There was a lot of poor choices working in concert to allow this accident to even happen, but based off the article there was nothing maliciously stupid, or grossly negligent in the context of rural southern AZ.
What does that mean? Negligence is not a regional concept?
The difference between negligence and gross negligence is quite significant, and contextually dependent.
This family lives near the border in a rural desert, which is typically flat, open, and sparsely populated.
ATVs are a pretty common way to get around, even for younger kids, and so is target shooting.
Poor choices were clearly made (negligence), but nothing either party did was done with a reckless indifference and disregard for life or property (gross negligence). At least, assuming no other facts come out that significantly alter what was said in the article.
If this same incident occurred in the middle of an urban, or even suburban, city with a medium to high population density, then it would be grossly negligent to have kids on ATVs, or to shoot .22 caliber air rifles.
Context matters.
Not sure what op meant, but there’s a lot of angles that I can see it being true. Having a shooting range on personal property is very different in rural Arizona than places with higher population density. The risk is objectively not as large. The space makes it unlikely to hit anything you wouldn’t want to target, and it’s very ingrained in gun culture to be smart about what direction you fire.
They may have also been referring to accepted risk vs freedoms. Gun people understand that there’s a risk to owning guns, but it’s an acceptable risk because they value guns, much like how people understand the risk of traveling by vehicle yet still choose to.
it’s very ingrained in gun culture to be smart about what direction you fire.
This is one of those things where 99% of people I see online say it, but like 10% of people I know in real life actually practice it.
Like wearing protective gear on a motorcycle
That’s interesting, when I look online, most people seem to think all gun owners are totally careless. I say it because I’ve lived in that culture before, everyone where I’m from has their hunter’s safety training and I’ve never been out shooting with anybody did it carelessly.
Is this your impression of friends/acquaintances of yours that shoot or have you taken part as well and seen it first hand?
When I’m in online conversations it’s responsibility and gun safes and trigger discipline.
When my friends get drunk it’s “let’s go shoot rocks from my deck”
I feel like by the time the tide turns on gun control people will be so frustrated that repeal of the second will be on the table.
The article says it was actually an air rifle pellet, which is probably always going to be legal. They are quite powerful for some models.
This isn’t a gun control issue.
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It’s wild you’re even questioning whether air powered firearms should be treated the same as a rimfire or centre fire firearm.
There are countries where people require a regular firearm license to own an airsoft gun let alone an airgun.
In my country Airsoft are completely banned.
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Oh weird I thought a child was murdered with a gun
Not as long as parents like this are bringing sacrifices
Thank you for your contribution, Vaginal_blood_fart.
How about you don’t let the kid play anywhere near a shooting range let alone leave the possibility for them to drive right onto it with an ATV. It sounds more like reckless manslaughter rather than an accident to me
It wasn’t a shooting range. That part of Arizona is pretty rural, and it looks like they rolled onto some land where people were doing target practice. Not uncommon for a rural community.
This is exactly how I ended up getting shot at while hiking. A bunch of drunk assholes decided to do target practice without checking what was down range, or they just didn’t care that they were shooting towards a trail. Either way, bullets were hitting trees near us so we took off running back the way we came.
From what the video on the report seems to imply, it looks like the kids took their ATV on private property that their parents told them not to go on.
Still though, ATVs aren’t silent. The fact that they kept shooting wasn’t smart at all.
If you don’t want to go deaf really quickly you should be wearing ear protection while shooting. If they were then I doubt they could have heard the ATV. If they weren’t wearing hearing protection then they were probably too deaf to hear anything anyways.
It was an air rifle. Those are only around 70db.
Ah. The bigger air rifles aren’t that common in the US (because you could just get a normal rifle almost as easily) so I was assuming it was a regular rifle. Yeah, the shooter should have definitely noticed then.
Obviously we don’t have all the details but to hit the kid center of mass and kill him with an air rifle it seems hard to belive that was entirely accidental. A .22 air rifle only has an effective range of about 50 yards. There’s no way the shooter didn’t see the kid when they pulled the trigger let alone hear the ATV. I’m wondering if the shooter deliberately shot at the kid for trespassing thinking an air rifle wouldn’t do any real damage. A lot of people don’t realize how much damage air rifles can do. At the same time though .177 is the normal target shooting air rifle caliber and the most common one. The only reason you would specifically buy a .22 caliber air rifle is for hunting so the shooter should have known what it was capable of.
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Well if they had ear protection they might not have heard them, it’s just a mess
People might have been wearing it, but it was an air rifle. Those have a solid bang, but they are nothing like a real fire arm.
It’s pretty common in AZ that off-road trails where you take vehicles double as target practice areas. On the side of a trail will be an area with backstops (basically the side of a mountain or just dirt hills) where people setup targets and shoot. The desert is a big place out there but there are also a lot of random dirt bikes and ATVs around. Supposed to be the responsibility of the people doing target shooting to watch out for people.
Gross negligence to shoot targets anywhere in front of any kind of trail.
As an off road enthusiast, it is always super sketchy how there are random folks with guns shooting as I pass by. They have their backs to the trails so are shooting away but still, you can sometimes spot them with a case of beer lining up their empties. Ain’t no one going to say anything to them so I imagine that is a reason it is so prolific.
Supposed to be but most gun owners are drunk idiots so here we are.
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an air rifle can kill?? wtf kind of air rifle is this?
I’m sure a paint ball to the eye could potentially kill someone too.
If only she had a gun to defend herself with!
