ID - 2 year boy accidentally shoots and kills mother in walmart in ths US

[Brightbird]

I'm not sure that the desire to protect yourself from harm is a psychological problem. We saw recently in Australia, which has very strict gun laws, people killed in a public cafe.

So it's not surprising that people wish to carry self defense guns in stores or other public places. JMO.

The fact she had the gun in a purse which she set down in the trolley suggests self-defence might not have been her primary concern while in Walmart with the kids. However, perhaps she usually carried it for protection and had a lapse in awareness this one time. We'll never really know.

 

[jjenny]

Probably because some fear that the United States will go the way of Australia and they will have to turn in their guns. So it scares the crap out of them. JMO.

Why would that be scary? Australia's murder rate is a lot lower than in US. I constantly see claims that guns make it safer, but that is obviously not the case when it comes to Australia vs. US.

 

[Brightbird]

Probably because some fear that the United States will go the way of Australia and they will have to turn in their guns. So it scares the crap out of them. JMO.

Scared that there will be fewer mass shootings, armed (with a gun) robbery, domestic shootings, and accidents like this? Okay then.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

People get hit by lightning, fall down open manholes, etc., but they still leave their homes every day. That's because people do a sort of risk assessment as a matter of course. Now, some people are extremely poor at assessing risk, and may even imagine extraordinary risks that are unsupportable by any analysis. People who have irrational fears have a sort of mental illness -- a psychological problem.

As it turned out, the main people that this woman needed to fear were herself and her son, and she made the worst possible decision to protect herself by electing to exercise her right to carry a loaded firearm into an otherwise safe place.

I don't look at it that way. The gun wasn't any more dangerous whether she lived in the ghetto and was somehow more justified in carrying it than doing that in the "safety" of a Idaho Walmart.

She made a mistake and paid the ultimate price. JMO.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

Why would that be scary? Australia's murder rate is a lot lower than in US. I constantly see claims that guns make it safer, but that is obviously not the case when it comes to Australia vs. US.

Gun laws didn't save those people in Australia.

 

[Curious Guy]

I thought this was a victim friendly site?

Shame this poor deceased woman is now being labeled psychotic among other things.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

Scared that there will be fewer mass shootings, armed (with a gun) robbery, domestic shootings, and accidents like this? Okay then.

Sacred that the only people left with guns will be criminals, terrorists and dictators.

 

[Montjoy]

I thought this was a victim friendly site?

Shame this poor deceased woman is now being labeled psychotic among other things.

This is a bit of a gray area: Evidently, she is not a victim of crime, as no charges are being laid; if there were any charges being laid, they would likely be against her for her own negligence, which ultimately endangered her, but put everyone else in that store at risk.

 

[Brightbird]

Sacred that the only people left with guns will be criminals, terrorists and dictators.

Well I don't know what would happen in America. I don't think you're going to have Australian style laws anytime soon so need to worry. And it's not the case in Australia that a lot of criminals have guns. The average petty criminal here isn't armed with a gun. If bikies want shoot each other, not my problem unless there's a stray bullet in a public place. Apparently only 18% of armed robberies in 2012 involved a gun. It's debatable whether the Sydney siege was a terrorist act. And dictators? That's news to me. Besides, people do have lawful guns here - for hunting, sport, and pest control.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current series/facts/1-20/2013/2_profiles.html

 

[Mrs G Norris]

Yes, people who need guns for sport or hunting in Australia still have them, people don't need guns for protection because not every second person has one. I think we'd rather live with our gun statistics than yours which are absolutely horrendous for a civilized country.

 

[Sonya610]

People DO have control over accidental firearm deaths in the home, so the 400 accidental deaths are not a risk to the public at large.

Let's compare that 400 a year in the U.S. to...

14,000 murders per year
83,000 forcible rapes per year
350,000 robberies per year
750,000 aggravated assaults per year

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

 

[sonjay]

I get why people would object to emotive language, but I was specifically talking about the term "gun culture" in my post. What I don't get is why peaceful, law-abiding gun owners so often react emotionally by twisting words and claiming that people who want more gun control are anti-gun, are hysterical, have a hidden political agenda, are naive, or must want criminals to be armed.

Because:

I think that believing that she needed the gun in a Walmart shows a sort of psychological problem akin to paranoia.

Carrying a loaded firearm into a Walmart when accompanied by a small children who are within close proximity to the firearm, is crazy, IMO, and has more to do with political posturing and, as I stated previously, rhetoric fueled paranoia, than it does common sense.

Of course Im aware that there are those who live their lives in constant fear of being swarmed at any moment by rampaging inner city minorities or ATF agents and arent willing to concede their option to start blazing away at once ....for their own safety or anybody elses.

People love their guns more than they love their children's safety.

Stop with the accusations of craziness, psychotic paranoia, and other crap and we'll stop reacting emotionally.

Many people, and most politicians, who want more gun control are anti-gun, do ultimately want to ban guns, are hysterical, are naive, and do have a hidden (and sometimes not-so-hidden) political agenda. We've seen it before, and we'll see it again. We know that new regulations are promoted as "common-sense gun control" when in fact those regulations are not common sense, would do nothing to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and are nothing but a step toward the ultimate goal of banning guns.

Want me to start linking to news articles about self-defensive uses of guns? Particularly ones outside the home, which happened because because the person made it a routine practice to carry daily wherever they went? I've got an endless supply of them, and more every day.

Do you wear a seatbelt only when you expect to get in an accident? Or every time you get in your car?

Carrying a gun is like that. We certainly don't expect to be attacked every time we go to a Wal-Mart or stop at a gas station to fuel up, or or any other routine daily activity. In fact, if there's somewhere that we expect to be attacked, we try to avoid that place if at all possible. But we know that attacks most often happen when they're not expected, and in order to be prepared, you have to have your gun on you despite not expecting the attack. It's not paranoia, it's common sense.

 

[Gardenlady]

Your chances of dying in your own bathroom, or being struck by lightning, far outweigh your chances of being beheaded, killed by a terrorist, or finding yourself suddenly being flung into a secret prison or something by a random dictator. hoh:

I agree with Montjoy, there is a psychological disturbance of some type going on when people cannot accurately and logically assess risks, and are so caught up in fear and paranoia that they cannot even go to the store with their kids without taking a gun.

The fear of these remote things happening is out of all proportion to reality.


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[TrackerSam]

Or she just forgot it was in her purse. and she doesn't have to justify why she has it to you or anyone else.

 

[jjenny]

Or she just forgot it was in her purse. and she doesn't have to justify why she has it to you or anyone elae.

She can't justify anything even if she wanted to because she is dead. If she were alive and somebody else was a victim you don't think she would have to justify why she left her gun accessible to a 2 year old? That 2 year old could have easily shot himself or some innocent bystander.

 

[rob]

In this country we have a constitutional right to bear arms. No one is forced to. I choose to.
In other countries they have different laws, I don't have a problem with that. I don't see why citizens of other countries feel the need to condem what we are legally doing here. If someone doesn't like our laws, don't come here. Problem solved.
Not trying to be controversial, just stating my opinion.

 

[jjenny]

In this country we have a constitutional right to bear arms. No one is forced to. I choose to.
In other countries they have different laws, I don't have a problem with that. I don't see why citizens of other countries feel the need to condem what we are legally doing here. If someone doesn't like our laws, don't come here. Problem solved.
Not trying to be controversial, just stating my opinion.

What do you propose to do with people who are born here but don't like the laws? Ship them out?

 

[rob]

What do you propose to do with people who are born here but don't like the laws? Ship them out?

Don't own guns.

 

[jjenny]

Don't own guns.

It's not myself owning or not owning guns that I worry about. It's other people who do stupid things with their guns.
There was a guy killed on New Year by "celebratory" gunfire. Somebody was shooting up in the air to celebrate New Year's.
What goes up must come down. This guy is now dead, and police haven't a clue as to who was shooting up in the air.
I don't think most people can be trusted to behave responsibly with their guns.

 

[nrdsb4]

Of the population of women who have abortions, a higher percentage die than the percentage of the population who die from unintentional firearm injuries.

It's estimated that somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors.
Source: http://www.fluentmedical.com/docs/To_Err_Is_Human.pdf

1,000 people dead from unintentional firearm injuries (including approx. 400 children) vs. 44,000 to 98,000 from medical errors.

I bet that despite that number, most people here go to the doctor when they get sick or injured.

Why? Because we put that number in perspective. Out of the many millions of doctor & hospital visits every year, 44,000 to 98,000, while serious numbers, mean that it's highly unlikely that you will die as a result of medical error when you go to the doctor or hospital.

The likelihood that you will be killed by unintentional firearm injury is vastly lower than that.

It would be a far better use of your time to campaign against all the irresponsible doctors making all those fatal mistakes, and demanding new regulations to stop them. You would be far more likely to save lives.

If we are going to fling statistics around to support our various agendas, I suppose we could say the odds of needing to use a firearm at a Walmart in order to protect oneself are "freakishly" low. Probably lower than any of the stats previously referenced.

When I first heard about this incident I had wondered if perhaps this woman had an ex husband stalker. In that instance, it probably is the only solution for an abusive ex who doesn't give a flip about restraining orders or the fact that every woman has the right to end a relationship is she wants to. If I were in that position, I might very well carry a gun with me at all times. But NOT in a purse!