Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: Whoozyerdaddy
Self-defense gun kills N. County boy
Wow... just wow. The 'gun' didn't do anything. His brother killed him. Inanimate objects have no will. They just sit there until someone manipulates them. Apparently this AP reporter is not aware of this concept.
Gun advocates are sure fixated about trying to argue this point.
So, the stories reporting a US soldier is killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq are wrong, and should be re-written; the bomb didn't kill them, the person who placed the bomb did.
And if a guy is walking down the street and a piece of a building falls and kills him, the story should not say he was killed by the debris - objects don't kill anyone, you said.
The story should say 'man killed by construction workers who built building'.
The child was killed by the gun. The gun was shot by his brother. His brother had the gun because the mother left it in reach. The mother had the gun because laws allows it. Etc.
It's propagandistic to try to insist on some certain, unnatural phrasing - 'GUNS DO NOT KILL PEOPLE GUNS DO NOT KILL PEOPLE' mantra that Must Be Enforced for 'right thinking'.
It's not designed for accuracy - no one reads the story and thinks the gun shot itself; it's to try to control people's thinking not to make any connection between guns and violence, as if magically, the rates of violence would not be any different whether guns are present or not, so people don't analyze the issue and determine how to reduce such incidents, since there's no solution on the horizon for the negligence, the crimes of passion, and so on that lead to the abuse of guns for violence by otherwise law-abiding citizens.
It's not trying to win the debate, it's trying to prevent the debate. GUNS DO NOT KILL PEOPLE so it's not even worth talking about the tradeoffs of gun laws.
Still... sad. How does a parent leave a loaded weapon in reach of her kids?
IMO, it's wrong to use libertarian ideology on issues like this, and ignore the effects of policies just to say things have to be a free-for-all. However, society's judgement on this issue is heavily in favor of the right to have that shotgun, despite the casualties like this. This seems like an issue where another solution, such as mandatory safety training to purchase the gun, might be helpful.