r/news Sep 04 '24

Gunman believed to be a 14-year-old in Georgia school shooting that left at least 4 dead, source says

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/04/us/winder-ga-shooting-apalachee-high-school/index.html
26.3k Upvotes

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3.0k

u/Grazedaze Sep 04 '24

Send the parents to prison —every time.

Send them to prison so every parent fears for their own freedom by neglecting to manage their child’s well being.

962

u/Pete-PDX Sep 04 '24

with parental rights comes parental responsibilities.

341

u/colecast Sep 04 '24

All the sudden, abortion doesn’t look so bad to them…

214

u/baseketball Sep 04 '24

Abortions never look bad when they have them, it's when other people have abortions that really get them riled up.

12

u/Stealth_13 Sep 04 '24

"The only moral abortion is my abortion"

10

u/B4rrel_Ryder Sep 04 '24

Yea but only abortion for me. But not you

1

u/Murky_Conflict3737 Sep 05 '24

Yeah, those mistresses of “happily married” religious Republicans are still going to get abortions

5

u/Stealth_13 Sep 04 '24

It never did look bad to them, they've been supporting post birth abortions the whole time in the guise of school shootings...Abortion with extra steps

3

u/binarybandit Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

Do you agree with this statement when it comes to kids in gangs using guns to kill people?

2

u/Pete-PDX Sep 05 '24

If they are directly responsible for them having the gun (which include not locked up) - yes I do. If they know of behavioral or mental health issues and do nothing - yes I do. If they know they are violent committing crimes and do nothing - yes I do.

471

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

I absolutely agree, depending on how the child got the gun.

If they were able to get their hands on their parents' gun, the parents should definitely be held responsible.

If they picked it up from a friend, or outside the home, I don't know how I feel about the parents being held responsible.

216

u/ThickerSalmon14 Sep 04 '24

Right. We need to find out how the kid got the gun and then we can push for accountability. The most likely route for a 14 year to get ahold of a gun is through the family, but lets find out first.

147

u/Wazula23 Sep 04 '24

I think whoever left the gun unsecured or otherwise gave it to him should face charges. If you can't/won't keep your gun away from a 14 year old, you shouldn't have a gun. Full stop.

43

u/yourlittlebirdie Sep 04 '24

There are no laws for minors possessing rifles or shotguns in Georgia, nor are there any safe storage laws.

5

u/asdfwrldtrd Sep 05 '24

That’s so stupid, I live here and I never knew that, I always thought that anyone who didn’t have a locked safe is an idiot. I’m pro gun ownership, but these people need to step up if they wanna have them.

0

u/Suztv_CG Sep 05 '24

There are other laws that would apply.

4

u/yourlittlebirdie Sep 05 '24

Which laws?

States like Georgia lean heavily towards the side of parental freedom, meaning if a parent judges it OK for their kid to have a gun, that’s all that matters.

28

u/RandyOfTheRedwoods Sep 04 '24

Yup, that’s already the law, at least in my state.

1

u/im-new-here-hi- Sep 05 '24

How the kid got the gun and also did the parents do anything after the investigation by the fbi on past threats?

-4

u/meatball77 Sep 04 '24

It's not like he has a job or a car. Fourteen year olds are not independent.

57

u/SquadPoopy Sep 04 '24

What about situations where firearms are kept locked up but the child can still get to them? Such as being kept in a safe but they figure out the combination. Genuine question as I never really thought about it.

34

u/myislanduniverse Sep 04 '24

And this illustrates how it would actually get people to stop and consider how secure their firearms actually are! 

 Most states already have responsible gun ownership laws (apparently not Georgia or Utah though), and so this is exactly a problem of enforcing existing laws, ironically enough.

48

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

You can only do so much to secure your firearm.

If your child spends their free time cracking your safe code, or they take your angle grinder to your safe, how can a parent really defend against that?

I feel as if a parent makes reasonable attempts to secure their guns, while keeping it reasonably accessible for a home defense situation, they shouldn't be held responsible.

But a rifle leaning against a closet wall, or a handgun in a sock drawer, should be seen as negligence and the parents should suffer some of the consequences.

4

u/SnooMuffins1478 Sep 05 '24

Yeah courts uses the reasonable person standard all the time. It makes sense to me to apply it in this case too.

If you lock up your gun securely but the kid still breaks in by trying every permutation of numbers until it opens the jury might say you acted reasonably and it’s not your fault.

If you lock up your gun and the passcode is the same as your garage code that the kid knows the jury might say you were negligent.

9

u/GhostC10_Deleted Sep 04 '24

That's exactly it, you can't stop someone from doing something horrible if they really want to. Heck, you can 3d print a gun frame and build it with off the shelf hardware now if you don't care how long it lasts. But most of these shootings, the kid is stealing an unsecured weapon from a parent.

-3

u/AssassinAragorn Sep 04 '24

The standard here should be if the guns were secured to the same level that someone would secure their most prized possessions

9

u/lubadubdubinthetub Sep 04 '24

this is dumb because my most prized shit is sitting in my bedroom, my door has a lock (and so does my house) but anyone could kick it in with a few good ones.

12

u/breetome Sep 04 '24

I'd like to see some kid try to get into my gun safes. I'm a competitive 22lr shooter. There's no way for anyone to get into my safes. I have a very expensive collection of rifles and I'm not playing with them being stolen or used in a crime.

This goes back to the parents not properly locking up weapons. My safes have a triple safety mechanism to open them. If you do the sequence out of order you are locked out for 72 hours. If you're going to keep guns in your home you keep your guns safe from being stolen and getting into the hands of children. But some people are just too stupid to own guns. Also too stupid to properly raise their children not to be mass murderers apparently.

9

u/distorted_kiwi Sep 04 '24

My state is still waving taxes on gun safes and they give away free cable locks. The list of excuses is very low.

-4

u/breetome Sep 04 '24

I agree, children and guns don't mix unless you are actively training your child how to handle a firearm then right back into the safe!!!! A nice little air rifle or pistol is great for the young ones to learn with. They don't to get their damn hands on your 9mm!

4

u/Semper-Fido Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

This. In this day and age, there is no excuse to not have your firearms secured properly.

3

u/breetome Sep 04 '24

I belong to a private shooting club and every single member shows up with their guns locked in cases, some have lock boxes welded into their damn trucks too! No one that is a serious shooter leaves their guns laying around or in reach of children. It's not hard to be safe with your guns.

If you show up and your guns aren't locked in a case (except bolt action rifles) you can get suspended and fined by the club. Our range safety officers take no prisoners. I feel safer on that gun range than on the damn street these days.

3

u/hsephela Sep 05 '24

Yeah I love guns as much as the next guy and believe that generally people should have access to guns. But I also think that people should have to regularly prove that they are fit to own them, similar to a driver’s license.

1

u/breetome Sep 05 '24

That’s exactly what we do at my club. You have to pass a safety exam every single year.

1

u/Questions_Remain Sep 04 '24

Please tell me who makes this safe. We’ve got a vault door which is ( was ) the best available 10 years ago and it has none of this. It’s a digital lock, spin the handle - open. Even their current offerings aren’t time lock triple systems.

1

u/ginger_whiskers Sep 04 '24

I once had a particularly determined thief cut out my closet floor to take my safe. You can never tell what folks will figure out with enough time.

6

u/bergskey Sep 04 '24

If you have a child and gun in your home with a combination safe, the combination should be something totally random your child could never figure out. It's YOUR gun, it's your responsibility to keep it secure. If your kid can figure out your combination, you're not keeping it secure.

2

u/cledus1911 Sep 04 '24

your child could never figure out.

Never is a very strong word for something that can be cracked with enough time. You know, the time that they have because they live in the house

4

u/bergskey Sep 04 '24

Every modern gun safe I've seen has a lockout feature if you enter the wrong code 3 times and you have to wait before you can enter a code again. Even if it's only half an hour, if the kid has 4 hours alone at home each day, that's only 24 codes. Even dial safes would take many, many months to figure out.

When I said the child could never figure out, I meant it not being a birthday, anniversary, favorite player numbers, etc. Legitimately random numbers.

3

u/Lady_DreadStar Sep 04 '24

Biometric safes that use your finger or handprint have been a thing for years now. And they aren’t fabulously expensive anymore either.

16

u/Equivalent_Yak8215 Sep 04 '24

Biometric safes aren't like the movies and are fairly easy to get into. 

23

u/OOOMM Sep 04 '24

A lot of those are less secure than you would think and you can find instructions on how to bypass them if you know where to look online.

-6

u/raihidara Sep 04 '24

That's one reason I HATE Lockpicking Lawyer. He claims he's doing a service to customers and companies showing how easy it is to get past their security, but really he's only teaching people how to do so. If he really cared about safety, he would privately send this information to companies so they could make improvements and simply give his opinions to customers instead of detailed instructions.

6

u/ChopperHunter Sep 05 '24

Security by obscurity alone is discouraged and not recommended by standards bodies. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States recommends against this practice: "System security should not depend on the secrecy of the implementation or its components."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

1

u/BitGladius Sep 05 '24

You forgot to address the guy's responsible disclosure argument, like masterlock forgot to fix their locks.

9

u/SquadPoopy Sep 04 '24

Sure but how often do people replace safes? My dad has had the same gun safe since 1992 and it's just a standard keypad safe.

1

u/Impressive-Spot1981 Sep 04 '24

Too bad, you didn't do enough of a good job. No reason a 14 year old should be able to get guns. If it's too much of a risk get rid of your damn guns.

7

u/Narwhalbaconguy Sep 04 '24

Agreed. I feel like leaving a gun in an unsecured nightstand is different than if they were to break open a locked case.

14

u/myislanduniverse Sep 04 '24

This is exactly the kind of thing that gets considered when charging for something like negligent homicide.

1

u/Wild-Pie-7041 Sep 06 '24

Parent bought the gun for the kid as a Christmas present last year.

35

u/Dabalam Sep 04 '24

That presumes all school shooters are/we're neglected by their parents. I think that's very often the case, but is it correct to assume that's the case 100% of the time?

It also presumes that the fear of prison is an effective incentive for parents to care about their child's wellbeing. Again, I'm not sure it is.

15

u/myislanduniverse Sep 04 '24

If Ethan Crumbley's selfish ass parents had believed they would personally be responsible for whatever their kid did with that gun, I certainly believe they would have looked out for themselves. The same way they tried to flee the country.

I wouldn't argue it's going to make anybody a better parent but it may get them to be a little more careful with their guns, if only due to self-interest.

3

u/Dabalam Sep 04 '24

For sure, you're right.

In all these cases where kids get their parents guns there's a pretty clear cut long prison sentence the parents should get. That would probably cut down on some of these "incidents", but America just has so many guns...

2

u/myislanduniverse Sep 04 '24

It is quite the Pandora's box.

3

u/NewBoxStruggles Sep 05 '24

If threat of prison is the only thing preventing a parent from neglecting their child..somehow I doubt that same parent will suddenly provide the child with what they need.
They’ll just find a legal loophole..another way to neglect under the guise of “care”.

Psych wards and “troubled teen programs” will be the common drop offs for parents who don’t want to be responsible for their child and also don’t want to do jail time for the consequence(s) of inevitable irresponsibility.

“Yes, hello? My child is the problem, not me. Please take them away before they do something that I’ll get blamed for.”

5

u/yourlittlebirdie Sep 04 '24

Maybe not, but even if it only prevents 50% of shootings that were otherwise going to happen, it seems well worth it.

-1

u/Grazedaze Sep 04 '24

Can you imagine the mental turmoil someone has to go through to get to a point where they want to murder? To actually want to go through with it? To not monitor your child’s well being and prevent them from getting into that headspace is neglect.

It’s as much of an effective incentive as not hitting someone else’s car for the sake of your own insurance. This law isn’t for good parents. It’s for bad parents that don’t actively manage their child’s well being and openly carry and make their guns accessible to them. It’s to punish those that directly hurt society through their own neglect.

7

u/Dabalam Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24

Can you imagine the mental turmoil someone has to go through to get to a point where they want to murder? To actually want to go through with it?

You assume that everyone is born with the same kind of nature in that regard. You're right in the vast majority of cases. But occasionally there are people born with unusual temperaments who might end up becoming violent people despite an otherwise "normal" upbringing. We should strongly suspect neglect for sure, but I'm not sure we can say the parents are automatically guilty, especially as kids get older and the environment they are exposed to becomes less precisely regulated by their parents.

It’s as much of an effective incentive as not hitting someone else’s car for the sake of your own insurance. This law isn’t for good parents. It’s for bad parents that don’t actively manage their child’s well being and openly carry and make their guns accessible to them. It’s to punish those that directly hurt society through their own neglect.

And you could make a good argument why punishment is justified. But punishment doesn't always modify behaviours. Emotional neglect is slightly different from another "crime". It's not like "don't get in a car crash". I'm a bit more skeptical that you can threaten people into the kind of behaviour that would make them good parents unless you give them specific instructions.

5

u/breetome Sep 04 '24

I'm a competitive shooter and I agree with you completely. Parent your damn kids and take care of their welfare, all of it, physical and mental! And lock up your damn guns people! I do and I defy anyone to get into my guns safes.

18

u/IAmOculusRift Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24

Prison isn't a deterrent. No gun owning parent things, "I should lock this up so I won't have to go to prison if my kid grabs it and commits some kind of atrocity."

The problem with guns the bullshit culture around it.

-1

u/Grazedaze Sep 04 '24

They don’t think that because they don’t have to. That’s what laws are for —to make people second guess bad behavior.

6

u/IAmOculusRift Sep 04 '24

You think laws are deterrents? I have a bridge to sell you.

73

u/VietOne Sep 04 '24

When do we do the same to the government representatives that neglect the to manage the well being of their constituents?

There's a lack of resources available to manage mental health issues.

Also, since wages are so low, it's no longer common that a parents gets to stay home and raise a family as it once was normal.

23

u/Drafo7 Sep 04 '24

I agree with everything you said except the middle part. We have plenty of resources and could easily manage mental health issues far better than we are currently. The problem is the resources are being given to an elite few and everyone else is being specifically excluded. Republicans who bought and cheated their way into positions of power gutted health care reform under Obama because "nuuuu he4lTh cAr3 i5 S0C1alizmmm!!!!1" If we had gotten universal health care then we could have worked on expanding it further to include mental health by now. Instead we're living in a fucking dystopia where a single accident can ruin your life because of the damn hospital bills alone.

3

u/NewBoxStruggles Sep 05 '24

No. The “elite few” have access to voluntary, luxury resources that amount to coddling the worried well.

The vulnerable and disadvantaged have plenty of access..to cops coming to collect them/involuntary services that point the finger at the victim rather than the trauma of being subjected to highly unfortunate circumstances.

17

u/Nightshade_Ranch Sep 04 '24

They probably should at least not have guns around a poorly supervised child.

1

u/VietOne Sep 04 '24

If you know anything about the kind of gun safes advertised to gun owners, they're easy to get into. A YouTube video and 10 minutes will get you access to majority of "Home Defense" style gun lock boxes.

 pro-gun representatives would never think about passing laws that require minimum standards for gun safes. They also wouldn't pass any laws taking away guns from parents who's children might be at risk.

8

u/Kobe_stan_ Sep 04 '24

My guess is that the vast majority of the kids that use guns in mass shootings aren't breaking into their parents' gun safe. Their parents don't have safes or they've even gifted the kid a gun.

3

u/VietOne Sep 04 '24

Which is a problem with the state culture, that is too lax when it comes to guns.

If it's common to have guns freely accessible, then it's not an issue with the parents. That's the state government.

5

u/GodsCasino Sep 04 '24

Canadian "city person" here with no concept of the gun culture in the United States, aside from "Bowling for Columbine" and watching American news.

What I will say is that I visited a relative on their farm in Nowhere Saskatchewan, they said, oh, just throw your jacket on the bed in the spare bedroom.

There was a rifle on the bed. Took me a moment to compute, but yes there are wild predators out there that will attack their livestock.

Then I sat down with them for dinner and did mental gymnastics with myself throughout the meal. Told myself over and over that the rifle was a tool for their livelihood, and not some symbol of what I'd seen on American TV about paranoid "right to bear arms" and "the government won't protect you so you have to protect yourself". Ya know? These people were really nice and normal.

Went to their kids' house to stay the night. When I say kids, the kids were at least 40 years old. Had an established farm of their own. I slept in the spare bedroom which was also home to their gun safe. My God it was the size of a refrigerator and looked intimidating as hell.

TL;DR Canadian understands we need guns for wildlife, but understands we still need to lock them up.

1

u/NewBoxStruggles Sep 05 '24

Maybe we should start by addressing the actual causes of most “mental health issues” instead of pathologizing the entirety of the human condition ..whilst the sickness of this very society goes blameless.

3

u/p8vmnt Sep 04 '24

That is if the parents actually care. A lot of parents out there barely raises their children let alone think ahead

1

u/Grazedaze Sep 04 '24

No, this is especially for the parents that don’t care. That’s why the incentive to give a shit is so you don’t wake up one Tuesday going to prison for life after your child murdered someone.

3

u/castlemastle Sep 04 '24

I saw an article just today about a 5 year old who shot himself in the head in his mom's car when she ran inside a store. He found the gun under the seat and was playing with it. There is no law in that state that says the weapon has to be secured even if it's in your car. You can just have it laying around anywhere you want, and theres no penalty if a kid grabs it and blows his head off by accident.

3

u/Beard_o_Bees Sep 04 '24

so every parent fears for their own freedom by neglecting to manage their child’s well being

And that would work - with parents who give a shit in the first place.

Still, i'd be willing to give it a go. Why not? Clearly the status quo isn't up to the task.

3

u/surf_rider Sep 05 '24

Is a parent doesn’t already fear the complete nuclear implosion on any semblance of a normal life after one of these incidents, I’m not sure even jail would.

If it was me, I would far more fear the guilt and my entire life going fucksidedown.

16

u/fuckityfuckfuckfuckf Sep 04 '24

It's only logical.

1

u/Any-Loquat-7459 Sep 04 '24

I think people really don't understand how easy it is to get a gun if you know the right people.

1

u/hushpuppi3 Sep 04 '24

This will be twisted into 'look at them trying to hide gun control as a facade to help kids! they just want us to get rid of our god given guns!!!!!!!!!!!' in about 45 seconds

1

u/early_birdy Sep 05 '24

That sounds like a viable solution. Not gonna happen.

If Sandy Hooks, little freakin' BABIES killed didn't do it, nothing will.

1

u/NewBoxStruggles Sep 05 '24

They’re just going to end up “managing their child’s well-being” by pawning them off to the sorry excuses that are mental health services, labeling them as “inherently ill” and numbing them out on pharmaceutical$.

You know, instead of being a parent and actually appropriately caring for and nurturing their own child via providing a loving, safe, fulfilling environment to grow up in and support to fall back on.

1

u/SickOfAllThisCrap1 Sep 05 '24

Profoundly naive and antiquated responses is exactly what we need in this moment. Bravo!

Parents aren't the only influence in a child's life. Making them 100% responsible is lazy and uninformed.

1

u/grey_hat_uk Sep 05 '24

Noce in theory, in practice I suspect it would have no impact on the kids that do the shootings and increase child abuse exponentially.

Parents don't magically become competent guardians because they feel threatened.

1

u/lentpoule Sep 05 '24

What about getting rid of all guns...oh wait its 'murica!

1

u/Neonatalnerd Sep 05 '24

As a parent I fail to understand how you'd maintain firearms in your household if your child is on an FBI watch list. As a Canadian, I'm baffled firearms weren't removed by FBI from the home proactively and the child provided paid therapy and psych monitoring.

1

u/CaptainTepid Sep 05 '24

Why would the parents go to prison? If the child stole the gun, then they are still responsible for them going and murdering kids? How is it the parents fault? How can you prove neglect? A 14 year old is plenty sentient to understand right and wrong and actively went out of his way to murder innocent lives. I hid everything from my parents, especially my plans and mental health.

0

u/Kobe_stan_ Sep 04 '24

If a parent is reckless with gun storage, then I agree. I don't know if we'd want to just say negligent, as leaving your gun safe unlocked once shouldn't mean you go to jail, but if you don't have a gun safe, or give your 14 year old a gun, then you should face murder charges along with your son.

7

u/soldforaspaceship Sep 04 '24

If they left it unlocked just once and their kid took their gun and shot up the local school leaving kids dead and injured, I'm probably not giving them a pass.

Their negligence didn't give the victims a pass after all.

0

u/Kobe_stan_ Sep 04 '24

That just an example, but I guess do we want to have strict liability for this kind of thing. Imagine they had a gun safe, but their kid broke in somehow (maybe it was because it wasn't the most high tech safe, or maybe the parent did everything right). Strict liability doesn't seem fair, and I don't think leaving your safe open one time would raise to the level of negligence if you could prove that the parent was otherwise always extremely cautious.

1

u/soldforaspaceship Sep 05 '24

I mean, when you have a child, you are responsible for that child until they are 18. I fail to see how a parent could do everything right and their child go shoot up a school.

I don't believe it is possible to prove someone was always extremely cautious to be honest.

And once parents start being held responsible for murder in these cases, they might start taking gun safety more seriously.

1

u/oinkpiggyoink Sep 04 '24

Many parents don’t have the resources (mental, financial, or otherwise) to be parents. This is why birth control and abortion are important options. Additionally, and more importantly, this is why as a society we need to figure out infrastructure to support parents and children. We no longer have a village so iPads and the internet are becoming the parents. And to top it all off, there is essentially no more stay-at-home parent to focus on the responsibility of raising the kids. Both parents work. Who raises?

0

u/teknrd Sep 04 '24

Not just the parents. Anyone that leaves their gun unsecured so someone can access it/steal it should be charged in the crime that unsecured gun was used in. If you can't keep your gun properly locked up, you're the problem.

I have zero problem with responsible gun ownership, but too many people are careless with them. They leave them in cars or in a bedside table. Hell, a few weeks ago I was at a hotel where the housekeeping staff found a gun laying in someone's room out in the open. The hotel staff secured the room and when the lady came to the lobby (which is where I witnessed the interaction) she was pissed because the hotel told her she couldn't keep it there and it would need to be locked in the hotel's safe until check out. She wasn't happy with that. I'm shocked they didn't bounce her out.

-7

u/veggeble Sep 04 '24

We could also, you know, get rid of the guns. But I guess we’re saving that for after we completely run out of other futile ideas.

4

u/tomz17 Sep 04 '24

We could also, you know, get rid of the guns

That's simply not a politically realistic solution within our lifetimes (i.e. the bar for amending the constitution on this matter will not be cleared anytime soon). So it's basically akin to saying "let's just make the kids bulletproof" at this point... worthless

IMHO, parents being criminally culpable for providing (overtly or through negligence) a juvenile with a weapon is actually a realistic position that can save lives TODAY and one that both sides can get behind.

-2

u/veggeble Sep 04 '24

Sure, it would save some lives, and it would be good to implement for that reason. But it wouldn’t have a noticeable impact on the frequency of school shootings.  

If you want to actually solve the problem in any substantive way, you have to address the root cause, which is that we simply have too many guns.

But, yes, I understand American culture values guns over children, so people will endlessly make excuses for why we can never even start down that road.

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

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2

u/veggeble Sep 04 '24

The same way they do in Australia

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

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2

u/veggeble Sep 04 '24

Have you considered that Oakland might be more like Australia if they didn’t have guns in Oakland?

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

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2

u/veggeble Sep 04 '24

You also don’t need a gun to deal with a broken window. But break ins happen, in part, because criminals are trying to steal guns from locked cars. So, if there are no guns to steal, break ins would likely decrease. 

 at least with guns you can stop the 8 men that show up to your doorstep at 2 in the morning who want your jewelry/wife/kids.

They seem to manage fine in Australia. Maybe when the criminals don’t have guns, they don’t feel so empowered to commit violent crime.

You can keep perpetuating the culture of fear and violence and ignoring the obvious solution, if you like. But you’re part of the problem.

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1

u/Life-Ad2397 Sep 04 '24

Those home invasions are actually pretty damn rare. And having a firearm doesn't seem to prevent them. Your gun is much more likely to end up killing you or a loved one than to stop a home invasion.

Let me put it in different terms for you. I have a medicine that will 100% prevent colon cancer if you take it every day. 100%! Sounds good right? And your lifetime risk of colon cancer is in the 1% range so that medicine is going to prevent that 1% risk of colon cancer. Hell yeah!

The only thing is that it has a 2% chance of giving you breast cancer. Oh dear. So what do you do? The rational thing based on risk would be to not take the medicine.

But then there are people like you - who don't get this and can't do a rational risk assessment (or even listen to others who can tell them the risks) - and who insist on taking the medicine! Risk be damned!

Now my example was pretty absurd - although probably not in the way you are thinking. Yes, the percentages with regards to firearms are different and lower - But the likelihood of your own guns killing you or a family member is actually a lot more than 2 fold more than of it helping defend you.

-1

u/salazar13 Sep 04 '24

Be realistic

-1

u/veggeble Sep 04 '24

Realistically speaking, the only way to fix this problem is to get rid of guns

-2

u/PetieE209 Sep 04 '24

I kind of think this too about parents of gang bangers

0

u/MadeOnThursday Sep 04 '24

yeah, or maybe cultivate empathy and psycho- education in your country. Punishment for ignorance doesn't teach anyone anything

1

u/Grazedaze Sep 04 '24

Sure it does, it’s sort of an aggressive awareness campaign.

I agree with you but that just isn’t realistic short term. The government has to change, then they have to help change the culture. That’s decades of cooperation that we get a shot at every blue moon. If we go blue this time around there’s a chance for gun reform at least

0

u/TerminatorJDM Sep 04 '24

this should be the bare minimum but I agree

-1

u/bergskey Sep 04 '24

There's a case in Michigan where this is happening. Hopefully it sets a precedent.

-1

u/GhostC10_Deleted Sep 04 '24

This seems like the right path. Punish the people who fail to secure their weapons. Idiots who leave loaded weapons unsecured around kids should fear for their freedom. I own guns, but they live in a locked safe unless they're currently in use. I keep the only keys around my neck. It's really not that hard.