^ No no no, I'm supposed to be sending YOU flowers! 
5 year old given rifle as gift, kills 2 year old sister
- Thread starter Candlelight
- Start date
^You're the one who supposedly died. 
Getting back on topic...and I do apologize for derailing the thread, anyone who wishes to chastise me may do so now 
: I'm not sure I even agree with the very concept of teaching a 5-year-old how to shoot a gun. But then again, I'm not a dad, so what do I know. As soon as these parents finish explaining to this 5-year-old child how he killed his sister, they should be locked up, that's what I think. Total carelessness on their part.
: I'm not sure I even agree with the very concept of teaching a 5-year-old how to shoot a gun. But then again, I'm not a dad, so what do I know. As soon as these parents finish explaining to this 5-year-old child how he killed his sister, they should be locked up, that's what I think. Total carelessness on their part.
I said that because I remembered the details. I don't think it was right, and I don't think the little kid should have been shooting it.
However, I have no problems with adults shooting, or owning a full-auto or burst firing firearm.
Indeed.
I totally agree. Banning those eggs was totally stupid and pointless.
why must you always try and pimp your country's draconian gun laws as not only being a good thing but something other countries should emulate?
Well, if we wanted to protect children from things that are killing them in large numbers we would ban children from riding in cars, and then ban cars because for every child who gets shot (usually by gang bangers or adults on rampages), a dozen are run over in the street. Every day about six kids die in auto accidents and about 700 are injured.
Our laws aren't draconian. it is quite easy to get a gun licence in Australia, as easy as it is to get one in many US states. it is easier in Tasmanian than most other states because people here usually knows someone on a rural property who will let you use details of their property as the place where you can use the gun for hunting or vermin control, if one cannot do that they only have to prove that they belong to a shooting organisation, or that they are a bona fide collector.
There is a total of 122,800 registered firearms in Tasmania, our population is around 500,000. This is the highest rate in Australia, an I believe it is higher than Canada, and slightly less that Norway. It is more than 6 times the rate of of gun ownership in the UK.
There is a total of 122,800 registered firearms in Tasmania, our population is around 500,000. This is the highest rate in Australia, an I believe it is higher than Canada, and slightly less that Norway. It is more than 6 times the rate of of gun ownership in the UK.
Personally I am not csuggesting for guns to be banned, just not letting young children (under about the age of 10) use them. The USA does not allow young children to get driving licences.
Once a child is old enough to understand the permanence of death than that is the time to start giving them access to guns.
Last edited:
And to that argument I can only repeat: Cars are not designed to kill - they are designed to move people from one place to another. They can kill, yes, but are not specifically MADE to kill. Guns, however, have no other function in life but to kill.
Yes, and then we can all go back to riding horses until we have to ban them because every day sixty kids are tossed from the horses, and after that we can go back to walking until we have to ban that because of the rampant mountain lion attacks, and then we'll all be back in our cars again until we finally get cheap, reliable jet packs.
Cars and guns are not a reasonable comparison in purpose, frequency of use, or necessity of ownership.
The analogy also falls through since we apply all kinds of restrictions, registration requirements, and regulations upon car manufacturing, ownership, and use, whereas any attempts to discuss the same with guns nowadays immediately comes up against the brick wall of the NRA lobby.
We couldn't even get a watered down "expanded" background check bill through the Senate when the vast majority of the US population supported it. We even have bullshit fearmongering about UN Arms Trade Treaties that have nothing to do with domestic gun ownership. It's a disgrace.
I think Charlie Pierce pretty much dots the "i" in the summation of his piece in Esquire:
"Up with this, I no longer have to put. If your "way of life" involves handing deadly weapons to five-year olds, your way of life is completely screwed up and you should change it immediately because it is stupid and wrong. (And, again, also, too: goddammit, "learning to use and respect a gun" means at least knowing that the fking thing is loaded when it's sitting in the corner of the parlor like it's a damn umbrella stand or something, and we should talk about that part, too.) It is not in any way "normal" to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too. If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too. I do not have to understand these people any more, and it is way too early in the day to be drinking this much."
"Up with this, I no longer have to put. If your "way of life" involves handing deadly weapons to five-year olds, your way of life is completely screwed up and you should change it immediately because it is stupid and wrong. (And, again, also, too: goddammit, "learning to use and respect a gun" means at least knowing that the fking thing is loaded when it's sitting in the corner of the parlor like it's a damn umbrella stand or something, and we should talk about that part, too.) It is not in any way "normal" to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too. If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too. I do not have to understand these people any more, and it is way too early in the day to be drinking this much."
Those only apply to cars driven on roads. None of those things come to play for non road driving. That car restriction analogy would only work in connection with something like concealed carry, not simple ownership.
I bet you think that was a really good argument.
Annie, get your gun.
And even then, if cars were to be invented today in our current mindset, they wouldn't make it on the streets. Everyone would look at the risks and tell you how insane it was to let everyone at the age of 16, 18 or 21 drive vehicles that weigh at least two tons, can move as fast as average 240 km/h and carry explosive fuel. And they would be right.
What happened with cars and guns is the frog in the water effect. Tiny changes in temperatur, over a long time, and the frog will never recognize that he actually gets boiled to death. But if he's taken out of cold water and exposed to boiling hot water, he'd jump out of it immediately.
BUT the main difference is: cars are tools for transportation. Guns are tools for killing. Nothing else. Of course you can use a car as a weapon as well, but you can't use a gun in any other useful way than to threaten and to kill other beings. And there's no single valid reason why a civilian needs such a tool.
WRONG. I see this argument all the time and it really annoys me because it is absolutely wrong. Guns can be used to kill people, sure, but that is not their only purpose by any means. They are primarily a recreational object but they can also be used for killing. I and many people I know have done a lot of shooting. Some have used guns for hunting, but that was a tiny fraction of what they have used them for. The rest have been 100% recreation. None have used them for killing. Guns are a recreation object and self-defense tool that can be used for killing. Knives are a cutting tool that can be used for killing. Cars are a transportation object that can be used for killing. Hammers are a tool that can be used for killing. And so on and so on (ropes, candlesticks, lead pipes, wrench, etc.)....
Right, the purpose of weapons is recreation.
I`m pretty sure you can create sports gear that emulate any recreational effect a gun might have 100% without being lethal...
So why not use those?
So why not use those?
I do hope you don't mean that seriously.
Every 13 minutes someone dies in a traffic accident. Over forty thousand deaths and over two million injuries a year. Over 6 million accidents that amount to over 230 BILLION dollars of damages. And that's just the statistics for the United States.
If you presented these statistics to a world where cars haven't been invented yet, nobody would ever allow them. We are only allowed to drive cars because it was an EXTREMELY slow development from only a handful of cars that couldn't go faster than 10 mph to a world where there's almost more cars than people and each car can go up to 180 mph. It's normal now because we are totally used to the fact that THOUSANDS of people die from car related accidents. Actually, it's pretty horrifying that we allow such a thing to happen to ourselves. If you get hit and killed by a car tomorrow, it's like "Yeah, tragic, but it happens, move on."
Much, much worse with firearms. When a school class gets massacred, the NRA is like "Yeah, necessary evil for freedom, tragic, happens, more weapons would have prevented it, move on."
Last edited:
