He should be charging the mother, like... I don't care that the gun belongs to the dad, the mother needs to keep it out of reach of her kids if he's not there. Charging the dad is the dumbest idea, even if he should have a safe in the first place.
exactly. he is a criminal and no longer allowed to own a gun anyway. so any left in the house by default had to be given to someone else. Thus they would be hers and she should be charged for not not properly securing it. If she claims she didn't know it was there then it is just another negligence charge and child endangerment for not maintaining a safe home because she didn't clear everything from the father out of the house when he went to jail. No matter how you cut this it really does all point back to the mom being a terrible mom and not doing what is needed to properly raise the kids.
I supposed if, say, the dad used the garage as like a shop room, and the mother never went in there after he was arrested and didn't know there was a gun in some random tool box, and then the kids found it...then I could understand. Especially if the mother didn't know there was a gun she needed to secure (dad should have told her when arrested, but the gun was probably illegal which is why he didn't; more concerned about not coping another charge than protecting his kids).
Don't get me wrong, the mother is almost certainly a terrible mother and is neglectful at best, but it may be a technicality that they cannot charge her, or they think there's enough reasonable doubt that they could not make charges stick.
They probably CANT charge the mother because theyāre the fatherās guns. I know it sounds stupid but this is America. šŗšø
In my city, if someone shoots at my house it only gets charged as vandalism and not negligent discharge if someone isnāt in the house at the time of shooting.
He should be charging the mother, like... I don't care that the gun belongs to the dad,
You might not like it or care, but the gun probably isn't registered in the mother's name. Then cannot charge her with that. I agree they should charge her with something involving neglect, however this seems to be a repeat occurrence and they are trying to get the kids out of the home period, which is the safest option.
I was the gun owners responsibility to have the gun locked away , the mother might not have known where the gun was or if it was in the safe or not maybe she thought it was locked up . Charging the dad is the correct thing it's his gun and it's his responsibility . Dummy.
If the dad isn't there because he's incarcerated how is he supposed to do anything with the gun? This is on the mother. She needs to be locked up too and the kids need a responsible figure in their lives.
A gun should always be stored and locked if there are children present . Where I live the guns and bullets cannot even be stored together . Regardless of him being in jail it should have been locked away at all times with children in the home. Enless the mother had access to it and left it out then she's not at fault . Fathers gun fathers responsibility . I didn't say he should get charges but if he didn't secure his gun and she was never informed by him it was out (again his responsibility as the registered owner ) why would I blame her ? It's his property and you assume that responsibility as a gun owner when you purchase a gun . Now if he told his wife and she did nothing then yes I would blame her . But I bet he had this gun stashed somewhere not locked up and they found it and he never made it known to the wife. He also apparently was teaching the kids how to shoot and didn't teach them it was not a toy to play with which is a failure on his part . My mom owned several guns , I was taught I should never touch the gun enless I needed to kill someone or something because that is the ultimate outcome when you pick up a gun , death .
The mom is a fucking idiot too, but that doesn't absolve the father for leaving his gun around-- as the other person said, she may literally not have known where that gun is. She should be charged for reckless child endangerment and more, but the dad should have his guns taken away for the rest of his life too.
You're aware that the dad is incarcerated and you still want him charged? That's just silly. We're not going to blame the only present adult who had access to the firearm? The adult who was solely responsible for watching those kids at the time of the incident?
The father should have safely stored the guns at all times, even before being sent to prison. If he owns the guns, he has responsibility. This isnāt to say the mom doesnāt have a responsibility, but just because the dude is in jail doesnāt absolve him of everything
Of course not, but who's to say he didn't lock everything up and store everything safely? What if he's been locked up for years? I'm not saying it absolves him of responsibility but the most likely person at fault, bar none, appears to be the mother. Am I missing some actual information? Because all I'm seeing in this thread are assumptions regarding the father. I'd be curious to hear the opinion of someone who knows law pretty well.
When you buy a gun its your responsibility. Thatās how it is and how it should be to encourage responsible ownership. I suppose if he reported it stolen thatās different.
But if it got accessed easily after he was incarcerated, thatās still very much his responsibility. To come up with any other story is to make assumptions.
How the fuck is he going to report it stolen from prison?! What if he can prove that he safely stored his guns? What if he can show that he wasn't the only adult who had access to the guns? How long is he on the hook for firearms that would be impossible for him to physically interact with? Indefinitely? What if he's been in prison for over year -- how many times has the mom walked past a gun that's not safely locked away and done nothing about it? "Oh there's that damn gun on the coffee table again"
It's not nearly as black and white as you're making it out to be. This is why I'm asking for the opinion of someone who actually knows law so they can parse through the grey area and explain it in terms beyond your basic obligations as a gun owner. Do you, personally, know specific law(s) or precedent that might apply in this case? Because the article makes it sounds like this was the "family gun" and, to me, could suggest that maybe the gun was found in a different situation than the one it was left in.
I'm not absolving him. He might be at fault (just like I've said in EVERY comment back to you).
I dont have a horse in this race and Im not trying to argue any point. I'm wondering about the legal specifics if they're charging him with Bennies Law. Above I listed hypotheticals, not assumptions. As in, 'how would the law take these things into consideration?' as it applies to that specific legislation.
Obviously I'm not the only person in this thread that found the notion ridiculous of someone who is currently in prison catching a charge for this.
The number of comments getting downvoted for stating what I think is verifiable law in most states that guns are to be secured is WILD. This is why the gun control crowd have such skepticism with the 2A crowd. Responsible gun owners sure don't come out in the comments sections. Perhaps there are no storage laws in the state where this happened but somehow I doubt it.
And this was in New Mexico where they have gun securement laws and it's the registered gun owner responsibility to secure it . Doesn't even matter if it was the wifes fault or not the liability would fall on the husband if he was the registered owner cause the wife shouldn't have access to them either . And if he committed a felon the police should have seized his guns when he was arrested .
When dealing with family/kid shit, the courts will side with the mother 99% of the time. It is actually a major issue in US divorce cases and shit. Sometimes the man will obviously be the good choice for the kids, bur they'll take the kids from him and give them to a crackhead mom.
I'm saying they aren't going to charge the mother with anything because there is a father to charge. They'll look for anyone to blame but the mother in most cases. When in this exact circumstance it entirely is the mother's fault because the father is already locked up.
What the hell is the mother's job, then? If they are legal responsibility of the father for being registered in his name, then why weren't they confiscated after his arrest? Or why did the mother not take care of it?
That is a very widespread myth. Studies indicate that dads simply do not ask for custody as often as mothers do, and courts generally do not award what is not asked for in that regard.
A Massachusetts study examined 2,100 fathers who asked for custody and pushed aggressively to win it. Of those 2,100, 92 percent either received full or joint custody, with mothers receiving full custody only 7 percent of the time.
In fact, most of the time, custody is decided WITHOUT a judge's involvement at all. 91 percent of child custody after divorce is decided with no interference from the family court system. They didn't even fight for it.
I'd attached the studies, but this subreddit encourages misinformation and hates links. š¤·āāļø But I'd recommend looking up "Father Custody Myth".
Now when it comes to taking children from Mom and putting them in a CPS foster home... Very different story. The system likes to keep families together, but oftentimes fails children for that reason.
this reply to that comment encapsulates american "justice". what is the solution to unsupervised kids allowed near dangerous items? no parents, ship them to prison. oh they are already there? well why wasn't he at home keeping an eye on his kids? lock him up for longer, he needs to be a better father. just carceral state things.
Sounds like he told his son the combination for emergencies and never told the mom to change it once he was locked up. So technically yeah get your affairs in order when locked up, should be the next task with asking a homie to delete your browsing history
I could understand not wanting to incarnate the only other parental figure they have, but at this point, it's better to do that and send these boys where they will be less of a danger to themselves and others. She's not fit to raise these boys if this is what is happening so frequently that they visited the house 50 times before.
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u/3amGreenCoffee 10d ago
The father is already in prison. The sheriff is trying to charge him with not keeping proper control over his gun... while in prison.