Friday, June 11, 2010

Florida - Lax Gun Laws and Heavy Prison Sentences

From our friends at Ohh Shoot.

Mother and son charged in boy's shooting death

A Florida woman and her 14-year-old son have been charged in the shooting death of a 13-year-old boy. According to police reports the two boys were home from school when Jeff Dilworth went and got his mother's 9mm handgun from her bedroom nightstand and showed it to his friend, Daniel Torres. Torres removed the magazine and Dilworth, thinking the gun was unloaded, pulled the trigger. Tragically, a bullet remaining in the chamber fired, striking young Torres in the head, killing him.

14-year-old Dilworth is being charged as an adult. He faces a charge of manslaughter with a possible sentence of up to 30 years.

Because Florida law requires gun owners to prevent children from gaining access to firearms and requires firearms to be stored in a locked container or with a trigger lock, Dilworth's mother Shari Edwards, 50, is charged with culpable negligence, a felony charge that carries a maximum five-year sentence.

Mother and son are expected to appear in bond court together.

Ohh shoot

The thing that kills me about Florida is their gun friendly culture combined with the law-and-order hard line. Charging a 14-year-old as an adult is an abomination, especially when the shooting was unintentional.

At least they arrested the mother too, that's something.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

8 comments:

  1. Gun safety education may have helped to prevent this tragic event.

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  2. Daly, most of the anti-freedom loons oppose Gun Safety programs for children for purely political reasons.

    Under MikeB's shared responsibility theory, all of them are partly at fault for opposing common sense safety programs for children.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Let's approach this logically, shall we?

    Our gunloon bretheren get very excited when they see stories like this because it gives them the opportunity to hype NRA-approved gun marketing, errr, safety education.

    The gunloons tell us that such 'education' may have prevented tragedies such as this.

    OK, let's assume this is true. It isn't, but let's assume it is.

    OTOH, I know of several measure that would have prevented this--without question and without a doubt.

    The question is why gunloons demand something that they admit "might" or "may" work and oppose initiatives that will work each and every time?

    --JadeGold

    ReplyDelete
  4. Obviously, if there had been some kind of safe storage law in place, this 13-year old would be alive today.

    Oh, wait.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "The question is why gunloons demand something that they admit "might" or "may" work and oppose initiatives that will work each and every time?"

    Because there are no initiatives that will work each and every time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. My idea is these kinds of tragedies happen more than they need to. With proper gun control laws properly enforced, we could cut way down on this misery. But, the pro-gun folks won't hear of it because it would inconvenience them. Oh, they don't admit that, who would, but behind all the bullshit double talk and "natural rights" crap, the bottom line is the selfish motivation.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It would do more than just inconvenience gun owners.

    It has lead to the exact thing it is purported to stop: the needless deaths of children.

    http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/2nd_Amend/deaths_in_merced.htm

    Gun owners aren't opposed to safe storage. You see them advocating it all the time. We're opposed to an unenforceable law mandating it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous, That sounds very Libertarian of you.

    "At the end of the day it has absolutely zero effect on your life."

    How do you propose to encourage all the gun owners who don't make the slightest efforts along these lines to do so?

    ReplyDelete