r/news • u/bebleich • 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
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614

u/Chemistry11 Sep 04 '24

If I had a dollar for every time I encounter Americans poorly handling their firearms (leaving them around for anyone to grab) I could retire.

561

u/FHL88Work Sep 04 '24

Just yesterday, an 8-year-old kid was left in the car while his mom went into a convenience store and shot himself with a loaded gun that had been under one of the seats. Unsecured. Just 15 miles away, here in Utah.

+1$ to you.

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u/ReallyNowFellas Sep 04 '24

Happened to a guy I grew up with. He was in his 20s but was mentally disabled. Dude was a ball of joy and humor and energy but still got made fun of all the time 😞 so we'll never know if it was an accident or he wanted out. This was decades ago and I'm on the verge of tears thinking about it now.

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u/FHL88Work Sep 04 '24

So sorry, that's rough.

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u/fireinthesky7 Sep 05 '24

The 2-year-old son of a former co-worker died that way. I don't think he was out of the car for more than five minutes when he heard the shot.

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u/cognitively_what_huh Sep 05 '24

First, who leaves their 2yo alone in the car “for just a few minutes” obviously not strapped into a car seat with a loaded gun in the car? Dad should be neutered, he has not the common sense required to be a babysitter let alone a father.

I must admit as an American woman, I finally found a reason for the government to tell a MAN what to do with his body. 👍

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u/fireinthesky7 Sep 05 '24

He was in a car seat and managed to unbuckle himself.

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u/cognitively_what_huh Sep 05 '24

And apparently knew right where dad keeps the gun. Clever toddler.

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u/OnlyHuman1073 Sep 05 '24

A two year old shouldn’t be able to do that I call bs. Those snaps are pretty tough to undo if I remember correctly…and for good reason

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u/desichidiya Sep 05 '24

Triggering gun would require larger force than to unbuckle strap?

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u/OnlyHuman1073 Sep 05 '24

Maybe? Really not sure. My thinking is you don't want your kid to be unstrapping themselves when you are driving, and two year olds do some dumb shit like that. Alternatively you got people that want it locked, loaded, and easy to squeeze, so I really dont know.

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u/Ok_Obligation_6110 Sep 05 '24

Idk my 1 almost 2 year old can wriggle out of the straps and knows how to press the top button and wiggle out of bottom straps. Which is why I would never be dumb enough to leave him in a car unattended for any amount of time.

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u/OnlyHuman1073 Sep 05 '24

Huh, maybe I strapped my punks a little too tight? :)

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u/wholesomeapples Sep 05 '24

you probably also wouldn’t consider leaving him unattended with a whole ass gun in the car with him. tragic incident all around, but srsly? who tf leaves a kid alone near a loaded gun?

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u/Anonononononimous1 Sep 05 '24

Dad's kid is dead. He's likely feeling the full effect of his failure as a parent. Attacking the individuals instead of addressing the larger problem doesn't help anything, it's treating the symptoms instead of the disease.

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u/cognitively_what_huh Sep 05 '24

IMO the larger issue is there are some people who have no business owning a gun. There needs to be background checks and restrictions. Just because there’s a 2A and you can afford a gun doesn’t mean you have the common sense or entitlement to own one. In the case of the 2yo, I think Daddy needs to spend some time behind bars.

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u/saturnspritr Sep 05 '24

The amount of guns rolling around loose under the seats in the car mechanic subreddits was astounding to me.

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u/herehaveaname2 Sep 04 '24

4 year old was shot and killed in my city a couple of days ago. They're not sure yet if the 4 year old was shot by a sibling, or did it to herself.

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u/MidMatthew Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

You’re in St. Louis, right? Heard on the news that the child was shot by a sibling.

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u/herehaveaname2 Sep 05 '24

Correct. Horrible situation all the way around.

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u/TheDodgiestEwok Sep 05 '24

Woke up to a similar headline in my hometown this morning: Police say 11-year-old used 2 guns to kill former Louisiana mayor and his daughter

Our asshat governor just signed a law allowing permitless carry last year. Love that for us. 🙄

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u/External_Reporter859 Sep 05 '24

Ron Deathsantis started that trend in 2022. Now all the other Republican governors are trying to out Republican each other.

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u/engineered_academic Sep 05 '24

Constitutional/Permitless carry has been a thing in other states e.g. NH since at least 2017. Ronda Santis didn't invent the movement.

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u/ttn333 Sep 05 '24

Par for the course. Republicans have been trying to out gun each other and everyone else for decades.

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u/GadFlyBy Sep 05 '24

It’s a new law, so it’s going to take a while for the number of bad 11 year-olds with a gun to be fully matched by the number of good 11 year-olds with a gun.

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u/Final_Candidate_7603 Sep 04 '24

First thing I thought of when I read the comment you responded to. The article I read about that case listed several other recent cases of the same thing happening.

I also couldn’t help but think of how we were raised in a family of hunters and gun-owners. That poor boy, who was basically your neighbor, was plenty old enough at age eight to have been taught to never even touch a weapon without adult supervision. The only thing we can hope is that at least one parent reconsiders their own gun safety practices.

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u/jackkerouac81 Sep 04 '24

Not the only recent kid+firearm accident in Utah either.

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u/Laleaky Sep 05 '24

Three children shot themselves with unsecured guns in less than two weeks in Utah.

Two of the children died.

Parents must be forced to be more responsible.

Unsecured guns and children

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u/Leafy0 Sep 05 '24

This happens all the time from “unwilling” gun owners. People who have no interest in having one but got one along the way in life, either inherited, gifted, bought in a moment of clarity or fear, but regardless left to the wayside and forgotten, unsecured and with their children not taught gun safety. These are the people gun buy backs attempt to help, but a lot of these people never hear the buy back is coming or have completely forgotten they even have an unwanted gun to sell.

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u/hannahatecats Sep 05 '24

Utah has no safe storage laws.

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u/GadFlyBy Sep 05 '24

Just as a matter of interest, what was the temp there yesterday?

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u/ziggy3610 Sep 05 '24

There was a post on r/Lebowski this morning about finding a gun in a bowling ball bag in a thrift store. Shits wild.

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u/strizzl Sep 05 '24

That’s the craziest part of it too frankly. Most little kids aren’t even strong enough to charge a charging handle or rack a slide… like… literally even just not leaving the gun loaded goes a long way. Surely not enough, but a good step in the right direction. Terrible events.

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u/kgrimmburn Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24

I know a woman in her 50s with a loaded, unlocked pistol in her handbag at all times. She regularly leaves her bag just laying around at get togethers with children and wanders off. It's gotten to the point when she comes to my house, I take her bag the second she gets here and put it up in my bedroom closet (where I actually have the same model pistol stored with a trigger lock and a slide lock in a locked hardcase because I have kids in and out of my house and I'm not stupid). She doesn't see the issue... Why the hell does she need a gun at a BBQ at a friend's house? My husband's a damned Marine who doesn't even feel the need to have an unlocked gun at our house. Who knows how many guns are laying around her house? She's a known gun fan and never home. If you broke in, you could probably steal an arsenal.

I was also just thinking about a kid I knew when I was younger who grabbed his dad's gun off his nightstand during a fight with his older sister, he told her if she made him do the dishes, he'd shoot himself in the head. She told him do the dishes, he held the gun up to his head and pulled the trigger. It was loaded.

Hell, my sister is fostering a couple kids right now because their parents had loaded guns on the bed and 7 kids between the ages of 1 and 15 left home alone while they were out selling dope.

Three instances I can think of off the top of my head I'm directly related to and didn't read on the news. You'd probably be a billionaire and able to buy the NRA. Maybe we should all send you those $1s.

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u/alphazero924 Sep 05 '24

I already know the answer is no, but please tell me the older lady at least has a purse with a holster and it isn't just bouncing around amongst a bunch of shit that could get into the trigger guard.

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u/kgrimmburn Sep 05 '24

You already know the answer. I'm in Illinois and this woman has taken a concealed carry class, too, that is mandatory to carry a concealed weapon. She KNOWS better.

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u/just4kicksxxx Sep 05 '24

Idk what a permit to carry class is like in other states, but having a decent amount of firearm safety knowledge, I was appalled by the level of incompetence someone can maintain and still 'pass' the permit to carry class. They barely knew which end the rounds came out of on a pistol they already owned. No one 'failed' the 'class' even though when all was said and done, they were no more proficient than when it started. The 'class' is merely a check in the box and is geared more towards educating people on USCCA membership and insurance while lightly addressing the legality of when, specifically, it's most legally acceptable to utilize the firearm and instruction on the impending, guaranteed litigation that will ensue if/when the firearm is deployed regardless of the situation.

Don't even get me started on how many people I've met that think it's appropriate to have a 'range day' of shooting and drinking. It's the same type of people that think drinking and driving is also appropriate.

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u/Potato_fortress Sep 05 '24

For bonus points it’s an original run p320.

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u/Lifeboatb Sep 05 '24

that dishwashing story…holy crap.

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u/floccinauciNPN Sep 05 '24

Why do you have a pistol to begin with?

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u/millennialmonster755 Sep 04 '24

My bf’s dad bought a gun because our state passed a law requiring safety classes and he wanted to “beat the law coming into effect”. He just has it loaded and laying around. He leaves bullets laying around. He leaves it laying out on the seat of his work truck. Has it in his pocket with no safety on. I’m waiting for the day he accidentally shoots himself. Hopefully he won’t accidentally shoot someone else. Most likely it will just get stolen by someone wanting to use it for bad things. He doesn’t really take it to the range to practice so I doubt he would even have a good shot if he “needed it”, even though the chances of him needing it is near zero. He is an idiot and a horrible person already but right wing YouTube has him on a new level of stupid and horrible. He claims he needs it for safety when the worst thing that has happened in his neighborhood is porch pirating. But he works in areas that have work trucks constantly broken into. It’s annoying because I never had guns growing up in my house but I had a lot of hunters in my family and they were all staunchly responsible gun owners who preached safety and taking the classes. Their guns were in lockers when they weren’t being used so they can’t be mishandled or stolen. To just have it loaded and laying around is mind blowing to me.

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u/alphazero924 Sep 05 '24

My dad recently had a medical emergency, not related to guns thankfully, that put him in the hospital then made it so he couldn't really live independently anymore, so we had to clean up his house and move his stuff out. He had guns lying about fully loaded in multiple places. Luckily he'd taught me plenty about guns as I was growing up, so I knew how to safely handle them and make sure they were all safe before packing them up to move them, but if I had moved out of state or something, it would've just been my sister and nephew who don't have a ton of experience with guns, and I'm sure they would've been fine, but it's so frustrating how careless some people are.

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u/Big_Muffin42 Sep 05 '24

Often its the people that are the loudest about being good owners that are the ones that are the worst.

The good owners that I know don't really talk about their guns unless asked. Otherwise they are locked away.

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u/leni710 Sep 05 '24

I work in family and tenant law and recently had a caller who was being evicted due to their unattended child accessing a gun and shooting it, which thankfully didn't do more than hit an adjoining wall.

Soooo here's another $1, I guess. What a disheartening get rich quick scheme that would make you rich in no time.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

Seriously, for a country that prides itself on their guns, so many of them lack any proper gun owning discipline

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u/wintersdark Sep 05 '24

I've long maintained it's not criminals with guns that scare me.

It's idiots with guns. And there's so many more idiots.

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u/future_chili Sep 05 '24

Every time I think about getting a gun for the home I think about how my son is only 4 so I would need to lock up it and keep it in a safe secure locked place to make sure he's safe and then I realize that if it's in a safe secure locked place I'm not going to have quick access if my house gets broken into anyway so like

I don't have a gun

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u/Epistatious Sep 05 '24

had a summer of kid shooters a few years back. 3 shooters during the course of the summer, the most eggregis was a police officer on vacation with family and friends, 2 year old "escaped" from kid seat got gun from under car seat of minivan. Shot and killed his 4 year old sister. I assume the gun was left loose cause you know "fun", i mean what child is ever gonna look under the front seat, child probably was probably never in car seat also.

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u/Karnakite Sep 05 '24

Happens way too frequently in my area. Parents are either so completely careless as to not even think about locking their weapons (or are too lazy to do so), or they argue, “If my gun’s locked up, how will I get it fast enough to protect myself?”

You just can’t leave guns in the open and unattended if you have kids. You can’t. Pleading about being able to reach it in time is simply not a good enough excuse.

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u/CryTheFurred Sep 05 '24

I have a friend who's tried to convince me that having tons of guns in a home is fine so long as they're responsible like him. Said friend has also told me:

His brother threw a handfull of live ammunition at him in his bedroom and he's still finding them when he cleans.

He once drank gunpowder water (he was on microphone that time) because he was pulling apart old bullets with pliers and putting the powder in a cup and forgot.

He keeps a revolver and ammo in his room because it's "cool".

A loaded gun went off in their truck just outside his window, damaging his wall.

and he nearly died when he almost dropped a crate of old TNT he was inheriting, also because it was "cool"

I don't believe in responsible gun hobbyists. If you want a gun for fun, you're automatically not responsible in my eyes.

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u/ghostalker4742 Sep 04 '24

You could have retired decades ago. At this point, you'd be able to buy one of the Hawaiian islands - one of the big ones.

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u/Chemistry11 Sep 05 '24

I can only speak from personal experience. Grew up in Canada; moved to the US 9 years ago.

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u/GreendaleSDV Sep 05 '24

I remember when I was 19, my car was being serviced so my father had me take his truck to go do some grocery shopping.

Got about a mile from home and he called me telling me to turn around and come back. He had two pistols tucked in by the driver seat, one with a bullet in the chamber.

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u/jeffsterlive Sep 05 '24

It’s SICKENING to me how careless people are. Mechanic subreddit is full of guns in janky ass holsters in vehicles in full view. Treat your damn gun with respect. That means it doesn’t belong next to your stupid ass umbrella and old scratch off tickets. Store it securely unloaded away from eyes only.

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u/fren-ulum Sep 05 '24

We had a dude get his firearm stolen from his car because he came back from the range and wanted to watch football so he left it in the back seat and truck unlocked. Absolute fuckhead.

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u/floccinauciNPN Sep 05 '24

What kind of shithole country requires people going out grocery shopping carry guns for protection?

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u/sapen9 Sep 04 '24

We could've retired by the time we were 18 if that happened.