A woman is dead because the teen was "playing" with a weapon!

No charges. None.

No justice, no penalty.
Rest In Peace, Lucinda.

Or is it just idle speculation of the writer of the article?

Legally accidental death cases are not as open and shut as most would think, here is an interesting piece revolving around auto fatalities and charges, some parts can translate to other death cases.

http://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-the-majority-of-drivers-don-t-face-charges/380345481/

It starts with a woman being killed crossing a cross walk which would seem like an open and shut case but no charges were filed because quoting from the article "Prosecutors decided not to charge the driver who killed Wiggins because he wasn’t intoxicated, speeding or using a cellphone, Carver County Attorney Mark Metz said. “It was dark out. He didn’t see her,” Metz said."

There is a legal difference between "neglect" and "criminal neglect" and depending on the circumstances it can mean the difference between a light, hard, or no sentence.

Almost everyone had guns,
and no one played with them.

And I never heard of anyone getting shot,
accidentally or on purpose.

"And I never heard of anyone getting shot,
accidentally or on purpose."

...Are you missing the sarcasm tag on that?

So sorry for the young lady and her family. He should be charged!

...the NRA isn't responsible for this tragedy, the young man was.

If he had observed proper firearms-handling procedures, the young lady would still be alive.

A gun would not have been a toy 40 years ago. The NRA has helped promote that culture of irresponsibility. The days of them being a gun safety organization ended when they hired lobbyists and hitched their wagon to a single political party.

Opposing safe storage laws:
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20161014/safe-storage-media-blitz-ignores-historic-trend-of-firearm-safety

Promoting guns as father's day gifts:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3639983/NRA-breaks-silence-aftermath-Orlando-massacre-promote-gun-themed-Father-s-Day-gifts-post-link-article-slams-Hillary-Obama-s-call-gun-control.html

examples go on and on...

I grew up in Tennessee and I know of no one who received a gun for graduation 40 years ago. Guns were tools, not trophies.

I noticed this trend in 1999 when a slew of politicians held raffles for firearms... all Republican candidates. Then came Columbine, and I realized that traditional gun safety won't protect anyone if little Timmy decides to deploy grandpa's arsenal.

I also found out they had suppressed the gathering of statistics on gun death around then.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nra-gun-research-cdc-statistics-2013-1

We don't know how dangerous guns are. We understand death by cancer better than gun deaths. The NRA has had a hand in that. They have promoted the gun as a symbol of freedom. They have let manufacturers treat firearms like toys. The days of the NRA as neutral arbiters of safety are a distant memory except as PR for the NRA itself.

Try this as an example. Write them and request gun safety information and then track the marketing you begin receiving. How many safety messages do you get compared to every other PR message fetishizing guns in one way or another.

That's my take on it.

"The NRA has helped promote that culture of irresponsibility."

Really? Maybe you'd like to comment on this:

https://gunsafetyrules.nra.org/

"Try this as an example. Write them and request gun safety information and then track the marketing you begin receiving. How many safety messages do you get compared to every other PR message fetishizing guns in one way or another."

Yeah, once you're on a marketing list, you'll get marketed to. Does that somehow dilute or invalidate the safety information you receive?

Have you ever taken an NRA safety class? The people in this incident violated literally every single one of the rules that those classes teach. Yet somehow you feel that this is the NRA's fault.

...in much the same way 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' is for others.

Many forget that what Richard Hofstadter termed the 'paranoid style' is by no means the exclusive province
of right-wingers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics

Tell us how guns were "fetishized." Be specific.

Some folks just can't put party before ego.

Had the teen observed just one of the rules, the girl would be alive today.

What's really depressing is that the girl's father thought a gun would make a great graduation gift. And the kid was an experienced gun owner? Maybe he'd shot off a lot of guns but somehow he didn't learn some basic safety procedures.

The kid should serve time, and the dad should be charged as an accessory.

And people wonder why we anti-gun nuts go off foaming at the mouth about these kinds of things.

If I gift a 21 year old with a bottle of Scotch for their birthday and A week later he finishes off the last 1/4 remaining in one sitting and goes out driving and kills someone should I be charged as an accessory?

Plus, there's an age difference.

An 18 year old was given a gun, which is primarily an instrument of death. Supposedly this 18 year old was an experienced owner and user of guns. He played with the gun, shot and killed his girlfriend. There's a direct instrumentality here that is completely unlike the equivalence you are trying to suggest.

Oh, and bars have been implicated as accessories when someone is served alcohol and then goes off and kills someone in a drunk driving incident. So yeah, maybe you should be charged as an accessory. Although I'm not suggesting that, because I see a distinct difference between the two situations that seems to escape you.

I happen to live in New Mexico, which seems to have an extraordinarily high rate of drunk driving deaths. So much so, that many of the bars and restaurants I frequent are pretty strict in their limits on how much alcohol they'll serve. Which helps a bit, I suppose.

I will say I've never lived anywhere else where so many drunk drivers manage to get on an interstate going in the wrong direction. And given our relatively low population, and our dearth of interstates, that's a pretty admirable achievement.

But I still see guns as fundamentally different.

Last edited Thu Jun 8, 2017, 02:56 AM - Edit history (2)

The father had gifted him the gun while he was inebriated on the night he killed his girlfriend you might have an argument, but he didn't.

An 18 year old has a full legal right to posses a firearm, just as I have a right to posses a bottle of scotch, If I kill someone in a DUI later the liqueur store is not responsible, if it can be proved they sold it to me while in a state of inebriation there is a case, my equivalence is perfect.

Guns are intended to kill.

Alcohol is not intended to kill.

So there simply isn't the equivalence.

And I still come back to the fact that supposedly this young man was experienced with guns. And somehow he "accidentally" killed his girlfriend? Either he was an incompetent idiot with guns, or perhaps he deliberately killed the girlfriend. Either way, we get back to the fundamental dangerousness of guns. Very much unlike alcohol.

The legal right to possess either one isn't even an issue.

Let me quote a what you said "and the dad should be charged as an accessory" This assumes you recognize US law, as citizens can be charged for breaking it, I agree. In the quote you focused on the gifter stating that they should be legally culpable under US law, except under current US law he was fully compliant in gifting a legal item to one who is legally allowed to be gifted said legal to posess item, under US law he is not culpable.

And yet alcohol kills way more people somehow...

.....he will punish himself forever for this...

...then he absolutely should be charged. To be sure, accidents happen but firearms aren't toys, they're deadly weapons.

It's astonishing to me how fatal carelessness with guns is so casually dismissed as "accident" as if it the results were completely unforeseeable and unknowable. Guns are dangerous weapons. Guns have as their primary purpose to kill. "Playing" or in any way being careless with a gun is criminal negligence, not some unforeseeable accident.

There should be no excuse for negligence and the reckless disregard for the safety of others, whether when dealing with guns, knives, cars, boats or any other potential instrument of death.

He will be affected emotionally for the rest of his life, yet some want to add the additional psychological abuse of prison on top of it? Disturbing.

"Beware of those in whom the urge to punish is strong." - Goethe

The father, who provided the gun, should at least be charged for giving it to someone who had no business having a gun.

forms of tragic accidental death.)

As described, it sounds as though they were passing around a loaded gun for viewing (maybe a case of the magazine empty or removed, but a forgotten round in the chamber?) and the gun was accidentally fired when he went to put it away. Definitely a massive screw-up to be handing around a loaded gun, and a second massive screw-up to inadvertently move the trigger (which is what I assume happened, unless there was a real defect), but I don't think it rises to needing charges.

On the other hand, if he was really playing--deliberately pointing it at people, or otherwise being willfully irresponsible--then I'd say charges are warranted.

In both cases, I imagine he'd punish himself for a long time, but charges would still be appropriate in the latter...

He'll sleep with the next girl to come his way, and marry her before getting divorced.

This will bother him, and he'll think about it, but he won't punish himself forever. In fact, he'll probably be back to shooting off the gun he killed her with in the next few days.

This is tragic. I don't think the kid should be charged if the shooting was accidental. Sadly teens do stupid stuff. If there was alcohol or drugs involved I would feel differently. How many teens get killed in auto accidents because a teen driver was showing off? You shouldn't charge a kid with murder unless there is clear malicious intent. This is really tragic. So many steps could have prevented this young lady's death.

Or heck, even to George Zimmerman's murder of Trayvon Martin? Those involve malicious intent, and they get off, so I guess someone who "accidentally" discharges a firearm that kills someone is likewise not responsible for what happened.

And teens who show off driving a car and cause the death of other teens -- are you suggesting they should be exonerated? At what point does personal responsibility kick in?

Your post is literally riddled with falsehoods and false equivalency.

1. Comparing George Zimmerman to the 19 year old male in this article is ridiculous.

2. Comparing cops who kill black men and go unpunished to this 19 year olds like trying to compare oil and water. At least oil and water are both liquids. The only commonality between cops and the kid is the firearm. Just admit that you hate guns and stop with the looney comparisons.

3. Exonerate teen drivers who do stupid stuff and kill people...exonerate someone for a tragic accident where they were never charged? Last time I checked, the only way someone gets charged is when drugs, alcohol, or intentional crime is involved. Your version of reality would open up a legal avenue to put every person involved in fatality traffic accidents behind bars. Again just admit that you don't like guns and stop with the crazy talk. You have wasted 3-4 minutes of my life with this garbage and I will not respond further. Good luck getting out of the rabbit hole you have fallen into.

I hear news stories from time to time from around the country of cops who accidentally shoot themselves or someone while cleaning their gun,
and I ask "How can that happen!?"

http://www.fox13news.com/news/258696306-story

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WHBQ) - A 19-year-old Tennessee woman was killed by the gun her own father gave her boyfriend as a graduation present, according to investigators.

Deputies in Shelby County, Tennessee say the recent high school graduate - 18-year-old Brennan Fields - was passing the gun around to his friends when it accidentally fired, hitting his girlfriend - Lucinda Luna.

“They handed it back to him. He was in the process of putting it away and it went off,” explained Shelby County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Earle Farrell.

Witnesses in the room confirmed that the incident was an accident. Investigators say they do not plan to file charges against him.

Teen accidentally shoots, kills girlfriend while playing with graduation gift

I blame the news media for trying to sensationalize the event. Am I not making sense here? The actual account does not match the media headline.


The bottom line is another dead person because of a gun. That is the tragedy. That is why we need stricter gun control. We shouldn't argue over the senselessness of this death or who gets punished. We need to focus on preventing more senseless deaths.

The thing that strikes me most...why is it legal to give a gun as a gift? That's bullshit that needs to be rectified by law. It would also help to put an end to straw man gun purchases.

Sorry about the gun law rant. I think we all agree that it's too easy to get a weapon of mass destruction. Yes that is how I feel about guns. For the record, I am a gun owner with cc permit, I just don't like lazy gun laws. Have a good day my friend.

Pick and choose.

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/brady-shady-gun-rules-control-backer-son-rifle-article-1.477603

Control backer got son rifle
BY Timothy J. Burger
3 minutes

WASHINGTON - Gun-control advocate Sarah Brady bought her son a powerful rifle for Christmas in 2000 - and may have skirted Delaware state background-check requirements, the Daily News has learned. Brady reveals in a new memoir that she bought James Brady Jr. a Remington 30-06, complete with scope and safety lock, at a Lewes, Del., gun shop. "I can't describe how I felt when I picked up that rifle, loaded it into my little car and drove home," she writes. "It seemed so incredibly strange: Sarah Brady, of all people, packing heat.

Brady became a household name as a crusader for stricter gun-control laws after her husband, James, then the White House press secretary, was seriously wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan. Brady writes in "A Good Fight" that the unnamed gun shop ran federal Brady Law and Delaware state background checks with great fanfare. The book suggests that she did not have her son checked, as required by Delaware state law. "[W]hen the owner called in the checks, it seemed to me he spoke unnecessarily loudly, repeating and spelling my name over and over on the phone," Brady writes. Amy Stillwell, a spokeswoman for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the federal Brady Law does not require background checks for intrafamily gun gifts. Stillwell said she did not know whether her son was checked under the state law. The Delaware Department of Justice says the state does not have an exemption for family gifts. "Scott is not a convicted felon, and he is not prohibited from owning a gun," Stillwell said. "Scott Brady could walk into a store and buy a - he is not a prohibited purchaser.

Delaware Justice Department spokeswoman Lori Sitler said the purchase could be illegal under state law if Brady did not also say who she was buying the gun for and submit his "name, rank and serial number" for a full check. "You can't purchase a gun for someone else," Sitler said yesterday. "That would be a 'straw purchase.

I didn't even think about all the hunters that purchase guns for their minor children. That would create a huge backlash if parents weren't allowed to give their kids rifles and shot guns for hunting. I still think it just sounds strange to give a person a weapon as a gift, but that's just me.

When I was eight. I still have it. I have a small collection of firearms ranging from original Revolutionary War flint muskets to a 50 BMG caliber bolt action rifle. Parts of my collection are pass downs from family. A Colt New service revolver (1907) and a Winchester M92 rifle (1911), both in the same caliber 38 Winchester (AKA 38/40 Winchester). That my Grandfather used as a Volunteer Deputy Sheriff in Quitman County Mississippi. These 2 will not be separated. There is also a cased Sharps rifle in 45-90 that was passed to me from my Dad, he received it from his Father, and he received it from his Father.
My will declares what each of my 3 sons will receive upon my final sleep. Those weapons that are not accounted for this way will be sold in my, and my Loving Wife's later years. Each son will receive a 600# safe to place these treasures into for safe keeping.

Giving your children a firearm as a gift does several things. It is a continuation of a hobby, it is a continuation of the Family. It is a passing on of something that has a direct line to Family long gone and only known from pictures.

I didn't even think about all the guns my own father has that belonged to his father, his uncle, and one my uncles that passed at an early age. I totally understand handing them down as a family heirloom. Especially guys from my Dad and Grandfather's generation. They hunted together and the rifles and shotguns are very sentimental to them. I totally overlooked this when I made my previous post. It just struck me as weird that the girl's father had given the gun as a gift and now she is dead. It seemed like a strange graduation gift, but like I said, I forget that there are so many people that still hunt.

"Giving your children a firearm as a gift does several things. It is a continuation of a hobby,"

With you so far...

"It is a continuation of the Family."

This is true of something with family history, but not any gun. Certainly not for Luna in the thread above.

"It is a passing on of something that has a direct line to Family long gone and only known from pictures."

Again, so does my great grandfathers railroad cap. And of course, a gun can be a great heirloom.

It can also be a GREAT way to teach responsibility, if done correctly and at the right age.

In fact, I only pulled it down from my garage rafters a couple of months ago. From what I can tell, it should fire just fine.

I have trained all three of my sons. along with my oldest grand daughter with this rifle. In several of my gun safety
classes I have brought it out for some rather petite students who have LoP or weight issues with a wooden stocked rifle.

How old is that rifle oneshooter? Love that diamond emblem.

only in 1962-64.

Fixed.

"This is going to hurt real bad for him,” Stubblefield said. “Like he's not going to get over this for a long time. I am just worried about Brennan really and her parents too.”

It's like they barely acknowledge the loss of life of the victim and that her parents are grieving too. Of course it's going to be worse for them.

This man was "an experienced gun owner who regularly went to a shooting range". At his age and with his experience, he should have known not to play with a gun inside a house and with someone in the room with him. Did he point the gun at his girlfriend? With his experience he should have know not to point a gun at someone. The first thing you are taught when handling a gun is not to point it at someone, even if the gun is fake.

the perp is in prison, he was experienced too. Subject who was experienced with handling guns, showed “utter disregard” for the most basic tenets of gun safety that day. He was convicted by a jury, of second degree manslaughter. He was sentenced from 3 to 9 yrs.

Meanwhile the dead girls family is left with a memory.