A 14-year-old boy allegedly fatally shot his older sister in Florida after a family argument over Christmas presents, officials said Tuesday.
The teen had been out shopping on Christmas Eve with Abrielle Baldwin, his 23-year-old sister, as well as his mother, 15-year-old brother and sister’s children, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference.
The teenage brothers got into an argument about who was getting more Christmas presents.
“They had this family spat about who was getting what and what money was being spent on who, and they were having this big thing going on in this store,” Gualtieri said.
That those kids got the guns illegally and would have done so regardless of what laws were in place? That point?
Ah yes, the “If it’s not going to stop 100% of the problem, let’s not do it at all” bullshit.
That old chestnut.
If random check stops don’t stop 100% of drunk drivers, why do them at all. Your just punishing the drivers who AREN’T driving drunk!
If seatbelts don’t save 100% of lives, why regulate that we wear them. Muh Freedums!!
It bullshit excuses made by people with literally nothing of any real sense to fall back on.
Not on that guy’s side, but he didn’t strictly say that we shouldn’t have those laws.
He said that if you’re siteing a case where we did have those laws and a bad thing happened as an example for why we need laws like that in place to stop the bad thing from happening, it falls a little flat.
Not that the idea of having laws like that is bad, but citing individual cases is flawed, as no amount of regulatory structure will ever prevent 100% of cases.
To frame it a different way, I could argue that there’s literally no country on earth with strong enough gun laws, because there’s no country with zero gun deaths. I could argue that we need random searches of people homes to try and find guns, or imprisoning people who talk about guns, because the current laws clearly aren’t good enough because people are still getting shot. Doesn’t matter if it was only 1 incident in the past 30yrs. Still happened, so we need stricter laws.
That’s obviously an absurd level of hyperbole, and I want to reiterate that I’m all for regulation on firearms. Just wanted to point out that the core argument here is unideal.
The guy said “would have done so regardless of what laws were in place”.
As in, this happened, and there are already laws, so there’s no point in stronger laws or more restrictions.
That’s like saying “Sure, there are hundreds of fatalities in this factory, but they already get 10c fines whenever there’s an at-fault accident. The accidents would have happened regardless of the fines! There’s no point in higher fines since the fines have shown they’re not working!”
That’s all valid, but I think you’ve missed my point.
While I disagree with “the laws did nothing so why have laws,” I also disagree with, “the laws didn’t work, so we need harsher laws.” Both are flawed logically.
There is, in fact, a level of restriction that goes too far in the name of preventing crime. We could lock everyone in jail for instance, as people in cages can’t commit crimes (ymmv). That’s obviously a bad idea though, for many reasons.
And I’m with you. I think we need to evaluate what that right balance is. What I was pushing back on was the idea that, “if there’s even one gun death ever, then the laws didn’t go far enough, and we need more restrictions,” which I took to be the sentiment of the OP. That lack of nuance worries me is all.
I don’t know if the gun laws that were violated were good enough or not. I didn’t look them up, tbh. But you can have all the laws in the world, and have them be completely useless if they aren’t properly enforced. Maybe the laws are actually good, and the enforcement mechanism is flawed? Maybe both are good and this is just an unfortunate side effect of it being impossible to police everyone all the time. Or maybe the laws themselves are flawed and the OP is right that something needs changing. I don’t know. But I do know that it’s a big issue with a lot of nuance, and that a knee jerk reaction of “we need more laws” is unhelpful at best and detrimental at worst.
I don’t know what you mean by “logically”. There’s no “logical” way to determine what will work. This is a matter of human nature, not logic. But, science strongly suggests that harsher laws do work when it comes to guns. Places with strong gun laws have been clearly shown to have fewer gun crimes. That doesn’t necessarily work for everything. During prohibition, strong laws forbidding alcohol did somewhat reduce alcohol use, but it definitely didn’t eliminate it, and it dramatically increased crime due to smuggling alcohol. For guns, the picture is much clearer. When they’re harder to own legally there are fewer gun crimes.
In this case it’s more “we need the same laws as the rest of the civilized world, which doesn’t have all these problems with gun crimes”.
I really think we’re just having two completely different discussions here mate. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. I never did.
I also don’t know that I think it’s worth the time to hash out at this point. We’re just talking past each other.
Imagine applying that logic to anything else:
“He would have been murdered regardless of what laws were in place. There’s no reason to change the penalty for murder! The 10c fine already ensures that only criminals will murder other people.”
“The city already has a firefighter, and the city block still burned down! What’s the point in adding more firefighters if we already have a firefighter and we still get major fires?”
…
The kids got the guns illegally because it’s incredibly easy to get illegal guns in the US. The biggest reason for that is that it’s so incredibly easy to get legal guns too. In places like Japan or England where it’s hard to get legal guns, it’s extremely hard to get illegal guns, so the criminals tend not to use illegal guns.
If “would have done so regardless” were true, there should be no difference in gun crime in the UK vs the US. But, they’re not. It’s not because the US has far more of a problem with mental illness or something, it’s because the tool designed for killing is harder to get.
Well, in MY state random stops ARE illegal. Thanks Oregon! Frankly, I’m surprised more states haven’t done that.
https://romanolawpc.com/oregon-dui-checkpoints/
There are things that CAN be done, you just have to start with rejecting the idea of “hurrr durrr take all the guns” because that can’t be done due to the 2nd amendment.
In THIS case, we know the two kids already had priors for car burglaries.
So #1) You find out who legally owned those guns, then you charge them with improper storage and/or failure to report a stolen weapon.
#2) When kids are arrested for a crime like burglary, you search their homes to make sure weapons weren’t anything that were burgled.
“The solution to ensuring our freedom to own guns is to restrict all our other freedoms. “
Our other freedoms aren’t restricted though.
Children steal a car and have their private property ransacked by the cops in case they have a gun. That was your suggestion was it not?
Tbf if you steal a car your rights are usually “infringed upon.” They call it “jail.”
They didn’t steal a car, they burgled cars, big difference. But yeah, if the cops recover a stolen car and the owner goes “Hey, where’s my gun?” Yeah, the cops absolutely need to be serving a search warrant.
Your rights protecting you from illegal search and seizure don’t come into play when there’s probable cause and a search warrant.
Wow you’re a moron
Really? Well, what would your solution be?
Keep in mind, banning guns is not an option because of the 2nd Amendment and changing the 2nd amendment is currently a political impossibility.
Sooo? Thoughts?
The second amendment refers to a well regulated militia and bearing arms. It gives the right to possess guns by militia members.
The Second Amendment also states its purpose expressly: to protect the security of the state. If the “let everyone have whatever guns” approach is a threat to state security, then obviously that approach isn’t protected by the Second Amendment.
Your version of the Second Amendment is a right-wing lie, not borne out by law books, history books, or dictionaries.
Again, rendered irrelevant by the Supreme Court rulings in Heller and McDonald:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/
“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.”
Further, they explain their reasoning:
“As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.””
This reading is pretty obvious when you look at the text of the 2nd Amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms, not the right of the MILITIA to keep and bear arms.
Yes, this is a radical supreme court that is ignoring 200 years of president. In order to come up with these bullshit rulings. They aren’t going to last more than a couple of decades.
We should hope so, but then it took 50 years to overturn Roe… so…
Right now, the court is 6-3 conservative.
If Biden wins in '24 and the Dems win again in '28, that gives a solid chance at replacing Thomas and Alito. Thomas is 75, Alito is 73. So 84 and 82 by 2032.
That would flip the court 5-4 liberal.
But the next 3 after that are Roberts, Sotomayor and Kagan. Roberts has been somewhat of a check on the crazier judges, losing these three under a Republican President would lock in Conservative rule for the better part of a century.
Oh come on, regardless of where you stand on the issue, you can’t think of any change in law could contain that would prevent someone from getting a gun?
FTA:
“Both teens have prior arrests for car burglaries.”
Seems likely they stole the guns from cars, so maybe make it illegal to keep your gun in your car?
Hard to say until the gun origins are traced back, but they weren’t legally purchased by or for the kids.
Hmm, so the source of the guns were the cars that were broken into. Hmm, yes. So what law can you imagine that would have even prevented the option for those gun owners to keep guns in their cars? C’mon, you’ve got this. Hint: How did the car owners get the guns?
Nothing that could be blocked because of the 2nd amendment. You can’t prevent people from legally owning guns.
Now, if you want to get rid of the 2nd amendment, we have a process for that…
First you get 290 votes in the House, then you get 67 votes in the Senate, then you get ratification from 38 states, so all 25 Biden states +13 Trump states.
Good luck with that!
The constitution was written by a bunch of geriatric slave owners who barely washed once a week. Every single one of the signatures on that paper comes from someone that would be considered mentally deficient in this day and age.
You shouldn’t be proud of it standing in the way of sane legislation, nor the fact that gross gerrymandering keeps it that way.
Regardless of how you FEEL about the 2nd amendment, it is the law of the land and it’s not going anywhere until we can get 290 votes in the House… you know, the legal body that took 15 tries to get the simple majority of 218 to decide who their own leader was.
But hey, we got 311 to bounce out George Santos, so it IS possible to get that level of agreement, it just won’t happen on guns.
“Regardless of the geriatrics who wrote the constitution, it will never change due to the geriatrics who are now in power”
While your comment is entirely true, it represents a seriously flaw in the way that our country determines what is best for its people
Oh, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s what we have to live with.
Jefferson advocated for throwing everything out and starting over every 19 years, that would have been interesting.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/thomas-jefferson-on-whether-the-american-constitution-is-binding-on-those-who-were-not-born-at-the-time-it-was-signed-and-agreed-to-1789
“Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”
So, two years before the Bill of Rights. If Jefferson had his way, the 2nd Amendment (and everything else) would have expired in 1810 and would have had to be renewed then and another 11 times since then.
But Jefferson didn’t get his way and here we are!
The law changes all the time.
It does, it’s been getting more conservative since 2008.
Here’s the breakdown:
2008 - Heller - Self defense is the core component of the 2nd Amendment, you can’t require safe storage, ban entire classes of weapons, or require militia membership.
2010 - McDonald - Heller applies to States as well (Heller was a Washington D.C. ruling so clarity was needed to show it applied to the states.
2016 - Caetano - 2nd Amendment applies to bearable weapons that did not exist when the 2nd Amendment was written. This one is fascinating. MA tried to charge a woman for buying a stun gun to protect herself from a violent ex. MA argued “stun guns didn’t exist, so 2nd Amendment doesn’t apply.” Supreme Court shot that down.
2022 - Bruen - Carrying a gun for self defense is a fundamental right and states cannot require “special need” to exercise it. Bonus - court also ruled that future gun laws need to show historical precedent or be struck down.
Bruen is going to be key in future gun cases. This court will have some super unpopular rulings in the pipeline.
Realistically, the actual wording of 2nd amendment is actually rather specific. But that leads to a whole different ugly ass problem - what to do about the corrupt SC?
Ugh
Yup, that’s a problem and it’s only getting MORE conservative, not less.
Adding term limits would require an Amendment which can’t be done for the same reason changing the 2nd can’t be done, the vote hurdle is too high.
Packing the court isn’t the answer, because the next president of the opposing party would just re-pack it the other way.
So the only thing that can be done is make sure Biden wins in '24, and the Dems win in '28 and hope that by '32 Thomas and Alito have aged out. Thomas will be 84 in '32 and Alito will be 82.
If they’re still hanging on, then it’s a matter of voting D until they’re gone.
Because if Trump or another R is in office when they leave, you can forget changing the composition of the court in our lifetime.
Unfortunately this is not possible. There are many businesses and such that have signs to the effect of “no guns in here.” In some states those signs hold no legal weight, but in some they do. In states where they do hold legal weight, your choice becomes
Just never carry because the grocery store I’ll be in for 15 minutes out of my day has a sign they think will keep mass murderers out (spoiler warning: mass murderers target those signs. Not that it’s more likely you’ll get shot there necessarily, just that their signs only matter to people who aren’t about to murder 25 people, as the murderer has other crimes to worry about vs me, where I just want some damn nuggies so prison actually matters to me.)
Carry in the store illegally. Honestly more people are doing this than you think, but as I said in some states this can become an issue for you.
Leave it in the car while I’m in the grocery store. Legal, not exactly safe, but since I am literally legally forced to be unsafe: “not my fault.” If you want to charge people with leaving a gun in a locked car and then the gun gets stolen, you have to at least meet halfway and let people with a permit carry at all times and not force them to leave it in the car. You may say "just go to a competing business. Well the way my state law is set up you can’t carry in ANY bank regardless of permission, any government building, and a few more places. And I’m fine with either, make them leave it and no charge or let them carry it and charge if they don’t, but I’m not fine with “you have to leave that in the car even though you’d rather leave it in the holster, and if it gets stolen we’ll put you in prison for life.”
Yes it is, you just don’t like the idea of being inconvenienced by public safety laws.
[citation needed]
This is an excellent reason to strengthen gun laws and make some examples out of the people who decide to violate the law.
Show me where this has ever happened (life in prison for having a gun stolen from you)
It never fails that the pro-gun argument is always just loaded with dishonest hyperbole. Guess that’s expected from a cause that has zero public benefit. Part of your argument is to just casually admit that people are illegally carrying guns all the time, and you say it like it’s some sort of argument in favor of guns…
More likely than you think:
https://www.wafb.com/2023/04/14/bill-could-hold-gun-owners-liable-if-firearms-are-stolen-vehicle-then-used-crime/
https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/new-ordinances-would-fine-criminally-charge-cincinnati-gun-owners-who-dont-report-missing-or-stolen-firearms
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2019/07/initiative-would-require-oregon-gun-owners-lock-guns-be-liable-for-damages.html
Yeah, but do you have a link to what you said actually happening? These articles are all talking about hypothetical liability, and none of them reference anyone getting sentenced to life in prison.
Only a matter of time. The one to watch is this one:
https://apnews.com/article/michigan-school-shooting-oxford-parents-ad8b0255c41b244f58850cbb118c44b5
“Inconvenienced” here means “no banking, and no buying food, cooked or otherwise.” So it’s a little more than a simple inconvenience. Which again is one thing, and that’s fine, I can leave it in the car when I go in to those places, BUT if a possibility of prison time exists for me following the law and leaving it in the car, yes, that becomes a problem. Frankly I’d have to reevaluate following the law, as if I leave it, it gets stolen, and used in a murder, and as such I’m charged in concert with the murderer, it now becomes less risky to just break the law and carry in the store. This law would make many others reevaluate similarly and do the same, killing the effectiveness of the signage in the first place.
Well, let’s start with all school shootings.
And here’s an article from the Anti-Self Defense movement’s favorite news outlet, biased towards them, that says I’m right. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/20/us/mass-shooters-soft-targets-challenges-cec/index.html
When gang and drug related shootings where 4 or more people are shot including the shooter, which everytown considers mass shootings (and they’re technically right but of course most of us are thinking of Sandy Hook or Vegas and it feels weird to me that everytown likes to blur those lines, but I digress), it does open up a bit, but that’s because drug dealers and gang members (crips, bloods, piru, gangstas desciples, ms13, sur13, folk, etc) don’t hang out in gun free zones most often (sometimes parks, so sometimes they do but typically it’s “the block” and US streets and apartment complexes are not gun free zones.)
So it really depends on if you want to include drug dealers and gang members. It’s already illegal to have a gun on you while selling or murdering someone for their drugs though (and how to fix that is an end to prohibition not more prohibition. They’re drug dealers obviously they have connections to get illegal shit). It’s not necessarily illegal to be in a gang though I don’t think, I’m not sure we can criminalize that here but I could be wrong, but usually most people in gangs have felonies that preclude them from legal firearms ownership if they’re of age to, usually resulting from said gang activity.
You just doing occular patdowns of your fellow Aldi patrons on the regular, or…? How tf you plan to catch em without security at every door ever patting down every customer ever? If you’re in the US you likely have at least one conversation with someone concealed carrying a week and you’ll never even know it.
In the hypothetical “we should charge people with having their gun stolen if it is used in a murder” I’m saying we should actually totally “not do.” That’s where. We don’t currently, people say “we should…” I say “we should not…” this is called a conversation, welcome to it.
That’s what we’re calling “you can’t read” now?
Edit: OH maybe you can read but you’re not familiar with how US laws work, just thought of that. Did you read the story the other day going around lemmy that talked about a guy who is charged with murder for a car crash but he was miles away in handcuffs when the crash occurred? What had happened was guy A and guy B were car hopping – checking door handles and stealing from unlocked cars – the police roll up and light them, guy A puts his hands up, guy B runs in their car, gets chased by the police, blows a red light (or stop sign but that is inconsequential to the outcome) and kills guy C. Guy A and guy B are both charged with the murder of guy C because they were acting in concert according to the court system. This is definitely a systemic issue that affects minorities, particularly black people, disproportionately, but I have no doubts that this same system would be applied to charging someone for being stolen from, if what was stolen is used in a murder. Currently we don’t usually charge victims of theft anyway, so it isn’t a current issue as far as having your gun stolen is concerned (but don’t hang out with sketchy people because if you thought y’all were just about to smoke a blunt but dude robs the minimart, you’re robbing the minimart too without even knowing), but I don’t think we should make it an issue.
You seem delusional and scared.
It isn’t delusional, it’s state law.
Agreed, folks who have an actual permit to carry should not be barred from normal businesses. Courthouses, government buildings, I totally get that. But leaving a gun in a grocery store parking lot is inherently more dangerous than a permitted person keeping it under their personal control.
Have you considered trying penile extension surgery instead?
Never considered it tbh, I always get called back (or calls answered) so I seem to be doing something right.
Have you considered that body shaming is a bad thing to do?
And I’m supposed to be the asshole here? Sure.
you know those minors, always committing major felonies no matter whatcha try to do.
FTA:
“Both teens have prior arrests for car burglaries.”
So, yeah, apparently so… probably where they got the guns.
Guess what, if those kids were breaking into cars in London, there’s 0 chance they would’ve acquired guns that way (not to mention, it’s irresponsible to store a gun in a car to begin with).
England doesn’t have a 2nd Amendment, but yeah, kids killing kids seems pretty universal:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/march2022
Those stats don’t show kids killing kids. It does show about 50% of perpetrators were aged 16-24 though.
Also UK has a homicide rate of 11 per 100,000. The US rate is 63 per 100,000.
What if I told you it’s much easier to use and illegal gun when they are readily available?
Only country where this happens regularly to not have figured anything out. Stop embarrassing yourself and just post thoughts and prayers
USA is not the only country with civilian gun ownership and carry being legal.
So with such crime stats it should be your first thought that the problem is narrower (EDIT: and more USA-specific) than people having guns.
Unless you’ve already made up your mind and now just want to somehow nail facts to it.
I didn’t make any argument about legal gun ownership. Guns are legal in my country and this doesn’t happen.
Read into arguments much? You had already set your mind on what I was saying before you read it
Seemed to mean that you tie availability of legal guns with availability of illegal guns, which is not wrong, but in a working system it is insignificant.
That Jordan Lund is too stupid to insult
The solution is to examine how these guns got out of the legal system and into the illegal system.
The 2nd Amendment isn’t going anywhere so you can take that pipedream off the table barring 290 votes in the House, 67 votes in the Senate, and ratification from 38 states.
So what CAN we do?
Well…
#1) Hold gun owners accountable for storing a gun in something like a car that can be easily be broken into or stolen.
#2) When kids are arrested for something like burglary, you search their homes for weapons.
If the US had gun laws similar to the rest of the world then the chances of children getting hold of them would be far lower.
True, but that’s not going to happen as long as the 2nd Amendment is in place and there are close to 1/2 a billion guns in the country.
Yeah, if only there weren’t so many millions of guns in this country that literally any pubescent dumbshit and his brother can get one illegally without any effort! But yeah no the system is flawless and the problem unfixable cool yeah I agree.
I’ve seen estimates of 475 million+ guns in a country of 330 million+ people, so, yeah. Tons of guns and not enough people taking securing them seriously.
These kids being car burglars makes perfect sense too… here’s a stat from my city:
https://katu.com/news/local/car-gun-thefts-increase-portland-police-say
"Kapp said nearly half of stolen gun reports from that last 15 months were firearms stolen from personal vehicles.
“That’s 47% of guns are stolen because they were stored in a vehicle; either the vehicle was broken into or the vehicle is stolen with a gun inside. That is a huge number,” said Kapp.
Kapp said gun owners should also have documentation, like serial numbers, in secure, safe spaces."
You would think by now that people would know “Don’t leave ANYTHING of value in your car!” but apparently not!
deleted by creator
EXACTLY RIGHT! That’s why need to outlaw Abortion, have speed limits, make fraud illegal, make murder and illegal and keep all other laws in place! Because laws DON’T WORK!