Kentucky Gun Owner Allows 4-Year-old Grandson to Shoot his 6-Year-old Sister - She Died - No Charges for Grandpa (yet?)

WSMV Channel 4

Huffington Post

19-Year-old Chicago Man Accidentally Shoots Younger Brother in the Head While Playing with Daddy's Gun

 

The Daily Mail

A teenager shot his high school basketball star brother in the head while playing with his father's gun, a court has heard. 

Michael Whitney then attempted to cover his tracks by shooting out a window and moving his brother's body to another room on Friday, prosecutors have said. 

The 19-year-old had taken the semi-automatic handgun which belonged to his security guard father from a drawer before teasing his 16-year-old brother Malcolm.
Malcolm was a standout basketball player at Hyde Park Academy. 

At first police thought Malcolm, who was found face down on a sofa, died of an accidental self-inflicted gun-shot. 

But his older brother Michael was charged on Saturday with manslaughter and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. 

According to prosecutors, Michael approached his brother who was in the bathroom and pointed the gun at him.

Before setting the bail amount, Circuit Court Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. said, 'The problem is, this tragedy would not have occurred if a convicted felon had not touched a firearm.

Does anyone really think the security-guard dad has no accountability in this? With a 19-year-old 4-time felon in the house, is it right to keep the gun in a drawer?

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Colorado Gun Laws Take Effect in Spite of the Expected Resistance

Fox News

"This is a very poorly thought-out, irrational law. And the shame of it is it's not going to stop one criminal from doing harm to anybody," said Paul Paradis, owner of Paradise Sales in Colorado Springs. Paradis said most of the magazines that will be banned soon have already been sold out at his store. 

He'll still do the checks for customers who buy firearms at his store because it's figured into his business costs. But he said he'll turn away those who show up at his store for a background check to sell a gun to someone else. In addition for the actual cost of a check - about $10 - the law says gun shops can't charge a service fee of more than $10 for those private sales. Business owners say they can't afford to do that. 

Those background checks currently cost stores $50 of processing work, said Richard Taylor, the manager at Aurora's Firing-Line. 

"We'll lose money if we do at it $10," Taylor said. 

Gun dealers are not mandated by law to do the checks on private sales, but it's the responsibility of a private seller to arrange the check through a dealer before transferring a firearm.

So, we've got one gun shop owner claiming to know the future and another flat-out lying about  "$50 of processing work."

What do you think? Will the new Colorado laws stand up to all the resistance?

Please leave a comment.

Zimmerman's Hand-written Statement Read in Court

US News | George Zimmerman Trial | More ABC News Videos

To me this seems like even a better day for the Defense than the day Rachel Jeantel testified.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

Zimmerman Trial - Week 2 - What to Expect

Slate Mistakenly Represents DGUs vs. Gun Crime

Slate

7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

I don't know where the "300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008" comes from.  I thought it was more like 500,000.  But the problem is this figure does not include all the kinds of incidents that are included in the DGU count. DGU estimates are based on a calculation that a certain percantage are unreported brandishings.

So, the Slate editorsseem to have been trying too hard to be fair and objective to have allowed such an apples and oranges comparison as that.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Lawful Louisiana Gun Owner Charged with Negligent Homicide - AR-15 Used

Local news reports

A 16-year-old is dead after being shot in the neck by an acquaintance holding an AR-15 rifle.

Police tell WWL-TV a 23-year-old was showing a group of people the newly-acquired weapon at around 1:00 a.m. in the 200 block of James Drive in Marrero when the incident happened.

The gun owner later told police he didn't know there was a round in the chamber, and "that he pulled the trigger to clear the weapon and it went off, striking the victim in the neck," according to WWL-TV.

Emergency responders prounounced the teen dead on the scene.

Update:  JPSO (Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office) Spokesman Col. John Fortunato says Christian Cardon, who police say admitted firing the weapon, was booked this morning with one count of negligent homicide. 

Forgetting there's one in the chamber happen more often in states like Louisiana.  And pulling the trigger to clear the chamber while aiming at another person takes a special kind of intelligence and gun-safety training.

If there were proper screening and qualifying done before issuing a gun ownership license, many incidents like this would be avoided.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.