Man accidentally shot child while officiating wedding near Lincoln, deputy says
klkntv.com
A Texas man accidentally shot a child while officiating a wedding in Lancaster County on Saturday, the sheriff’s office says.
Chief Deputy Ben Houchin said deputies were sent to a wedding at Hillside Events near Denton on a report of a gunshot wound.
Deputies learned that 62-year-old Michael Gardner, the wedding’s officiant, fired a gun to get everyone’s attention.
“He was going to fire in the air, and as he did that, it slipped and went off,” Houchin said.
The gun was loaded with a blank that Gardner made with gunpowder and glue.
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“buh guns not the the problem!1!”
But the gun literally isn't the problem, it's the idiot with the gun. The gun isn't sentient. The problem is we allow stupid people to own guns.
Edit: just the downvotes on this comment show that people think guns=bad
If this idiot didn't have a gun in this situation, no one would have gotten shot.
Yeah it's either outlawing stupidity or outlawing the tool. I don't think the former is possible.
That is true.
Generally when people say or suggest that, "Guns are a problem," they don't mean the literal inanimate objects are the sole issue; it's a shorthand way to refer to many things including access to firearms, lack of background checks, proper training, lobbying, and much more.
And that's why heated debates like this happen, because people don't say what they mean. A lot of people do really think the gun is the problem though.
I was raised around guns and shot them at a young age (10ish, I'm from South Jersey, not Nowhere USA), it was instilled in me "You don't fuck around with guns. Period. If you do, someone will end up getting hurt. It doesn't matter if it's a paintball gun, a BB gun, or a shotgun. Treat it with respect and only point it at things you wish to kill (metaphorically speaking for paintball guns)".
The major problem is the lack of training and respect for the weapon. People treat it like it's a party noise maker or an accessory to make you look cool/bad ass.
It doesn't seem that heated to me? Also I've never spoken to anyone who thinks that the actual gun objects are the problem; it's understood to be synecdoche.
I think responding to a literal interpretation of someone else's words as if that's what they meant as a way to criticize the way they expressed their point is more damaging to the discourse because it's a bad faith response.
Consider: just having the gun makes it an option in the mind of its possessor. I think most people are usually about themselves and their faculties enough to not resort to it. But we're only humans.
Which is why nobody is demanding guns are thrown in jail, they're demanding laws that make even a token effort to minimise the risk to the public.
But the pro-gun community responds with vapid "guns don't kill people, people kill people" talking points, fed to them by a gun lobby that doesn't care what kills people, as long as the profits keep soaring.
Legal gun owners kill people, with guns.
They make up 80% of mass shooters but when you ask the pro-gun community what they're going to change to stop legal gun owners doing mass shootings, they proudly boast "nothing" -- they're content to keep selling guns to blatantly dangerous people and letting people die.
Children are killing themselves in record numbers using their father's legally owned guns but when you ask the pro-gun community what they're going to do about poorly secured firearms, they proudly boast "nothing" -- they want to keep guns in gloveboxes and bedsides lest they miss their chance at a "get out of murder free" and they don't care if criminals and kids get their hands on them.
And of course, every week there's a new story about a legal gun owner doing something stupid with a gun but when you ask the gun community what they're going to do about stupid people with guns, once again they proudly boast "nothing". They'll double over to suck their own dicks because it wasn't them but they won't budge an inch to ensure "responsible gun owners" are actually responsible.
So fuck em and their second amendment. They've been insisting they had all the answers for 20 years and they've fixed exactly nothing, so I've got no idea why they're welcome in the conversation at all, let alone dictating when it can happen and what can be discussed.
If they throw a tantrum about their rights, fuck em still. Statistically they've repeatedly voted to trample the rights of others and even if they haven't, their guns did nothing to stop it happening, despite what we were promised.
If they want to follow through on their threats to become domestic terrorists, fuck em even harder. It shows they were never as far from firing on innocent people as they claimed and if they want to die in a hail of bullets, at least it's them dying for their guns for once.
If they do not give an inch, they will be forced to accept a mile. The obstinacy on action and refusal to allow any changes is just moving people more and more to the extreme on this issue. If the NRA doesn't want to come to the table, they'll see their guns confiscated at gunpoint.
This isn't a threat, it's an observation. It's why there's the saying "those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable". We are going to get the gun violence under control one way or another.
This person should never be allowed a firearm again right? He has abused our rights and therefor can not be trusted with the responsibility. Yet still those “rights shall not be infringed” folk will fight for him to carry whatever he wants.
Absolutely.
Everyone is stupid though, or will be. Humans are fragile and will deteriorate to the point of loss of control or sense of reality. It is the future we all share. Most of us will not die with our dignity intact.
How you going to let such dumb, fragile, emotional, unstable animals carry killing machines just whenever? Of course this is what happened.
I'm for more consistent regulations state to state, but saying "take away all the guns, problem solved" is like putting a bandaid on an infected wound. You're not treating the cause, our mental healthcare and healthcare in general is shit in this country. People want an easy fix and I don't blame them.
The issue isn't mental healthcare though. That's insulting to everyone who deals with mental health problems, and the US doesn't uniquely have mental health problems compared to the rest of the West.
I don't like like making multiple replies to the same person, and this is already my second, so I'm going to lump in my response to another comment -- the way you were brought up around guns, that fucking around will get someone hurt and you should never point it unless you're going to shoot -- needs to be drilled into every gun owner. I do truly believe that we can drastically reduce gun violence without taking away all guns. If owners have to regularly demonstrate they've internalized the mantra, we'll see fewer deaths. If we deny guns to people who want to use them to make a point, we'll see fewer deaths. We need to restrict ownership so idiots and violent people can't get their hands on a gun.
Mental healthcare definitely is shitty in the country, you can't deny that, I suffer from insomnia and ADHD so I'm well aware of the state of our mental healthcare here,it's better than it was in the past, but it's still not great. We don't give those in need proper support (why do you think there are so many mass shootings? Your average sane person doesn't unload on a crowd of people at a music festival, school, or mall, do they? They have long standing issues that weren't properly dealt with and they cracked.). That's not the case in this instance though, this guy was just an absolute moron. We need to standardize the gun laws federally because it's currently a mess state to state. I can't buy a BB gun here in NJ but someone in Texas could walk into a store and buy a rifle that day and walk out with it.
If he had a spoon instead of a gun, would the kid still have been shot?
Obviously not, but nothing happens in vacuum. Banning guns screws over all the people that use them legally and responsibly. It's like saying "we should ban all cars because some people can stop driving while drunk". The real solution is removing the idiot from the equation.
Propose a solution then. How do we stop this from happening again? We cannot simply say "ah well this is the price of gun ownership" and do nothing.
It's absolutely unacceptable, and a growing number of Americans, especially young people, do not want this to continue.
Gun proponents thus have a choice. Find a way for this to not be the price of gun ownership, or see gun ownership go away. If you do nothing, the extreme solutions to confiscate guns and the like are more likely to happen.
First off, we could make more consistent laws federally. Laws differ greatly from state to state. Here in NJ, I can't even buy a damn BB gun at a sporting goods store and it takes at least two weeks to get any deadly firearm, yet in some place like Texas, I could probably walk into a sporting goods store and buy a hunting rifle that day and walk out with it.
As a more direct response to your question: if you do something dumb with a gun, your ownership rights should be hindered or completely revoked, and you should be fined/jailed/held responsible for your actions. Treat it the same way we treat motor vehicles. You get caught driving drunk? You can't drive for a few weeks/months, you get caught again? It gets revoked longer this time, etc... You get caught speeding? You get fined. Pretty simple.
The problem is we have all these "you won't infringe on my second amendment rights!" idiots and lobbyists that prevent any changes from happening.
Ffs so you know how pedantic you sound right now? Yes technically a gun just sitting somewhere locked and unloaded is usually not the issue the problem is they are freaken everywhere. There is probably enough rounds of ammo in civilian hands in the US to literally wipe out humanity. When you have this much of something even if an absurdly small percentage is misused it means it will happen every day.
🥱
"I don't like what you're saying, so I'm gonna insult you for saying it."
I insulted your words not you but given that you have a gun I am sure you took it that way.
They truly aren’t, this is straight up lack of brain cells that’s the issue here
So we need to decide who gets guns then, right? Some kind of control?
You'd think the "don't ban guns" people would be all for registration and background checks. After all, guns aren't the problem, people are.
I’m all for background checks, even mandatory safety classes, it’s the random banning of features that gets me. Banning firearms because they have a pistol grip or more than 10 round magazines makes no sense. The problem is most people who think like this get lumped in with the crazies.
The right was given when guns were muskets. I have no issue following the forefathers intended right. You may have all the muskets you want but if it's not needed for hunting or defending your home from an intruder then you shouldn't have it. Nobody needs a hundred round clip or full auto for an intruder.
I hate to argue against you because I agree that nobody needs a hundred round clip or full auto for an intruder, but the forefathers' intended right wasn't "people should have muskets". It was much closer to "the people should be armed in case of tyrrany by their government". The intention was for people to defend their other rights by force, making it more difficult for the government (or an invading force) to take over (this was immediately post-revolution mind you and much of the bill of rights was in direct response to british soldiers' activities). Of course they also thought we'd be reforming the government and drafting new constitutions as the culture changed, but of course that never happened.
I am not a historian, just a pedant.
I mean I get you are playing Devil's advocate but its clear we have also moved far those ideals. You are right the founding fathers didn't just say "people should have muskets" but we also have to think in the context of the times, private companies were also able to be armed with naval cannons but in the modern day I don't think Pepsi, Coke, Johnson and Johnson, or Nestle have an battalion of M1 Abrams and F22 raptors and the such. Like we are told we have the right to bear arms and in those days would be able to purchase the same arms that the military uses but I don't think I would want a world where every idiot can somehow afford and operate nukes, apache helicopters, etc. Hell while full automatic weapons aren't "technically" illegal in the US they are heavily regulated and expensive to possess and we the common people are boxed out owning such devices. So its clear we are "compromising" on the vision already quite a bit. Hell I would hope even some of the most die hard conservatives would think a private citizen owning the right such devices would be a bit much as well.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-2/
The founding father's used capitalization to put emphasis on certain terms. It seems to me that they wanted the well regulated Militia, made up of the people, to keep and bear Arms to protect the State and by extension themselves from a tyrannical federal government. If they intended the people to bear arms, why did they add the terms Militia, State, and Arms with emphasis but the people without it?
The only other place in the Constitution that speaks about what constitutes a militia is the fifth amendment, and it specifically only protects a Militia when it is in service to the government, which again is capitalized because they wanted emphasis that it was a proper militia and not a make shift one.
I agree with you, but I wouldn't read that much into their writing. The English language was even more lawless in their day.
In fact, the German-style capitalization of nouns may have just been a stylistic choice by the calligrapher:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/fall/const-errors.html
What exactly do modern reprints have to do with why the founding fathers capitalize certain words?
No idea, I didn't say anything about modern reprints.
But your quote was specifically about modern reprints and nothing about why they original writers capitalized specific words.
Read it again, they didn't. It was a stylistic choice by the calligrapher.
The Second Amendment was never about hunting or home defense. It was about arming yourself against the government and to defend your other rights by force. In which case you should have every feature you can afford. Also, about muskets, the founding fathers understood the march of progress would eventually create bigger and more powerful smalls arms, they even wanted the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalthoff_repeater for their army to stay ahead. To think the second amendment only covers muskets is moronic.
Cool, so we'll be taking those away from law enforcement and the military too then, right?
How do you feel about the forced reset trigger?
Sounds fun
If they actually out-and-out banned anything, I'm sure it was for monetary reasons, not for health and safety. But idk, it seems like a small price to pay, you still get to feel like John Wayne whenever you want. Sorry you can't really fuck up that paper target like you want, but don't worry, it's dead.
The second amendment wasn’t made for plinking, hunting, or home defense. It was made to allow the common citizen to defend their rights by force against the government. In which case you should have every feature you can afford available to you.
For what it's worth, people like you are necessary if we're going to have a future without gun violence while maintaining gun ownership. My understanding is that banning specific guns really doesn't do anything.
Most people stop at that, but I appreciate that you go on to say what will work instead. Mandatory safety classes and comprehensive background checks that include psychological evaluation are necessary. And if someone rabid comes into a safety class and says they want a gun to make a point or uses a racial slur in the process, they should be denied ownership and that should be recorded in a manner that background checks will see it. They'd be free to retake the class, but until they reform their behavior and show responsibility, they won't get a gun.
I reckon that's probably agreeable to you? I think it would go a long way. The other half of the puzzle is strengthening and enforcing the laws we currently have on the books. Police need to be held accountable if they refuse to enforce a gun law, including prosecution as an accessory to murder if warranted.
There's so many times after a shooting when information comes out that they were a troubled individual who showed some violent tendencies. That should have been caught in advance.
At this point it’s been proven psych evals don’t really work, firearms classes and background checks should be plenty to stop people with issues and allow us I not have our rights infringed upon.
Works for me. We should just have an option for a medical provider to say they don't believe the person will be safe with a gun -- this goes for not only homicidal tendencies, but people at risk of suicide.
Your ideas are incredibly radical. We first must imagine the mindset of dead 200 year old wealthy men before we do such a thing.
Or send anyone over the age of 16 who you wouldn't trust to be safe with a gun to reeducation camp until they get their shit together.
Yeah 100% if you want to own a class of gun (say a revolver) you should have to take a class on that specific type of gun and pass a written and practical test, and renew this regularly. Want a different type of gun? Better go take that class and pass that test.
Rabid anti gun folks are just as bad as the rabid pro gun folks, but the regular ass folks in the middle all seem to agree that strong controls on who can purchase the dangerous tool is the most reasonable solution
But this is lemmy, basically Reddit but more intense. I fully expect the folks here to be rabid anti gun without any rationale arguments for that stance
Your comment seems needlessly inflammatory, almost aggressive. I did not vote on it at all, but I would not be surprised if the downvotes you received were mostly because of that and not due to disagreement with your points.
Yeah my bad. I’m tired of every single time a fun in mentioned seeing “just get rid of all of them it’s so easy” then when I reply with reasonable solutions, get shit on. Just tired of it. Shouldn’t have bothered to comment on this thread in the first place
Copy pasted for like the 6th time now:
Yeah 100% if you want to own a class of gun (say a revolver) you should have to take a class on that specific type of gun and pass a written and practical test, and renew this regularly. Want a different type of gun? Better go take that class and pass that test.
Rabid anti gun folks are just as bad as the rabid pro gun folks, but the regular ass folks in the middle all seem to agree that strong controls on who can purchase the dangerous tool is the most reasonable solution
But this is lemmy, basically Reddit but more intense. I fully expect the folks here to be rabid anti gun without any rationale arguments for that stance
You are a walking strawman factory 🤣
Cool. I don’t care. I just want to keep my family safe. If that offends you I couldn’t give a fuck less
Yeah, I'm really feeling that lack of general empathy! No surprises here my man.
Yeah nothing but irritation for you folks in this thread
I'm personally calling you out for visibly having trouble with empathy in this thread, it's just you and me, don't have to diffuse it with a we like you and I aren't people talking.
I mean you might have an opinion so stupid that you just copy pasted 26 times in the thread, so plenty of other people have noticed how weird it seems and commented on it. But like, that's a you problem yanno?
I pasted that because my inbox kept filling up with obnoxious comments that all needed a similar reply, and I don’t care enough to personalize the message a dozen times for folks that aren’t giving r the same courtesy.
Fuck me for coming here expecting to have an actual conversation. In the beginning you could actually chat on lemmy, it was nice. This thread is just like the toxic Reddit I left.
Last time I try to have a conversation here.
Oh, you think you're having a conversation by copy and pasting the same shit that makes you seem weird, yeah, that seems like everyone else is the problem!!
Picture if he didn’t have a gun how this situation would have went.
He could have shot the child with a bow and arrow :(
He probably would have used firecrackers or something. At least then it would have probably only have been his own fingers.
Someone who makes their own blank and whips it out at a wedding near a child simply to get folks attention is so fucking dumb he’d find a way to hurt himself with his dinner fork
The issue isn’t the tool, it’s the retard wielding it
So he probably shouldn’t have a gun then…
This asshole? Definitely not
It can be both
Someone who is living in a allegedly first world country who needs to carry a gun around is the issue.
Hey if you’ll pay to move my family to a safe neighborhood give you my gun
The problem is that an idiot with no brain cells was allowed to have a gun.
Exactly
Americans have an estimated 120 guns per 100 citizens, almost double that of the country with the second highest amount of firearms per capita.
Tell me again how that isn't a problem.
Do we have double the amount of murders per capita?
Gun deaths total, we come in at 9th place. (This is probably more correlated with poverty/wealth inequality though, which America also has in strides.)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
So first of all, no we don't have double the murder rate, and secondly even looking specifically at "firearm related deaths" we aren't even in the top 5? All that with 120 guns per 100 people, nearly double that of the next country (according to the above commenter).
Yes, there are multiple factors, just like basically everything in life. We’re not the absolute worst at one statistic, so there’s no problem right?
That stat obviously won’t scale linearly, because it’s not like every 1 person owns 1.2 guns. There are a few people who own like 50 guns, and that drives up the average.
If you’re cool being the only “first world” nation way up near the top of the gun death list though, I guess there’s probably no convincing you anyway.
I am when the murder rate is on par. It shows that without guns, people just murder with other means.
It’s a tool. Blame the idiots that don’t use it correctly, not the tool itself
There are 908 motor vehicles per 1000 citizens in the US (source
In 2020, there were 5,250,837 vehicle collisions in America source
Tell me again how cars aren’t the problem.
Oh wait, that’s right, they are just a tool. The problem is people.
Exactly, we should treating guns like cars. They should require revocable licenses, registration, training, and significant financial investment.
Not to mention liability insurance. Your gun harms/kills someone? You've got insurance to pay for it. Your gun stolen and used to harm someone? Prove it was securely stored or it goes on your insurance.
I’ve been arguing this for years
You do realise cars actually require a license to operate? You literally already have "car control".
So what exactly is your agrument again?
Copy pasted for like the 5th time
Yeah 100% if you want to own a class of gun (say a revolver) you should have to take a class on that specific type of gun and pass a written and practical test, and renew this regularly. Want a different type of gun? Better go take that class and pass that test.
Rabid anti gun folks are just as bad as the rabid pro gun folks, but the regular ass folks in the middle all seem to agree that strong controls on who can purchase the dangerous tool is the most reasonable solution
But this is lemmy, basically Reddit but more intense. I fully expect the folks here to be rabid anti gun without any rationale arguments for that stance
Ok, let’s treat guns like cars and require a training period and license to use one.
Though I would probably treat it more like a forklift, because a gun is a lot more immediately dangerous if you make a mistake than a car, like a forklift. With a car, you usually have to be doing something wrong for a while before you’ll kill anyone. With a gun you just accidentally pull the trigger when it’s pointed at someone and you probably just ended a life.
100% agreement! I world have no problem being made to take the required classes and tests to qualify for my firearms like this, and anyone who refuses or fails has to turn their firearms over. 100% agreement. I think it would help these kinds of issues as well as public perception, so I wouldn’t have to argue this hard to stand up for the right to keep my family safe
Ok, it sounds like you’re a gun owning democrat like me.
Yes sir, liberal gun owner here! Nice to see another in the wild
No, no, you're right there. Cars are a problem too. But that's a different topic, we're talking guns now.
Ah ok so any tool that can possibly harm you must be banned
Just go live in a padded cell and leave the rest of us alone
Who talked about banning cars? Don't put words in my mouth and don't be so rude.
Cars are a source of different problems: pollution, traffic congestion, lack of space in cities due to parking needs... and accidents too, yes. All of these issues can be solved with his public transport, and 95% car rides can be replaced by public transport (unless I'm transporting the furniture I just bought back to my house).
There's no need to go live in a padded cell (although if you wish to, be my guest), just stop whining online and look for solutions instead.
Read the post again, you got everything backwards lol
Nice red herring. What does this have to do with the fact that there are TWICE as many guns per person in America than the next highest country? Doesn't that tell you that maybe we have influenced too much gun culture in our society and made it too easy for people to obtain without proper vetting and safety regulations?
Copy pasted from a reply to some other asshat
Yeah 100% if you want to own a class of gun (say a revolver) you should have to take a class on that specific type of gun and pass a written and practical test, and renew this regularly. Want a different type of gun? Better go take that class and pass that test.
Rabid anti gun folks are just as bad as the rabid pro gun folks, but the regular ass folks in the middle all seem to agree that strong controls on who can purchase the dangerous tool is the most reasonable solution
But this is lemmy, basically Reddit but more intense. I fully expect the folks here to be rabid anti gun without any rationale arguments for that stance
Maybe don't start off your argument with calling someone an asshat then 🤷♂️
I'm not anti gun, btw. I own a shotgun and know how to use it. My state recently passed a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons that I voted in favor of. But go ahead and keep insulting those who disagree with you and assuming they're 'rabid anti gun.'
Americans have all sorts of mental health issues that are completely undiagnosed and many of them are dealing with their unchecked emotions by waltzing into a Sportsman's Warehouse and back out with a cart of weapons after signing some waivers and shooting up places with large gatherings of people.
I don't even understand how people argue against this shit. It's been happening for far too long, getting much worse, and America is basically alone on top of this shit mountain we've built for ourselves.
Copy pasted from another reply
Yeah 100% if you want to own a class of gun (say a revolver) you should have to take a class on that specific type of gun and pass a written and practical test, and renew this regularly. Want a different type of gun? Better go take that class and pass that test.
Rabid anti gun folks are just as bad as the rabid pro gun folks, but the regular ass folks in the middle all seem to agree that strong controls on who can purchase the dangerous tool is the most reasonable solution
But this is lemmy, basically Reddit but more intense. I fully expect the folks here to be rabid anti gun without any rationale arguments for that stance
So you're not here to actually discuss the issue. Got it.
I came here to have a reasonable discussion, but just got standard Reddit bullshit. Thanks for being part of the problem
lol you don't actually have an argument though