Same Insanity Every Year
It is time to stop this. It is past time when taking a firearm out with standard ammunition and discharging it at the New Year is acceptable behavior. Making it illegal won’t stop it, only society will stop it. Only a sane society that tells people who do these things, that they aren’t acceptable, will ever really change behavior.
I was going to write about this earlier when I read about the Italian child being struck by a bullet in the Miami Herald, Boy expected to survive gunshot, but later I heard a report on the Dothan, Alabama TV News: A 4 year old boy who was struck by a stray bullet while at church died Friday.
The family went to church to celebrate the New Year, and a bullet fired in the air by some moron came down, through the roof of the church and struck this small child in the head, as he sat next to his parents in a pew.
This occurred in Dekalb County, Georgia. People have to know who fired that shot near the church. It is time to end this kind of insane, reckless behavior.
7 comments
Sad to say, stopping this is like stopping drunk driving — there’s always the asshole who will do it simply because there’s a significant proportion of the American population who are assholes. Short of turning the USA into an East German style police state I’m not sure what to do about that. Assholes can’t be turned into caring feeling people from what I can tell, it just isn’t in their bones.
– Badtux the Pessimistic Penguin
I know you can’t stop stupidity, but it would be nice of people would stop covering for the jerks, so they can pay for acts idiocy.
These were accidents. The firearms were discharged by mischance, Someone pulled a trigger. In New York it would be criminally negligent homicide. Moronic hunters are charged with it all the time. It is a felony with major prison time the result.
Down here you would pay hell getting the state’s attorney to file the charge, or a local jury to convict, as they think it’s an “accident”.
I doubt very much if anyone will turn in whenever it was if they know. He is, after all, probably *one of them*. You know… A decent upstanding, g*d fearing christian, good-ol’ boy! They would have to admit that even *one-of-them* is a dumb murdering SOB. Anyone who fires a gun where there are people, whether it’s actually pointed at anyone or not, is a murderer. Because everyone who has a gun should know that it kills. There is no excuse. It matter’s not if it was premeditated, or he meant to kill anyone, it’s still murder in my book, simply because he must know that firing a weapon where there are people within it’s range has a good chance of wounding or killing someone. I bet they won’t even revoke his license, assuming he has one. I’m sure the NRA will send lawyers to his defense if needed.
And unfortunately, Budtux is right. Only thing to can do to stop an asshole, is bury them.
Once, in my childhood, when I lived in Montrose in an up/down duplex rental, on New Year’s, a bullet crashed through the window of the upstairs bedroom. (We were downstairs.) The landlord occupied the upstairs bedroom.
The landlord says he didn’t have to think: his W.W. II training kicked in; he rolled off the bed, away from the window, onto the floor, and found the best position he could. The bullet hole was clearly visible in the window; another foot or 18 inches and the landlord would have been dead. When no more shots were forthcoming, we all gathered… no one in the house could sleep by then… and called the cops. Amazingly, they came out fairly quickly, on what must have been a tough evening.
About that time, an 11-year-old neighbor girl came to our door, saying she knew who fired the shot. She was as good as her word; she took the cops to the woman’s house and told them what had happened. (Brave girl, eh?) The cops faced down the suspect and told her… falsely… that someone had been hit and seriously, possibly critically, injured. The suspect of course denied firing it; the girl said she had actually witnessed the woman pulling the trigger. The police told the suspect that if our landlord died of his wounds… he had none… they would be back to arrest the suspect. The neighborhood was a lot quieter for the rest of the night.
But for me it was a lesson. Mostly, I stay inside on New Year’s Eve. Not that doing so helped our landlord much…
Not everyone carrying a firearm is an idiot, but at times like those, it’s probably best to treat them as if they are.
Anyone who discharges a weapon within a populated area for any reason isn’t simply an idiot. They are at best complete morons who should have their license (if they have one) revoked for life and all weapons confiscated. At worst, they are murderers, and if someone is killed, they should be thrown in prison for life, or executed. Weapons are designed to kill. They are not toys. Anyone who owns a weapon knows they are designed to kill. There is no excuse.
Of course, in the USA, nothing will be done and more innocent people will die. Because in the USA, innocent people have no value.
In a country where someone like Dick Cheney can get away with shooting someone of the stature of Harry Whittington, what else can be expected when some unimportant innocent is killed. And just BTW, as someone who knows weapons very well, I can say with some certainty that Cheney did not shoot Whittington from 90ft as claimed, it would have been 15-20ft at the most given the spread and penetration of the pellets. anyone who knows shotguns would know this. You do not *accidentally* shoot someone from 15 – 20ft unless you are drunk or a complete moron (both of which are probably true for Cheney)! Especially when wearing high-visibility hunting gear in daylight! It was reported that Whittington was wearing three layers of clothing, at 90ft #7.5 grain shot (that Cheney was reportedly using) would not have much energy left at 90ft to penetrate 3 layers of closing, and the spread would have pretty well peppered Whittington’s entire body (the rough rule of thumb is that you get 1in of spread for every foot of distance with the shotgun and cartridges being used). The Texas Park and Wildlife Hunting Accident and Incident Report indicates that Whittington was wounded on his upper-right chest, neck and lower-right face areas. The digram on the report shows a spread of about 15-18in, consistent with a shot being fired from about 15ft. It’s pretty hard to believe that any shooter could mistake a man wearing a blaze-orange hunting vest and cap at 15″ as any kind of game bird! Whether or not Cheney intended to shoot Whittington is almost immaterial at this point, the fact that he and the Sheriff’s dep’t lied and it was all covered up (which means it was an illegal conspiracy) is a crime.
I have copies of the official incident reports and ballistics reports, and I am considered an expert in ballistics (you don’t train to be a sniper otherwise).
The first thing I was taught was “Never load a firearm unless you intend to kill someone.”
The stupid thing is that Dekalb County is metro Atlanta. No open spaces and it is against the law to discharge a firearm for any reason. Really a tragedy.
.-= last blog ..Balmy Atlanta =-.
I should have caught my mistake, leaving off several “n’t”s from verbs. I have investigated a number of “firearm accidents” and in ten years never saw an actual accident. Human error/stupidity was responsible for all of them, in the military and in civilian life.
Guns are tools. Like any tool, there is a right way to use them, and people who are unwilling to learn the right way shouldn’t be allowed to have them. I believe in the Second Amendment, just like every other Amendment, but that doesn’t mean that people exercising their rights, don’t have a responsibility to do it in a way that ensures other people are safe.
If you feel compelled to fire a gun for New Year’s, making blank cartridges is simple. If you don’t want to do that, shoot into the ground. It is your responsibility to know where any bullet you fire is going.
I would love to see them do the math and determine the path of the bullet that killed that little boy, and start asking some pointed questions. they have the hole in the roof, and the boy’s location in the church as two points on the parabola that the bullet would have followed, and the bullet will tell them the caliber to provide the rest of the information necessary to reconstruct the path.
I few gentle hints about obstructing justice, and you might shake someone loose to finger the shooter.
Yes, Steve, there are people willing to give information, if someone is willing to listen and act.
Kryten, the whole Cheney incident is so obviously a cover-up of a hunting while drunk incident, that no one who knows anything about hunting buys the story. Even if the pattern had shown the greater distance, the number on rule for real hunters is “identify your target”. If you are hunting with a group, you have to know where everyone in the group is, before you pull a trigger. This is why real hunters hate canned hunts on private clubs, you aren’t really hunting, and you can’t trust the people around you to know what they are doing.
Fallenmonk, nothing about this incident indicates any level of thought. Like I said, you can’t do this with laws, it requires social pressure.