +1

@42: manslaughter, negligent homicide <> murder

Piling on ...

A loaded gun sitting on the dash "just went off" ? What the fuck does that mean? I'd like to know what kind of gun it is, and how, exactly, that kind of gun can "just go off" when it's not being touched. Even a cocked single-action pistol with a round in the chamber will not "just go off" if it sitting there untouched. I'm not even considering the fact that it was pointed at his kid in the first place.

I'm not saying he shot his kid on purpose, but, based on this limited information, I'm guessing the gun was in hand when it went off.

Posted by aureolaborealis

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

dwightmoodyforgetsthings — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:22:51 -0800

@44- The NRA is an gun advocacy group that does not advocate for strict gun safety regulations, in fact they actively work against any such thing. They suggest you behave safely, but don't want enforcement for it. This is what @14 pointed out and what you failed to refute.

Now go fuck yourself.
Posted by dwightmoodyforgetsthings

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

MK1 — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:26:30 -0800

@44 You're right the NRA doesn't make laws. They pour obscene amounts of money into preventing any kind of law that would regulate gun ownership from being passed. They can "believe" in gun safety all they want but as long as they actively oppose legislating gun safety we can all feel free to believe that they care more about the rights of irresponsible gun owners than the rights of everyone else not to get shot by them.
Posted by MK1

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Theodore Gorath — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 06:11:49 -0800

@34: Since the NRA does not make laws (you know that right?) anything they say is technically a "suggestion." The point is that the NRA, like them or not, does believe in gun safety and does provide a lot of materials and courses to teach gun safety.

Why the hell would they want accidental or purposeful gun violence? It is detrimental to their group and political ideology.

How stupid are you?
Posted by Theodore Gorath

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Patricia Kayden — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:46:39 -0800

@21,

That was actually funny!
Posted by Patricia Kayden

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

DRF — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:35:01 -0800

I agree with the police on this one. This was an accident. The guy was careless with his gun and it went off--it should have been locked up when not in use--but that's not murder.
Posted by DRF

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

NotSean — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:29:08 -0800

@38 I have the very same questions.
Posted by NotSean

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Tawnos — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:10:52 -0800

@39, I agree with your overall assessment, but when most people refer to a "safety" they're thinking of a lever which acts as either a trigger disconnect, hammer block, or striker block. I make the pedantic correction because of the common misconception that you, clearly, don't share. Namely, many people who are unfamiliar with firearms will say something like "make sure the safety is on" when asked for how to check if a gun is safe.

None of the pistols I listed have any form of external switch safety, pull the trigger and they'll fire. The XD, GLOCK, and PPS will fire without that much trigger pull (all are around 6lbs stock), so it's important to clear the misconception that a "safety" is anything but a finger kept off the trigger.
Posted by Tawnos

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Bruce Garrett — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:51:15 -0800

@35: What you have on the Sig, as I read the literature, is decocking lever in lieu of a safety, and once that is used, according to the literature I read (I do not own one of those), the weapon is then "drop safe", meaning the firing pin is blocked from striking a round unless the trigger is pulled. Blocking the firing pin from striking unless the trigger is pulled is a very common mechanical means of preventing accidental discharges on modern firearms. And after the hammer is decocked you would need to do a double action pull to get it to fire...which I would imagine is kinda hard to do "accidentally".

But never mind...as you say, he violated three of the four rules for gun safety, but it's rule #2 that I'm going on about here because there seems to be this widespread misconception about the ease of which guns can go off by accident that allows people to get away with blaming the gun for their own stupid carelessness...when it's even that. No: he would have had his finger on the trigger. That was no accident, any more then turning the key in your ignition drunk is an accident. It was carelessness, and it got a kid killed.
Posted by Bruce Garrett

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Charlie Mas — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:20:24 -0800

There is something that disturbs me about this story and similar stories in which people accidently kill their own children: often no charges are filed.

Given identical circumstances, if the victim were anyone but the negligent party's own child, wouldn't charges be filed without fail? Consider if the 7-year-old who died in this story were anyone else's child. Surely in such a case charges would definitely be filed and there would probably also be hard jail time after the inevitable guilty verdict.

The leniency shown in cases in which people kill their own children suggests that the children were chattel - the parent's property - rather than human beings in their right with their own right to live. Is it any less a crime just because the child who died was his own? His owned child?

Or am I totally wrong and the criminal justice process would be the same if it were the neighbor's 7-year-old who caught the bullet?
Posted by Charlie Mas

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

MikeB — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:15:43 -0800

In my mid sized town in the south, twice in 2012, people have purchased hand guns at a gun show, gone to the parking garage, loaded the weapon, and accidentally shot themselves. Which makes me wonder how many people accidentally fired their new guns the same way without hitting anybody.
Posted by MikeB

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

fetish — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:29:19 -0800

Keep this in mind when some The Stranger comes to the defense of some hipster who's being accused of giving his buddy tainted cocaine.
Posted by fetish

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Tawnos — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:21:19 -0800

@27 - care to point out a safety on my Sig 226?
http://i.imgur.com/FS9WQ.png

How about on a Walther PPS? Or Springfield XD? Or any GLOCK, Smith and Wesson M&P, or Ruger subcompact, etc? The point is, a "safety switch" doesn't exist on most semiautomatic pistols that are commonly owned and carried.

The excuse "I didn't think it was loaded" isn't valid. You always treat guns as if they're loaded until you've personally checked them and left them like in the picture above (magazine removed, slide racked back). In group firearm training, this means any "unloaded" firearm must be unloaded in a safe direction and the breach shown to all participants.

This tool violated 3 of the 4 essential gun rules (and probably the 4th, but that's irrelevant here):
1) he assumed it was unloaded
2) he had his finger on the trigger
3) he had it pointed in an unsafe direction

Posted by Tawnos

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

dwightmoodyforgetsthings — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:22:27 -0800

@28, here's what @14 said "Checking the chamber as far as they're concerned is nothing more than a suggestion."

You linked to the NRA's suggestions.

You have no right to call anyone a liar.
Posted by dwightmoodyforgetsthings

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

venomlash — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:15:09 -0800

@20: Got it in one. Thank you.

Best Mudede post I've seen in ages.
Posted by venomlash

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Charles Mudede — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:57:51 -0800

@26, also nails it: "There's nothing astonishing about the current case - we live in a culture which values gun ownership more absolutely than the responsibility to use them."
Posted by Charles Mudede

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Charles Mudede — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:50:54 -0800

@19, simply nailed it and the meaning of this post.
Posted by Charles Mudede

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Orv — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:49:45 -0800

@28: I think the point was that the NRA doesn't believe people should have to take classes or demonstrate knowledge on any of these issues before being allowed to own a gun.

It's like if there were a National Car Association that offered up driving safety tips but insisted no one should have to take a test to get a driver's license.

Posted by Orv

Re: How to Kill Your Child and Not End Up in Prison

Jaymz — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:17:30 -0800

Negligence, gross negligence, criminal negligence, criminal intent - all different concepts and all dealt with differently in the law. Let's see what the investigation reveals, and allow prosecutorial discretion to sort it out.

I'll actually bootstrap on @23 - praise to @20 and kudos to @21.

Gun regulation just makes sense, including the requirement that all guns be registered and all registered owners pass a test, just like we do for driving motor vehicles.
Posted by Jaymz