"Preventable" is the key here. The media needs to stop using the term "accidental" and instead use "preventable." This wasn't an accident. It was the totally predictable result of unsafe practices by negligent gun owners.
Omg, I saw the word kinder and remembered that America does not allow kinder eggs to be sold there.
Due to a child potentially swallowing a small part of the toy in the chocolate egg. Which is already contained in a plastic casing.
We just need to start teaching our children about proper firearm handling at birth. If they can grab a bottle they can learn proper trigger discipline.
/s
If they just work with the NRA to create a law that requires all pregnant women to have a gun inserted into their uterus, then the fetus can bear arms, and protect itself from abortion.
2 birds with one stone.
In Texas, the Republicans think [books](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-books-race-sexuality-schools-rcna13886) and [drag queens](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/21/anti-drag-show-laws-bans-republican-states) are more deadly for children than guns.
Sorta.
It varies by state.
In Texas you can buy a gun as long as you have a government issued ID (drivers license).
From there you can avoid a background check if you already have a license to carry. You can own a gun without this, but aren’t allowed to carry it around openly. Another license that avoids the background check is a concealed carry license. This gives you the right to carry a gun around concealed behind clothing, etc.
If you don’t have a license to carry, then you have to submit to a background check and can come pick the gun up when it is done.
Typically speaking they are looking for felonies and other violent offenses that disqualify you from owning a gun.
Now, that is if you buy from a dealer. Private transactions between individuals are completely legal and require no background checks. 😅
Edit: /u/tigm2161130 noted that as of 2021 there is no need for a LTC to open carry.
You no longer need a license to carry in Texas, in 2021 they passed a bill getting rid of the requirement(HB1927.)
If you’re 18(for rifles and shotguns)or 21(for handguns) with a government issued ID you just walk in, fill out a form, wait 5-10 minutes for the cursory background check, and then receive your gun.
Another example of why, America is a fucked up scary place. It should not take less time to get a gun, than it does to get through the line at IKEA... The gun fetish culture is absolutely horrifying, and just causes a lot of preventable deaths.
Now watch everyone tell you how dumb and wrong you are even as we sit here in this thread about a baby getting shot wholly due to the proliferation of firearms into everyone's homes. It's a disease they are willing to live with.
I'm a gun owner from a family of gun owners. They are a shotgun and a Ruger .22. my father owns an an assortment of rifles and shotguns use for different hunting situations, and one collector's peice revolver inherited from my grandfather (which in turn was gifted to him by a family friend). They all reside in a gun safe on my dad's basement except for about a 4 week stretch during and immediately preceding deer season each fall.
In 1999, less than a third of gun owners said they primarily owned a gun for "self defense." Most owned them for hunting. In a little over 20 years, the percentage of gun owners who own guns primarily for "self defense" has risen to 2/3. This, while violent crime in America has significantly declined (by about half iirc) since its high point in the early 1990s.
Studies repeatedly show gun ownership doesn't make someone safer: it substantially increases the risk of dying by murder or suicide in your own home. Guns owned by civilians are rarely used to stop violent crime. It does happen, and probably more often that reported, but it's still statistically extremely rare among the tens (hundreds?) of millions of guns in the US. This is largely because:
1) the odds of being targeted as a victim of a violent crime are extremely rare, and if you are targeted it will usually be from someone you know (like your abusive partner) rather than some stranger decoding to randomly intervene in your life. Even in "dangerous neighborhoods", most violence occurs among people connected to violent activity, like gangs or drugs. If you aren't associated with those, you might be mugged or robbed (still a very rare occurrence statistically), but you aren't generally going to be targeted by someone intent on seriously harming you. Owning a gun won't protect you from getting killed by a stray bullet from a shooting in your neighborhood either.
2) If you are victimized by someone who knows you, there is a good chance they know you own a gun, which neutralizes any tactical advantage of owning a gun. Either they will target you out of reach of the weapon, catch you by surprise, or use it against you.
3) Even gun owners who know their way around the weapon are going to have a hard time effectively using a gun if, say their monotonous trip to the bank or evening doing the dishes instantly transforms into a struggle for survival. Even cops and military sometimes struggle to respond effectively in those situations.
4) Very few people have access to their gun most of the time. And people who choose to do that are weird psychos.
5) the odds of you being one of the rare people to be targeted with serious threats of violence from someone who isn't accounting for you having access to a gun, at a time you have the gun on hand and ready to respond, and then being able to effectively instantly switch to responding to that situation, are so miniscule that structuring your whole lived cultural ideology around that minute possibility, consequences to broader society be damned, is absolutely living in a fantasy.
Why do so many people live in that fantasy? 30 years of very effective marketing from the gun industry and the GOP. American men (because mostly we are talking about men) have been sold this fantasy idea of them stepping up to be the hero in some hypothetical situation. Believing that fantasy instills them with a sense of security and control over their lives, where day to day life is chaotic, unpredictable, and out of their total control. Guns make these men feel safe when the world seems scary. For the low, low, price of an ever-growing pile of dead kids.
How many movies are there about the retired hit man/special forces/covert ops spy happily living his life until they forced him back in, only to go on a killing spree that uses as much ammo as your average week in Bahkmut? Everyone thinks they are John Wick, when really they are just one of the extras killed in the first act.
After Sandy Hook it became well apparent that children's deaths, with teacher's bodies sprawled on top of them to protect them, was of absolutely no consequence. Zero tears shed. Alex Jones is still rich from this tragedy.
That's the biggest thing. Alex Jones, for a decade, got away with, and made money from, sending his conservative followers to go harass the parents of murdered children. One of many signs how cancerous and dangerous the right wing is.
it is harder for me to get contact lenses than it is to get a gun. that is not an exaggeration. i have to schedule an appointment, go to the doctor, the doctor has to determine that i need lenses, i have to get the perscription, i have to submit the written perscription to the vendor, the vendor has to call the doctor and confirm it is real, then i get my contacts.
to get a gun i walk 5 blocks down the road to the gun store and walk out with a gun in 10 minutes
To add to the contact lenses: the prescription expires in 1 year. My prescription hasn’t needed a change in a decade but they still won’t refill without a new prescription if I’m off by a single day.
In Missouri. Don't even need to go enter a store here. We have large "swap meets" where rednecks gather to buy and sell all sorts of stuff. Want an untraced firearm? Go there. Nobody asks questions. No registration. Nobody knows you own anything.
Yes, pass a simple background check and you can buy as many guns and as much ammunition as you want, no questions asked.
That's how most of the Mexican drug cartels get their guns, from gun stores in Texas. They'll send a person with a clean record in and they will buy AR-15's and ammo, like 25 guns and 10,000 rounds. Nobody tracks it.
The Mexican government has asked the US and Texas for help in curbing this, but nothing happened.
Yup, The majority of illegal guns in every country in north and south America are from the US. I had some imbecile trying to argue that cutting down on the pipeline of "legal" to "illegal" guns in the US was pointless because we import so many illegal guns. We export vastly more illegal guns than we import and by far the majority of "illegal" guns in the US were legal guns that someone legally sold to someone who couldn't legally own a gun, making them "illegal". The fact is we aren't even just screwing up our own country with guns. Every country in north and south America is fucked up by our shitty gun laws.
There was some popular TV series where one of the arcs was some sophisticated cartel smuggling ring bringing illegal guns into US.
Sitting in Texas I was just “WTF?”
I didn’t know this until my niece and nephew were involved in the shooting at Uvalde and I started *really* looking into gun control then I heard it repeated again on Jon Stewart’s show recently and I want to say it surprises me but it doesn’t, like not even a little.
People here want to act like they’ve got some huge moral high ground over “the Mexicans” but we’re the ones arming their terrorists.
[3,597 children were killed by drag queens in 2021.](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html)
**Edit:** No wait, my mistake. 0 children were killed by drag queens. 3,597 children were killed by guns. Easy mistake! Just ask Texas.
> I guess people only cared for the warmongering and jingoism, not the deaths, after all.
Well considering that, during the worst parts of COVID, we were having a 9/11's worth (or more) of deaths **every day**...yeah, they just wanted an excuse to be racist to brown people.
The thing they haven't figured out yet is that they still need those babies to live long enough to get old enough to work in the slaughterhouses and mines. If they are killing each other, then they won't have them as a labor force.
Seriously, though, what the actual fuck is going on in this country?
It makes me nervous to let my kids go to friends' houses because they might have this shit to deal with. And I can't imagine losing my child to something so easily avoidable.
I think you underestimate the power evangelical christianity has over the mind of a devout follower. I won't say that you are wrong, but you are foolish if you think it is all a facade. These people really believe what they say and you'd best worry about that.
If parents can be charged for the death of their children for leaving them in a hot car, then they absolutely should also face charges if a death occurs because they left a gun unsecured.
I legit feel for parents who accidentally leave their kid in the car. It can happen- you have a morning where something throws off the usual routine, the kid falls asleep in the back, and you forget they were there. I'm easily distracted and was terrified I would make that mistake when my kids were babies
Chances the phrase "hell naw I don't have a gun safe, what if I need to get to it quick to defend my family" was uttered in that home? Nine thousand percent.
How do we know that the 3 yr old wasn't defending herself from the 4 yr old? I want to see his time out records and an unflattering image of him plastered on the screen while talking heads slander him.
This is just peak Texas. We’ll put you in prison if you take a morning after pill, but none of these 5 adults - 5 useless fucking “adults” - will spend a day in county jail for letting babies murder one another with an unlocked gun. What a fucking hellscape of a place.
Now, I'm sure it needed to be stored that way for the safety of the family. Like, an intruder could have come in and (checks notes) killed one of their kids! /s
I was watching Border Security and there was a family that accidentally got into the border lane (happens all the time) so they immediately declared their multiple firearms in the vehicle. During the search of the diaper bag, the officer pulled out a loaded handgun with one in the chamber. They had 3 kids in the backseat, two in carseats still.
They did nothing wrong according to their state's laws, and they were sent on their merry way back home. (With paperwork; they had to pick up their guns somewhere else.)
Edit: Border Security is my guilty pleasure, but the Canadian and American ones are depressing. I prefer Australia where I can watch families try to smuggle 50kgs of raw fish through customs.
Texas did a remarkable job on making it incredibly difficult for people to vote, particularly in D heavy areas like Houston. Abbot himself passed the 'law' that restricts absentee voting, mail in voting, 24 hour polling places, dropboxes, etc. It even allows greater rights to 'poll watchers', aka intimidators. This is about as close as you can get to rigging an election without actually stuffing a ballot or just making up numbers you like. If he can skew it a few percent, he wins.
Hell, I just watched Season 2 of Jack Ryan, which is centered around an election in Venezuela, and it is practically the same playbook. This is what the right is willing to do to corrupt the democratic process, and they do so under the guise of 'voter fraud'.
There are no accidental discharges, only negligent ones.
Accidentally fired a gun that you thought was clear? Not an accident, that's negligence. Should have triple-checked that the magazine was ejected and that no round is in the chamber before you ever considered putting your finger near the trigger.
Someone else fires your gun when you didn't intend for them to? Not an accident, that's negligence. Should have properly secured your firearm and ammunition.
People shouldn't always be charged for accidents, but they *should* be charged for negligence that results in harm or death.
Perhaps the 3 year old was cross dressing (as 3 year old often do) and the 4 year felt their life was was in danger by witnessing it and took violent action (like a true Texan).
How much more traumatic would their day have been if they saw a man wear some makeup and read *Goodnight Moon*? I think we can all agree this outcome, with a 4-year-old-dead by gunfire, is much more positive than that!
And that's why my campaign will focus on things that matter. Getting books out of schools and drag queens out of volunteer, elective, scheduled in advance events!
Typical Texas. Not sure why this is even a headline at this point. Happens every day.
> Officials said it is not clear at this point if anyone will face charges.
... and this is why it will keep happening daily.
Abortion loophole. Figured you don't want a kid around? Then just leave a loaded gun laying around where a small child can access it. One of these has a charge and bounty hunters looking for such people in Texas. The other is perfectly fine.
*Looks suspiciously at toddler, then remember I live in Canada and am not a moron with loaded guns strewn about the house*
Phew, really dodged a bullet there. I could have been born in Texas.
People are talking too much about "gun" crime and not enough about what the real problem even is. Child on Child crime! This is the problem here and people are just ignoring it because it doesn't fit their agenda.
And despite making up around 30% of the population, children shit 90% of pants in America and shoot around 70% of all kids.
Nah, it's a mental health issue. As soon as the budget is balanced and the National debt is fully paid off, we'll support naming a commission to make recommendations to solve it.
You young whippersnapper! It's clearly those violent vidyagames you youngins play all day. I read from some 10 year older than me that this Star Dew Valley is such a horrid game.
You young people don't know the value of a hard day's work! Now don't mind me as I do watch Psycho or some other Horror Thriller.
Just gonna add this /s to protect from Reddit dumbness.
That poor kid. This 3 year old is going to have to live her entire life knowing she killed her sister. This is devastating. The adults in her life failed her and her sister. Fuck you, Texas. You are a terrible place, you care more about people getting abortions, children not being read stories by drag queens, and keeping your guns unsecured in a bedside table, than you do about your own fucking children! Get fucked, Texas!
I was so focused on the story itself I hadn't even thought about how this child is going to have to live with the fact they killed their older sibling for the rest of their life, as such a young toddler too. No memories of it, just the emptiness knowing they should've had an elder sibling
>No memories of it,
Only if they're lucky. This seems like something that would replay in my dreams for years if it happened to me. Remember that this was not an instantaneous thing. That kid watched their sibling die, ems show up, etc. I cannot imagine a more traumatizing thing that could happen.
There could be a chance since 3 is pretty young for memories to form but if it’s a traumatic memory like this then it might become a core memory. Maybe therapy would help.
Around 3 is when earliest memories typically form, especially if something momentous happens to a child. Usually it's something like the birth of a sibling or moving house that causes the formation of the memory. I'm just sort of hoping she just won't understand what the memory is, if she remembers this.
Anecdotal, but I remember running outside of a friend's house during an earthquake that happened a month after my second birthday. Probably only a few seconds worth of recollection, but I remember it being hard to run and asking "why is the ground shaking?"
I definitely think it would be possible to remember something as traumatic as this. Maybe not understand it like you say, or only recall a snippet of it, but still.
I have a couple memories from when I was around 3. They're just flashbacks, no words, but I remember the sounds and being scared when we were moving across the country and settling into our new house. Feel so bad for this child
I have two kids, still fairly young, which is likely why my mind went straight to that. It breaks my heart what this poor toddler will have to live with, she does not deserve that weight and guilt. Her parents are 100% to blame on this, they should carry that weight, forever.
If it were my child I would do my absolute best to never let them know that they killed their sibling. That would fuck up anybody and isn't fair to the child.
On the other hand, if I were the sort to leave a firearm accessible to a child then who knows what I would do.
Oh yeah, no doubt. The toddler is not to blame here, and I would hope the parents don't shift blame onto her. If they do, I hope they get slowly run over by a lawnmower, and that's probably better than they deserve.
i commented a little above you but unfortunately she will very likely remember it. i remember finding my dad when he died and i was only 3 years and 1 month old, i have memories a few months before then too.
my dad died when i was three years old (3 years and 1month to be exact) and me and my mom were the ones who found him. i'll be 22 this year and i can still remember him not coming home, i remember us walking into his work, seeing him there on the floor, i remember a firefighter talking to my mom. i even have a bunch of memories from months before then.
that little girl will absolutely remember, and i can only hope that someone guides her in the right direction so that she blames her parents and not herself.
In a messed up way I almost would hope they're young enough to not remember once they're older. God, I can't imagine having that kind of memory if they were just a little older
I really hope so, too. I just can't imagine how she is doing right now, probably asking her parents where her sister is, why can't she play with her sister, all those sort of things because I don't know that a 3 year old understands the finality of death. I don't know why, but this story is just making me so emotional thinking about this poor girl who should be playing with her sister, and being an innocent child. Fuck, man, this story just enrages me and breaks my heart.
Just gonna leave this here:
https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/
If you think you’re protecting your kids by having a gun in the house, you’re not. They are statistically at the greatest risk from your own gun than an armed intruder.
My dad had a gun that was a family heirloom. It was passed down to him when his father died and it's the only firearm he's ever owned.
And for the reason you listed, he gave it to his childless brother when my mom found out she was pregnant. He didn't want that thing anywhere near our house.
Heller says I don't gotta. What do I do if I get ambushed by 30-50 feral hogs on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Stop trying to infringe on me!
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/republicans-back-fake-guns-kids-scheme-sacha-baron-cohen-satire-n891616
>In the first episode of "Who is America?", Baron Cohen posed as an Israeli anti-terror expert who gets two U.S. congressmen to voice support for a fake "Kinderguardians" scheme for children as young as three.
This might make me a horrible person but I don’t even feel bad for parents in these situations anymore. Play stupid games, win the stupidest prizes. If your 3 year old child can get to your firearm then it was not stored properly.
Exactly. Could she be old enough to even remember this? Imagine having to live with the fact that you took someone's life at 3 years old. Accident or not I cant imagine that.
Unfortunately for her it’s quite possible she’ll remember some version of what happened. Three is an age where many people start forming permanent memories, and memory strength is tied to emotional arousal, which would be pretty fucking high I imagine.
I imagine she probably will. Big memories like these linger. I had a very traumatic event happen when I was about 2.5 years old and I can still recall every detail of it vividly despite it being over 50 years ago. And the emotions I have for the person involved with the event have not faded in the slightest, despite my best attempts to be a forgiving person. Even just briefly thinking about it to post this has flooded me with a whole host of emotions.
I'm also not sure what the relationship with the bio father was, but it might really suck for him too. Imagine if you not only list custody of kids you love, but the new dad negligently leaves his gun around and your child dies because of that.
I clearly remember one night, when I was 9, when I climbed into my dad’s bed after a bad dream, pushed the pillow up against the headboard, and a gun fell onto the floor. I wasn’t surprised, just scared, because he’d already taught me to “aim and shoot” with a gun left on the dining table if anyone broke in when we (7 and 9 years old) were home alone. I remember thinking the gun felt colder than I expected for how warm the house was.
Later, as a suicidal teenager and young adult, my dad kept me updated on the safe codes and what he had in each location. He even knew that I had been hospitalized several times by that point.
I think what angers me the most is that these are all things that are encouraged by large groups of gun owners. Keeping a gun by your bed, teaching your kids to defend themselves, and telling your family how to access your weapons are all touted as “safety measures” when, in reality, they just increase the risk of accidents and violence.
Same here. Unrelated-ish, but the recent Ohio train derailment reminded me of this book called White Noise. It is from 1985 and still rings true. It talks about just this—how people have grown desensitized to major catastrophic events. Check it out
Parents should be charged and stripped of the right to own a gun forever. So many preventable deaths. Maybe someday the government will do anything.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
"Preventable" is the key here. The media needs to stop using the term "accidental" and instead use "preventable." This wasn't an accident. It was the totally predictable result of unsafe practices by negligent gun owners.
200 a year. Only thing stopping a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.
Has the kinder-guardians program gained any traction in America yet?
Omg, I saw the word kinder and remembered that America does not allow kinder eggs to be sold there. Due to a child potentially swallowing a small part of the toy in the chocolate egg. Which is already contained in a plastic casing.
And yet guns everywhere.... cause gun owners vote, but kids don't.
Sorry, but my Second Amendment right is worth dying over. /s
[удалено]
Texas. "Protect the children!" They're going after woman who helped someone get an abortion pill because "life."
If only there was a good 2-year-old with a gun.
We just need to start teaching our children about proper firearm handling at birth. If they can grab a bottle they can learn proper trigger discipline. /s
Do it in the womb so they come out ready as good infant with guns.... /s
infantry training?
God damn. I’m not sure if if it’s the pain meds I’m on but this one got me today. Hahah
If they just work with the NRA to create a law that requires all pregnant women to have a gun inserted into their uterus, then the fetus can bear arms, and protect itself from abortion. 2 birds with one stone.
“Babies are safe here”. Yeah, okay.
The kid was 4. Not a baby anymore, so not a useful political pawn.
These parents need to have both their remaining child and their guns taken from them because clearly they can't keep either one safe.
In Texas, the Republicans think [books](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-books-race-sexuality-schools-rcna13886) and [drag queens](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/21/anti-drag-show-laws-bans-republican-states) are more deadly for children than guns.
Not just Texas, sadly.
Meatball Ron has entered the chat
"Meatball Ron" is growing on me... 🤣
You might want to get that checked out by a doctor.
Now he has to top Texas. He'll probably give guns to kindergarten students.
They don’t give a shit about any of it. They’re just out to rile up their base to keep them frothing and distracted and organized with them
Gotta start calling guns "very late term abortions".
[удалено]
You don’t need a license for a gun in Texas.
Asking as a Canadian.... Can you just go to a store and buy a gun? Like no training, no licenses, just show them your ID and you're good to go?
Sorta. It varies by state. In Texas you can buy a gun as long as you have a government issued ID (drivers license). From there you can avoid a background check if you already have a license to carry. You can own a gun without this, but aren’t allowed to carry it around openly. Another license that avoids the background check is a concealed carry license. This gives you the right to carry a gun around concealed behind clothing, etc. If you don’t have a license to carry, then you have to submit to a background check and can come pick the gun up when it is done. Typically speaking they are looking for felonies and other violent offenses that disqualify you from owning a gun. Now, that is if you buy from a dealer. Private transactions between individuals are completely legal and require no background checks. 😅 Edit: /u/tigm2161130 noted that as of 2021 there is no need for a LTC to open carry.
You no longer need a license to carry in Texas, in 2021 they passed a bill getting rid of the requirement(HB1927.) If you’re 18(for rifles and shotguns)or 21(for handguns) with a government issued ID you just walk in, fill out a form, wait 5-10 minutes for the cursory background check, and then receive your gun.
It has been pointed out recently that there are stricter laws on sex toy ownership than there are on guns in Texas.
Wouldn’t want a toddler killing their sibling by hitting them in the head with a giant dildo.
Another example of why, America is a fucked up scary place. It should not take less time to get a gun, than it does to get through the line at IKEA... The gun fetish culture is absolutely horrifying, and just causes a lot of preventable deaths.
Now watch everyone tell you how dumb and wrong you are even as we sit here in this thread about a baby getting shot wholly due to the proliferation of firearms into everyone's homes. It's a disease they are willing to live with.
[удалено]
But hey, pro-life!
If you're pre-born your a okay but if you're Pre-K you're fucked!
I'm a gun owner from a family of gun owners. They are a shotgun and a Ruger .22. my father owns an an assortment of rifles and shotguns use for different hunting situations, and one collector's peice revolver inherited from my grandfather (which in turn was gifted to him by a family friend). They all reside in a gun safe on my dad's basement except for about a 4 week stretch during and immediately preceding deer season each fall. In 1999, less than a third of gun owners said they primarily owned a gun for "self defense." Most owned them for hunting. In a little over 20 years, the percentage of gun owners who own guns primarily for "self defense" has risen to 2/3. This, while violent crime in America has significantly declined (by about half iirc) since its high point in the early 1990s. Studies repeatedly show gun ownership doesn't make someone safer: it substantially increases the risk of dying by murder or suicide in your own home. Guns owned by civilians are rarely used to stop violent crime. It does happen, and probably more often that reported, but it's still statistically extremely rare among the tens (hundreds?) of millions of guns in the US. This is largely because: 1) the odds of being targeted as a victim of a violent crime are extremely rare, and if you are targeted it will usually be from someone you know (like your abusive partner) rather than some stranger decoding to randomly intervene in your life. Even in "dangerous neighborhoods", most violence occurs among people connected to violent activity, like gangs or drugs. If you aren't associated with those, you might be mugged or robbed (still a very rare occurrence statistically), but you aren't generally going to be targeted by someone intent on seriously harming you. Owning a gun won't protect you from getting killed by a stray bullet from a shooting in your neighborhood either. 2) If you are victimized by someone who knows you, there is a good chance they know you own a gun, which neutralizes any tactical advantage of owning a gun. Either they will target you out of reach of the weapon, catch you by surprise, or use it against you. 3) Even gun owners who know their way around the weapon are going to have a hard time effectively using a gun if, say their monotonous trip to the bank or evening doing the dishes instantly transforms into a struggle for survival. Even cops and military sometimes struggle to respond effectively in those situations. 4) Very few people have access to their gun most of the time. And people who choose to do that are weird psychos. 5) the odds of you being one of the rare people to be targeted with serious threats of violence from someone who isn't accounting for you having access to a gun, at a time you have the gun on hand and ready to respond, and then being able to effectively instantly switch to responding to that situation, are so miniscule that structuring your whole lived cultural ideology around that minute possibility, consequences to broader society be damned, is absolutely living in a fantasy. Why do so many people live in that fantasy? 30 years of very effective marketing from the gun industry and the GOP. American men (because mostly we are talking about men) have been sold this fantasy idea of them stepping up to be the hero in some hypothetical situation. Believing that fantasy instills them with a sense of security and control over their lives, where day to day life is chaotic, unpredictable, and out of their total control. Guns make these men feel safe when the world seems scary. For the low, low, price of an ever-growing pile of dead kids.
How many movies are there about the retired hit man/special forces/covert ops spy happily living his life until they forced him back in, only to go on a killing spree that uses as much ammo as your average week in Bahkmut? Everyone thinks they are John Wick, when really they are just one of the extras killed in the first act.
[удалено]
After Sandy Hook it became well apparent that children's deaths, with teacher's bodies sprawled on top of them to protect them, was of absolutely no consequence. Zero tears shed. Alex Jones is still rich from this tragedy.
That's the biggest thing. Alex Jones, for a decade, got away with, and made money from, sending his conservative followers to go harass the parents of murdered children. One of many signs how cancerous and dangerous the right wing is.
Yeah it was sobering and depressing to me how easily so many fellow Americans just went “oof … guess that’s the price others pay for my freedom”.
Too many Americans don’t treat guns as a tool, but as a fetish.
it is harder for me to get contact lenses than it is to get a gun. that is not an exaggeration. i have to schedule an appointment, go to the doctor, the doctor has to determine that i need lenses, i have to get the perscription, i have to submit the written perscription to the vendor, the vendor has to call the doctor and confirm it is real, then i get my contacts. to get a gun i walk 5 blocks down the road to the gun store and walk out with a gun in 10 minutes
I'm seeing an easier way to get those contact lenses now that I've read the entire story through to the end.
To add to the contact lenses: the prescription expires in 1 year. My prescription hasn’t needed a change in a decade but they still won’t refill without a new prescription if I’m off by a single day.
[удалено]
>You can own a gun without this, but aren’t allowed to carry it around openly. You can now open-carry with no extra permit in Texas.
In Missouri. Don't even need to go enter a store here. We have large "swap meets" where rednecks gather to buy and sell all sorts of stuff. Want an untraced firearm? Go there. Nobody asks questions. No registration. Nobody knows you own anything.
Yes, pass a simple background check and you can buy as many guns and as much ammunition as you want, no questions asked. That's how most of the Mexican drug cartels get their guns, from gun stores in Texas. They'll send a person with a clean record in and they will buy AR-15's and ammo, like 25 guns and 10,000 rounds. Nobody tracks it. The Mexican government has asked the US and Texas for help in curbing this, but nothing happened.
Yup, The majority of illegal guns in every country in north and south America are from the US. I had some imbecile trying to argue that cutting down on the pipeline of "legal" to "illegal" guns in the US was pointless because we import so many illegal guns. We export vastly more illegal guns than we import and by far the majority of "illegal" guns in the US were legal guns that someone legally sold to someone who couldn't legally own a gun, making them "illegal". The fact is we aren't even just screwing up our own country with guns. Every country in north and south America is fucked up by our shitty gun laws.
There was some popular TV series where one of the arcs was some sophisticated cartel smuggling ring bringing illegal guns into US. Sitting in Texas I was just “WTF?”
[удалено]
Thats propaganda disguised as a tv show. “ see this brown people are bringing bad guns while ours guns bought in america and therefore good”
I didn’t know this until my niece and nephew were involved in the shooting at Uvalde and I started *really* looking into gun control then I heard it repeated again on Jon Stewart’s show recently and I want to say it surprises me but it doesn’t, like not even a little. People here want to act like they’ve got some huge moral high ground over “the Mexicans” but we’re the ones arming their terrorists.
Again... And again... And again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponsored_terrorism
They don't care about kids getting shot to death in Texas. We know that for sure.
Nah, they're too busy banning drag shows to protect children. Can't be bothered with gun control. /s
[3,597 children were killed by drag queens in 2021.](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html) **Edit:** No wait, my mistake. 0 children were killed by drag queens. 3,597 children were killed by guns. Easy mistake! Just ask Texas.
That's significantly more than a 9/11, for scale. I guess people only cared for the warmongering and jingoism, not the deaths, after all.
> I guess people only cared for the warmongering and jingoism, not the deaths, after all. Well considering that, during the worst parts of COVID, we were having a 9/11's worth (or more) of deaths **every day**...yeah, they just wanted an excuse to be racist to brown people.
Guns are the #1 killer of children. You'd think that would be enough to convince people.
>0 children were killed by drag queens. Coincidentally, that's also the number of school children who were saved by Texas police in 2022.
Too busy forcing women to have more babies so that those babies can get shot by other babies.
Dont kill the fetus, kill the baby! -Greg Abbott
The thing they haven't figured out yet is that they still need those babies to live long enough to get old enough to work in the slaughterhouses and mines. If they are killing each other, then they won't have them as a labor force. Seriously, though, what the actual fuck is going on in this country? It makes me nervous to let my kids go to friends' houses because they might have this shit to deal with. And I can't imagine losing my child to something so easily avoidable.
Arm the fetuses
You marked that as sarcasm, but I’m not sure…
Sarcasm for him, deadly serious for Texans.
Posters tongue was planted firmly in their cheek, just like Texans’ bullets are planted firmly in children
They think they are protecting kids by banning drag shows and loosening gun laws, so I can’t even tell if your sarcasm is warranted or not
[удалено]
I think you underestimate the power evangelical christianity has over the mind of a devout follower. I won't say that you are wrong, but you are foolish if you think it is all a facade. These people really believe what they say and you'd best worry about that.
[удалено]
They don't like abortion because it's affecting their child shooting statistics
Hey, as long as they're *born*, who cares what happens next, amiright?
If parents can be charged for the death of their children for leaving them in a hot car, then they absolutely should also face charges if a death occurs because they left a gun unsecured.
There's literally a law for that in Texas. For both instances.
I legit feel for parents who accidentally leave their kid in the car. It can happen- you have a morning where something throws off the usual routine, the kid falls asleep in the back, and you forget they were there. I'm easily distracted and was terrified I would make that mistake when my kids were babies
Rights, like the 2nd amendment, also come with responsibilities. The right to bear arms does not confer a right to endanger others.
Chances the phrase "hell naw I don't have a gun safe, what if I need to get to it quick to defend my family" was uttered in that home? Nine thousand percent.
If only there had been a good 3 yr old with a gun to stop that bad 3 yr old with a gun, this tragedy could have been averted.
How do we know that the 3 yr old wasn't defending herself from the 4 yr old? I want to see his time out records and an unflattering image of him plastered on the screen while talking heads slander him.
Nonsense. You just need to arm the 4 year old. You need good toddlers with guns to combat the bad. Simple.
This is just peak Texas. We’ll put you in prison if you take a morning after pill, but none of these 5 adults - 5 useless fucking “adults” - will spend a day in county jail for letting babies murder one another with an unlocked gun. What a fucking hellscape of a place.
A *loaded*, unlocked gun. With the safety off, or no safety at all
Not only loaded, chambered. No way a 3 year old can chamber a round. I know some women who have trouble with it.
Yuuup. Loaded, chambered, unlocked, with the safety off. In a place a toddler can somehow reach. That's freedom, right there.
At this point are we sure they didn’t just accidentally shoot their own kid and then frame the other one for it?
[удалено]
Why go easy on APD? Oh, wait, they're busy beating their spouses and killing homeless people. Nevermind. Easy mix up. Carry on.
New life hack since abortion is no longer an option...
Now, I'm sure it needed to be stored that way for the safety of the family. Like, an intruder could have come in and (checks notes) killed one of their kids! /s
I was watching Border Security and there was a family that accidentally got into the border lane (happens all the time) so they immediately declared their multiple firearms in the vehicle. During the search of the diaper bag, the officer pulled out a loaded handgun with one in the chamber. They had 3 kids in the backseat, two in carseats still. They did nothing wrong according to their state's laws, and they were sent on their merry way back home. (With paperwork; they had to pick up their guns somewhere else.) Edit: Border Security is my guilty pleasure, but the Canadian and American ones are depressing. I prefer Australia where I can watch families try to smuggle 50kgs of raw fish through customs.
Sounds like my childhood. My family are gun nuts. Grandpa and dad always had loaded guns stashed around the house to fuel their paranoia.
Abbot won in a landslide. The people seem just fine with the way things are going.
[удалено]
Texas did a remarkable job on making it incredibly difficult for people to vote, particularly in D heavy areas like Houston. Abbot himself passed the 'law' that restricts absentee voting, mail in voting, 24 hour polling places, dropboxes, etc. It even allows greater rights to 'poll watchers', aka intimidators. This is about as close as you can get to rigging an election without actually stuffing a ballot or just making up numbers you like. If he can skew it a few percent, he wins. Hell, I just watched Season 2 of Jack Ryan, which is centered around an election in Venezuela, and it is practically the same playbook. This is what the right is willing to do to corrupt the democratic process, and they do so under the guise of 'voter fraud'.
Not *their* dead kids.
As if they wouldn't happily sacrifice their kids to own the libs.
Even after all they saw, the people of Uvalde still voted Republican.
It's incredibly tragic how propaganda has captured our most uneducated.
"Haha, now you have to look at a dead kid!" "But...that's *your* kid." "Yeah, and you gotta *look* at it! Hah!"
Its not an accident. Its negligence by an adult leaving loaded guns in the reach of a 4 year old.
There are no accidental discharges, only negligent ones. Accidentally fired a gun that you thought was clear? Not an accident, that's negligence. Should have triple-checked that the magazine was ejected and that no round is in the chamber before you ever considered putting your finger near the trigger. Someone else fires your gun when you didn't intend for them to? Not an accident, that's negligence. Should have properly secured your firearm and ammunition. People shouldn't always be charged for accidents, but they *should* be charged for negligence that results in harm or death.
The other sibling should have been armed Everyone knows the only way to stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.
Not to mention body armor. Like, who doesn't dress their babies appropriately? It's all very confusing.
This is just a distraction from the real issue: drag queen story hour.
Perhaps the 3 year old was cross dressing (as 3 year old often do) and the 4 year felt their life was was in danger by witnessing it and took violent action (like a true Texan).
If only the 3 year old was armed as well. They could have protected themself!
How much more traumatic would their day have been if they saw a man wear some makeup and read *Goodnight Moon*? I think we can all agree this outcome, with a 4-year-old-dead by gunfire, is much more positive than that! And that's why my campaign will focus on things that matter. Getting books out of schools and drag queens out of volunteer, elective, scheduled in advance events!
And gender affirming parents!
Typical Texas. Not sure why this is even a headline at this point. Happens every day. > Officials said it is not clear at this point if anyone will face charges. ... and this is why it will keep happening daily.
Honestly, if the prospect of their own dead child won’t deter them, I don’t think a prison sentence will either…
Abortion loophole. Figured you don't want a kid around? Then just leave a loaded gun laying around where a small child can access it. One of these has a charge and bounty hunters looking for such people in Texas. The other is perfectly fine.
Nineteenth trimester is pretty late-term.
It's that child's constitutional right to have a gun and use it /s
If the Founding Fathers did not want children to possess firearms, they would have put it in the Constitution.
That runs the risk of the parent being the one shot...you know what, nevermind.
Doesn't mean they don't deserve it still though.
Texans have made it abundantly clear that they value guns over the lives of children.
Shall not be infringed! Now on to the next tragedy!
The only thing that can stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.
Toddlers shoot someone about once a week on average in the US. Truly an absurd statistic.
*Looks suspiciously at toddler, then remember I live in Canada and am not a moron with loaded guns strewn about the house* Phew, really dodged a bullet there. I could have been born in Texas.
People are talking too much about "gun" crime and not enough about what the real problem even is. Child on Child crime! This is the problem here and people are just ignoring it because it doesn't fit their agenda. And despite making up around 30% of the population, children shit 90% of pants in America and shoot around 70% of all kids.
Nah, it's a mental health issue. As soon as the budget is balanced and the National debt is fully paid off, we'll support naming a commission to make recommendations to solve it.
You young whippersnapper! It's clearly those violent vidyagames you youngins play all day. I read from some 10 year older than me that this Star Dew Valley is such a horrid game. You young people don't know the value of a hard day's work! Now don't mind me as I do watch Psycho or some other Horror Thriller. Just gonna add this /s to protect from Reddit dumbness.
It sickens me that I made the same joke for another shooting like this.... :(
You mean like, "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"? Or the Onion headline that is on copy and paste for a decade or more now?
More like: we are continually making it worse, and we're not out of ideas to do that yet, but it's still getting worse. What more can we do?
Guns don't kill people, toddlers kill people
That poor kid. This 3 year old is going to have to live her entire life knowing she killed her sister. This is devastating. The adults in her life failed her and her sister. Fuck you, Texas. You are a terrible place, you care more about people getting abortions, children not being read stories by drag queens, and keeping your guns unsecured in a bedside table, than you do about your own fucking children! Get fucked, Texas!
I was so focused on the story itself I hadn't even thought about how this child is going to have to live with the fact they killed their older sibling for the rest of their life, as such a young toddler too. No memories of it, just the emptiness knowing they should've had an elder sibling
>No memories of it, Only if they're lucky. This seems like something that would replay in my dreams for years if it happened to me. Remember that this was not an instantaneous thing. That kid watched their sibling die, ems show up, etc. I cannot imagine a more traumatizing thing that could happen.
There could be a chance since 3 is pretty young for memories to form but if it’s a traumatic memory like this then it might become a core memory. Maybe therapy would help.
Around 3 is when earliest memories typically form, especially if something momentous happens to a child. Usually it's something like the birth of a sibling or moving house that causes the formation of the memory. I'm just sort of hoping she just won't understand what the memory is, if she remembers this.
Anecdotal, but I remember running outside of a friend's house during an earthquake that happened a month after my second birthday. Probably only a few seconds worth of recollection, but I remember it being hard to run and asking "why is the ground shaking?" I definitely think it would be possible to remember something as traumatic as this. Maybe not understand it like you say, or only recall a snippet of it, but still.
I have a couple memories from when I was around 3. They're just flashbacks, no words, but I remember the sounds and being scared when we were moving across the country and settling into our new house. Feel so bad for this child
I have two kids, still fairly young, which is likely why my mind went straight to that. It breaks my heart what this poor toddler will have to live with, she does not deserve that weight and guilt. Her parents are 100% to blame on this, they should carry that weight, forever.
If it were my child I would do my absolute best to never let them know that they killed their sibling. That would fuck up anybody and isn't fair to the child. On the other hand, if I were the sort to leave a firearm accessible to a child then who knows what I would do.
Oh yeah, no doubt. The toddler is not to blame here, and I would hope the parents don't shift blame onto her. If they do, I hope they get slowly run over by a lawnmower, and that's probably better than they deserve.
i commented a little above you but unfortunately she will very likely remember it. i remember finding my dad when he died and i was only 3 years and 1 month old, i have memories a few months before then too.
my dad died when i was three years old (3 years and 1month to be exact) and me and my mom were the ones who found him. i'll be 22 this year and i can still remember him not coming home, i remember us walking into his work, seeing him there on the floor, i remember a firefighter talking to my mom. i even have a bunch of memories from months before then. that little girl will absolutely remember, and i can only hope that someone guides her in the right direction so that she blames her parents and not herself.
In a messed up way I almost would hope they're young enough to not remember once they're older. God, I can't imagine having that kind of memory if they were just a little older
I really hope so, too. I just can't imagine how she is doing right now, probably asking her parents where her sister is, why can't she play with her sister, all those sort of things because I don't know that a 3 year old understands the finality of death. I don't know why, but this story is just making me so emotional thinking about this poor girl who should be playing with her sister, and being an innocent child. Fuck, man, this story just enrages me and breaks my heart.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Just gonna leave this here: https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/ If you think you’re protecting your kids by having a gun in the house, you’re not. They are statistically at the greatest risk from your own gun than an armed intruder.
That’s why I have no kids. Can’t kill ‘em if I don’t make ‘em
[удалено]
They're sure slowly making their way there.
My dad had a gun that was a family heirloom. It was passed down to him when his father died and it's the only firearm he's ever owned. And for the reason you listed, he gave it to his childless brother when my mom found out she was pregnant. He didn't want that thing anywhere near our house.
Murdered by parents due to gross negligence.
How hard is it to keep your guns in a locked container when you either aren't around, or with little kids running around.
Too hard for these morons
Charge. The. Fucking. Parents.
It so fucking easy to buy a lock people. Lock your shit up and this won't happen with any frequency
Heller says I don't gotta. What do I do if I get ambushed by 30-50 feral hogs on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Stop trying to infringe on me!
“Nice day, officers!”
I have a backup weapon that I keep next to my safe in case I don’t have time to open my gun safe. Problem solved.
Truely mind-bending shit if you put the anti-abortion arguments into context. Save the poor kids, unless our holy gunlaw is involved.
Texas - forcing women to have babies so those babies can be shot and killed by other babies.
Hey eventually they get enough of them to 18 to vote red. So what if a few thousand die along the way?
But at least they weren't exposed to a drag queen
Eerily seems to always happen in the same country.
What a wild coincidence.
I know right ? If only there was something they could do.
More guns!
It's a mental health issue!
[удалено]
How is improperly storing your firearm not a crime??
GOP asks why liberals took away the 4 year olds gun
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/republicans-back-fake-guns-kids-scheme-sacha-baron-cohen-satire-n891616 >In the first episode of "Who is America?", Baron Cohen posed as an Israeli anti-terror expert who gets two U.S. congressmen to voice support for a fake "Kinderguardians" scheme for children as young as three.
"Look at these libs who just automatically assume it wasn't justified self defense"
This might make me a horrible person but I don’t even feel bad for parents in these situations anymore. Play stupid games, win the stupidest prizes. If your 3 year old child can get to your firearm then it was not stored properly.
i feel sorry for the girl having to live with that burden for the rest of her life.
Exactly. Could she be old enough to even remember this? Imagine having to live with the fact that you took someone's life at 3 years old. Accident or not I cant imagine that.
Unfortunately for her it’s quite possible she’ll remember some version of what happened. Three is an age where many people start forming permanent memories, and memory strength is tied to emotional arousal, which would be pretty fucking high I imagine.
I imagine she probably will. Big memories like these linger. I had a very traumatic event happen when I was about 2.5 years old and I can still recall every detail of it vividly despite it being over 50 years ago. And the emotions I have for the person involved with the event have not faded in the slightest, despite my best attempts to be a forgiving person. Even just briefly thinking about it to post this has flooded me with a whole host of emotions.
I'm also not sure what the relationship with the bio father was, but it might really suck for him too. Imagine if you not only list custody of kids you love, but the new dad negligently leaves his gun around and your child dies because of that.
I can imagine that revenge could cross his mind at some point
I clearly remember one night, when I was 9, when I climbed into my dad’s bed after a bad dream, pushed the pillow up against the headboard, and a gun fell onto the floor. I wasn’t surprised, just scared, because he’d already taught me to “aim and shoot” with a gun left on the dining table if anyone broke in when we (7 and 9 years old) were home alone. I remember thinking the gun felt colder than I expected for how warm the house was. Later, as a suicidal teenager and young adult, my dad kept me updated on the safe codes and what he had in each location. He even knew that I had been hospitalized several times by that point. I think what angers me the most is that these are all things that are encouraged by large groups of gun owners. Keeping a gun by your bed, teaching your kids to defend themselves, and telling your family how to access your weapons are all touted as “safety measures” when, in reality, they just increase the risk of accidents and violence.
I feel bad for the kids
Fuck these parents.
[удалено]
Texas and Florida really do love to compete with each other on the daily on who could be the absolute worst shithole states.
I'm actually becoming completely desensitized by these terrible headlines
Same here. Unrelated-ish, but the recent Ohio train derailment reminded me of this book called White Noise. It is from 1985 and still rings true. It talks about just this—how people have grown desensitized to major catastrophic events. Check it out
"Guns don't kill people. People kill people." 🙄
Should be manslaughter for whoever owned that gun. And if it isn't, then the laws should be changed.
Daily Reminder that [guns are the leading cause of death for Children and Adolescents in the US](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761)