A 14-year-old boy allegedly fatally shot his older sister in Florida after a family argument over Christmas presents, officials said Tuesday.
The teen had been out shopping on Christmas Eve with Abrielle Baldwin, his 23-year-old sister, as well as his mother, 15-year-old brother and sister’s children, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference.
The teenage brothers got into an argument about who was getting more Christmas presents.
“They had this family spat about who was getting what and what money was being spent on who, and they were having this big thing going on in this store,” Gualtieri said.
Just as the architects of the Constitution intended
As the 2nd amendment says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, well-regulated militias shall have the right to keep and bear arms. Also, in a twist completely unrelated to that other sentence, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. I’m talking rifles, muskets, flintlocks, hell, even futuristic weapons nobody’s invented yet. Not part of a militia? Doesn’t matter. Completely unregulated? That’s right. Also, by ‘people’ we mean everyone: kids, witches, the addled, it’s a free for all!
Of course, most people only know the final trimmed-down edited version of that amendment. The original was much better, IMO.
At 14 and 15, both of these kids are too young to legally own a pistol in Florida.
https://www.fdle.state.fl.us/FPP/FAQs2.aspx
So, yeah, pretty sure they aren’t concerned with the Constitution.
You’ve made an excellent point, just not the one you think
You’re playing chess with pigeons, I wouldn’t bother
Trying to regulate the weapons used in our hellscape dystopia is just a method of maintaining the hellscape and avoiding any real change to society at large.
That those kids got the guns illegally and would have done so regardless of what laws were in place? That point?
regardless of what laws were in place?
Oh come on, regardless of where you stand on the issue, you can’t think of any change in law could contain that would prevent someone from getting a gun?
FTA:
“Both teens have prior arrests for car burglaries.”
Seems likely they stole the guns from cars, so maybe make it illegal to keep your gun in your car?
Hard to say until the gun origins are traced back, but they weren’t legally purchased by or for the kids.
Seems likely they stole the guns from cars, so maybe make it illegal to keep your gun in your car?
Hmm, so the source of the guns were the cars that were broken into. Hmm, yes. So what law can you imagine that would have even prevented the option for those gun owners to keep guns in their cars? C’mon, you’ve got this. Hint: How did the car owners get the guns?
Nothing that could be blocked because of the 2nd amendment. You can’t prevent people from legally owning guns.
Now, if you want to get rid of the 2nd amendment, we have a process for that…
First you get 290 votes in the House, then you get 67 votes in the Senate, then you get ratification from 38 states, so all 25 Biden states +13 Trump states.
Good luck with that!
maybe make it illegal to keep your gun in your car?
Unfortunately this is not possible. There are many businesses and such that have signs to the effect of “no guns in here.” In some states those signs hold no legal weight, but in some they do. In states where they do hold legal weight, your choice becomes
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Just never carry because the grocery store I’ll be in for 15 minutes out of my day has a sign they think will keep mass murderers out (spoiler warning: mass murderers target those signs. Not that it’s more likely you’ll get shot there necessarily, just that their signs only matter to people who aren’t about to murder 25 people, as the murderer has other crimes to worry about vs me, where I just want some damn nuggies so prison actually matters to me.)
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Carry in the store illegally. Honestly more people are doing this than you think, but as I said in some states this can become an issue for you.
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Leave it in the car while I’m in the grocery store. Legal, not exactly safe, but since I am literally legally forced to be unsafe: “not my fault.” If you want to charge people with leaving a gun in a locked car and then the gun gets stolen, you have to at least meet halfway and let people with a permit carry at all times and not force them to leave it in the car. You may say "just go to a competing business. Well the way my state law is set up you can’t carry in ANY bank regardless of permission, any government building, and a few more places. And I’m fine with either, make them leave it and no charge or let them carry it and charge if they don’t, but I’m not fine with “you have to leave that in the car even though you’d rather leave it in the holster, and if it gets stolen we’ll put you in prison for life.”
This is not possible
Yes it is, you just don’t like the idea of being inconvenienced by public safety laws.
mass murderers target those [gun-free] signs
[citation needed]
Carry in the store illegally. Honestly more people are doing this than you think
This is an excellent reason to strengthen gun laws and make some examples out of the people who decide to violate the law.
If it gets stolen we’ll put you in prison for life.
Show me where this has ever happened (life in prison for having a gun stolen from you)
It never fails that the pro-gun argument is always just loaded with dishonest hyperbole. Guess that’s expected from a cause that has zero public benefit. Part of your argument is to just casually admit that people are illegally carrying guns all the time, and you say it like it’s some sort of argument in favor of guns…
Agreed, folks who have an actual permit to carry should not be barred from normal businesses. Courthouses, government buildings, I totally get that. But leaving a gun in a grocery store parking lot is inherently more dangerous than a permitted person keeping it under their personal control.
Have you considered trying penile extension surgery instead?
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What if I told you it’s much easier to use and illegal gun when they are readily available?
Only country where this happens regularly to not have figured anything out. Stop embarrassing yourself and just post thoughts and prayers
That Jordan Lund is too stupid to insult
The solution is to examine how these guns got out of the legal system and into the illegal system.
The 2nd Amendment isn’t going anywhere so you can take that pipedream off the table barring 290 votes in the House, 67 votes in the Senate, and ratification from 38 states.
So what CAN we do?
Well…
#1) Hold gun owners accountable for storing a gun in something like a car that can be easily be broken into or stolen.
#2) When kids are arrested for something like burglary, you search their homes for weapons.
If the US had gun laws similar to the rest of the world then the chances of children getting hold of them would be far lower.
True, but that’s not going to happen as long as the 2nd Amendment is in place and there are close to 1/2 a billion guns in the country.
EXACTLY RIGHT! That’s why need to outlaw Abortion, have speed limits, make fraud illegal, make murder and illegal and keep all other laws in place! Because laws DON’T WORK!
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Not owned, but easy and unhindered access to one. That is the problem : Way too many guns for way too little brains.
Agreed, and based on their rap sheets for car burglaries, a likely source of the guns.
Which goes back to the two points I made in other posts:
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Any dumbass who keeps a gun unsecured in their car needs to be held accountable.
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When these kids were busted for burglaries, their homes needed to be searched for any and all stolen goods ESPECIALLY stolen guns.
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I don’t recall the forefathers mentioning the age for gun ownership. Toddlers need to protect themselves against perverted republicans. #babyArms
It wasn’t the founders, it was the Gun Control Act of 1968 that blocked anyone under the age of 18 from owning a long gun and anyone under the age of 21 from owning a pistol.
Fuck the United States. Only place in the world this fucking shit happens regularly , because a bunch of small dick Republicans won’t give up their guns.
Careful there, lemmy has a bunch of gun nut weirdos
Who gives a shit what they think.
Libertarian reactionaries in general.
exactly 8, it seems
It’s actually more like 40%-50% of the country though.
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So we’re just going to keep repeating this exact conversation every single time this happens. Because other countries don’t have systems, or people with fingers.
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“i think i’ll be a mouthpiece today, that’s all i’m good for”
Jesus.
The 14 year old brother shot his 23 year old sister.
Then the 15 year old brother shot the 14 year old brother, and disposed of the handgun.
The 23 year old sister is dead. The 14 year old brother is stable.
The 14 year old is being charged with first degree murder. The 15 year old is being charged with attempted first degree murder.
The sister had a child, which was not harmed.
Everything about this is messed up and tragic
This whole thing is tragic and beyond dumb.
It would be tragic if this didn’t feel like reading a weather report.
It’s also tragic because it feels like reading a weather report
Apparently the sister died from drowning on her OWN blood.
Anyway, merry jolly Christmas everyone!
The sister had a child, which was not harmed.
Arguable
That family reunion is going to awkward AF next year.
The sister had a child, which was not harmed.
I thought you said “armed”, and if only… if that kid had been packing he could have been the good guy with a gun who would have mowed down all the bad guys and saved the day.
Go into any of the relationship subreddits today and for the next few days and you will see countless Americans melting down into various degrees of rage and bitterness over Xmas presents.
It’s like this very goddamn year.
Can anyone explain this part of the culture to me?
I’m not saying I hate all Americans or anything ridiculous like that, the cast majority of Americans I’ve met are good hearted people but when it comes to Xmas and in what I’m given understand is the modern vernacular: “y’all cray.”
Don’t any of your families still watch the Charlie Brown Christmas? Because you really should.
There are 335 million people in the United States.
One asshat shot someone.
I’m not defending guns, shitty culture, or shitty people, but this is clearly a case where this kid has some sort of mental disorder. Literally hundreds of millions of families watched Charlie Brown and went the entire holiday without murdering each other
If it was the only shooting that day, it would have been a peaceful one for a change. Hint: It wasn’t.
Like I said, I’m not defending guns.
What I hate is people who attack where I live, with sweeping generalizations about how shitty a place it is. It isn’t. The United States is entirely neutral. There are good things about it and bad things about it. Every country has their issues, and reducing violent crimes to such a simplistic focus as “lol, guns bad, USA sucks” is catastrophically stupid.
One of the main ways I judge people is if they punch down. A good example of this is Trump’s feud with Greta Thunberg. At the time he was president of the United States. And she was a 16 year old autistic girl. Think about that. For a time the president of the United States, a person with literal tens of thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, decided that a 16 year old, foreign, autistic girl needed the focus of his ire. That’s punching down. And it’s classless.
So if you think the United States is shit, that’s fine. But if you live in a place that you think is so much better than it, you can say that in a way that’s constructive. There’s no need to attack somebody or some thing you think you’re better than
The United States is entirely neutral.
No. Definitely not. When it comes to violent crimes, with guns or otherwise, the US is anything but “neutral”. It is a sore point sticking out of all western countries.
There’s no need to attack somebody or some thing you think you’re better than
Well, it is a fact that shootings are an everyday occurrence in the US. Heck, even mass shootings (plural!) are a normal, everyday occurrence in the US, to the point that mass shootings with less than ten dead people rarely make the news anymore in the US. I’m not attacking you, I’m just stating the facts. But yes, I think any place in the world where things like that are not normal, everyday events is inherently a better place. Try to change my mind on that.
No it is not clearly a case where the kid has some sort of mental disorder. You know literally nothing about this person.
I would probably bet that this kid made a stupid split second choice in the heat of the moment about something that (partially likely due to raging teenage hormones) probably seemed very important at the time, and the guilt will haunt him until the end of his life (which, statistically speaking, just got much shorter on average).
This is exactly why guns are so dangerous. It gives people (in this case, a literal child without a fully developed brain) the capability to make a decision to end another life in a split second.
Murdering another human is a sign of mental disorder. Especially if it’s in a case like this. I don’t think it’s possible to argue “this human is acting rationally, losing control of yourself to the point where you literally murder someone is, indeed, a sign of mental stability.”
Also, access to guns isn’t the reason people murder each other.
In Christmas Day a 36 year old stabbed 2 children, 2 girls aged 14 and 16, for no other reason than seemingly, they weren’t white. A fucking racist asshole decided to attempt to murder kids. Is this person not suffering from a mental disorder? Should we stop people from owning knives too?
Again, I have never said this was about gun ownership. People who think violent crime stops if guns are gone are delusional. It’s such a rhetorical trap. I bet conservative leadership in the United States love when liberals make this an issue, it’s one of huge issues that motivates their base.
This is now, and always will be, a public health issue. You want less people to be victims of violent crime? Give us universal healthcare that also covers mental illness. Make it free, make education high quality, and free too. Crime will go down, violence will go down.
The political discourse about guns disguises that entire debate. And it’s stupid that people fall for it.
The political discourse about guns disguises that entire debate. And it’s stupid that people fall for it.
Only stupid people say dumb shit like “guns aren’t the problem, the ONLY problem is mental health”. People can expect reform in two separate yet connected topics. One can absolutely impact the other.
Yeah, a crazy fucker stabbed a couple girls. He had a knife. I WISH that the crazy fucker who shot up entire classrooms at Uvalde or Sandy Hook had only had a knife.
Provide better mental health AND tighter gun control policies.
I have never said anything about gun control, for it or against it.
This is a mental health issue. Happy, well adjusted people don’t murder other people.
It’s interesting you mention Sandy Hook. Did you know on the same day in China a mentally ill person ran through a Chinese school and stabbed 22 kids in the fucking head?
Stabbings in Chinese schools are a huge issue. The person killed 8 of the kids by stabbing them in the head.
But sure, keep focusing on guns. Let’s put all of our effort into that. That’s clearly more important than free, publicly funded mental healthcare.
I have never said anything about gun control, for it or against it.
You’re apparently saying that we shouldn’t be focusing on guns because mental health is more important…
But sure, keep focusing on guns. Let’s put all of our effort into that. That’s clearly more important than free, publicly funded mental healthcare.
We can surely do both at the same time, don’t you think?
I really don’t.
The whole topic, in the current political environment, is so polarizing and so toxic, I think it torpedoes any progress that could be made in reducing gun violence.
I believe gun violence will go down if people have better mental healthcare, better access to housing, and better job prospects. My personal belief is people who commit violence against others are doing so because of mental disease. If you reduce their stress, make their future prospects better, and tell them they have a future, their prospects, and mental health, will improve.
America is more polarized now than it ever has been. A conservative and a liberal will never agree on gun control. They just won’t. But I do think a liberal and a conservative can agree that violence is a problem, and that conservatives would be willing to consider solutions to it that aren’t simply making firearms illegal.
It obviously wouldn’t reduce gun violence to 0 like a ban would, but focusing on it as a mental health issue, and addressing that, would reduce other forms of violent crime too. Less muggings, stabbing, rapes, etc. I believe, taken as a whole, there would be less crime and drastically less violent crime, doing that, than any kind of firearm ban could achieve.
Edit: the downvotes prove my point. American politics right now care more about winning whatever hot button issue someone has, rather than cooperating to make meaningful change.
How about everyone reading this does a mental exercise. Let’s say liberals decided not to care about gun control, and that issue wasn’t relevant in American politics for the last 20 years. Do you think the current supreme court would look the way it does? Do you think organizations like the NRA would have anywhere near the funding and power they have now? How many single issue conservative voters did simply not show up to vote if there was 0 chance a liberal majority would “take their guns”
How convenient for you: a kid shoots and kills another kid, and just by default, you can make all sorts of assumptions about their mental health, and use it as a scapegoat, before the topic of firearms can even be brought up.
Please save us all the time and energy and don’t pretend like you actually give a single shit about funding mental health care. A thing conservatives have also gone out of their way to de-fund.
Interesting you’d label a guy advocating for universal healthcare and increased education spending a conservative.
You’re not even listening to my arguments.
Materialism is really big with a lot of people. My in-laws kids are spoiled rotten and only accept big brand name stuff because that’s all their parents give them for Christmas and Birthdays. Same people who can’t afford to pay their mortgage and are likely to lose the house in a few months.
I like present-less holidays. Better to focus on just being with people I find. Also helps if there’s a lot of good, homemade food.
For me it’s all about consumables and experience. You like sauerkraut? I just made you a jar. You like classical music? Here are two tickets to the symphony. I just avoid stuff unless it’s like plates for someone who moved into their first apartment.
Americans live in a state of constant stress that is satiated by material possessions and trying to impress or be better than others. These kids were just trying to get their dose of imbalanced brain chemicals
Entirely too many people base their self worth on what other people think of them.
So “I didn’t get enough shinies” = “nobody really loves me” = “I’m a worthless human being”.
Alternately “I didn’t get enough shinies for my kids” = “I’m a bad parent” = “I’m a worthless human being.”
Then that gets reflected outwards, poorly. :(
Breaking that cycle of seeking approval from other people is one of the hardest things you can do. At our core, we all seek validation on some level or other.
Is it all about how terrible the gf/bf is for not magically getting the super perfectist thing ever?
15-year-old brother and sister’s children
This sentence is a great argument for the Oxford comma.
This whole article was confusing for me.
There are 2 brothers and 1 sister, who has her own child.
14 year old brother shoots 23 year old sister.
15 year old brother shoots 14 year old brother in retaliation.
Writing isn’t difficult, but most journalists suck donkey shit at what they do.
The sentence is a great argument for editorial oversight. How’d a copy editor let that go to print???
Copy editor got laid off
*ChatGPT please copy edit this for me"
This isn’t a series. Oxford commas are for a series.
I got a little lazy with the copy/paste. The first item of the series isn’t in the quote.
That’s it no more guns… For minors that is.
Republicans: “No! In fact, we’ll make sure that it’s legal for minors to carry weapons without any adult supervision!!!”
Are you suggesting to take away my God given second amendment right?
Unironically yes.
‘God given’ is the fucking funniest part about this.
While God isn’t real, it is a colloquial term for natural or inherent rights. All of the rights acknowledged in the Bill of Rights are considered natural rights.
The part about it being an amendment is even funnier imo. It didn’t even make the original document.
Its not god given and yes it should be taken away. Constitutions can be changed or what do you think amendment means?
Did you know gun control was invented to disarm black activists? You really support Ronald Regan’s RACIST policies??? Figures, bootlicker
Then do it. Get the 75% super majority that you seem believe exists who agree with you that the right to bear arms should be taken away, and amend the constitution.
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Missing the /s there, too many folks taking you seriously.
For minors yes. Unless they take safety classes for at least 3yrs.
Totally reasonable to require children to be at least 3 before they can own a gun. /s
lol you’ll need to point at the right part of a holy book and convince us that the Abrahamic god wants you to have guns.
Isia 69:420: lo and the lord said. Carry a strap. And they did.
Above poster was joking I assume
America is hell.
Three years ago I had to stop my 17 year-old adopted sister from hitting our elderly mother over $30 of missing Amazon crap on Christmas day, then I called the sheriff on she and her baby daddy. Five cars came to mediate the situation.
Needless to say, I don’t go to family Christmases anymore.
Families suck.
Sorry to hear that. That’s awful. If you have your own family in the future, that’s your chance to make sure nothing like that happens in it. We learn from the mistakes we experience.
I honestly feel like we get better with each generation from experiences like this.
I’ve read too many history books to think that things get better with our species over time, and my time is too valuable to me to waste on kids, but that’s just me.
I hope the choices you’ve made are fulfilling for you.
Oh I’m certain our generation is kinder to our kids than those that came before us. History shows us a lot of cruelty to each other over the years but it also shows us a huge improvement over time, particularly in the last 60 odd years.
But thanks I appreciate where you’re coming from and for sure I’m a better dad than my dad was and for sure he was a better dad than his dad was.
Hopefully we’re getting there. :)
Honestly, we peaked in the stone age.
Agriculture was a mistake.
I hope you have the opportunity to build a family (via biology or social bond) that better lives up.
I learned to be happy on my own, which is the best thing ever if you ask me.
I don’t need other people to live a fulfilling life, and I hope I never feel like I need anyone but myself.
Lol, what? I’d beat the shit out of her if she tried to lay a hand on me mom.
She’d learn real fucking quick about what it really means to beat on someone weaker than you.
It’s a nice thought but I’m pretty sure my beating the shit out of a 17 year-old girl wouldn’t have reflected well on me in front of five sheriff’s deputies.
And Florida’s answer to this, along with so much of the country, is more guns. Absolute insanity
A daily occurrence in Red States, unfortunately.
I mean, probably true, but misleading? You’re definitely way more likely to get shot in pretty much any major US city, almost all of which are blue.
Not making any value judgement of one vs another. Just saying that this particular issue is pretty ubiquitous. Definitely not just a “red state” thing.
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/16/america-gun-deaths-crime-south
It’s actually both a huge and growing issue in red states specifically. Plus the guns people are using in crimes in states with more restrictive gun laws are coming from the states with less restrictive gun laws.
Basically, the more people who have guns, the more likely those people are to use those guns. Go figure.
Those figures are per capita however. So while there are more gun deaths in California, you are significantly more likely to be killed in New Mexico to gun violence.
Blue cities in red states…gangs in those cities … shocking…
If you read it, you’ll actually notice there’s a specifically different flavor of gun violence in both urban and sub urban areas in states with more restrictive gun laws (generally but not always blue states) and states with less restrictive gun laws (generally but not always red states).
The casual gun violence in red states is also very high, road rage, bars, in addition to areas where the crime is already high, like areas with gang violence. The amount of people dying per capita is higher in red states.
When you add in the gang violence from blue cities…yes it is. Just like NYC carries all the violence of NY state, even thou NY state is pretty damn redneck.
You’re not wrong, just maybe purposefully missing the point? Actually, the majority of gun violence is suicides, have to be careful looking at the data to separate violent crime and suicide. But yeah I would agree with you except almost every other City is experiencing drops in crime and gun violence rates, even New York! Places like Florida have 20% increases in violent crime year over year in their largest cities.
https://time.com/6294021/ron-desantis-crime-florida-data/
You see Orlando catching up with Chicago there, that’s wild! So yeah, a lot of that violent crime is gang activity, but gangs use guns more in “blue cities” in “red states” then their “blue state” counterparts. Data is old though and Florida is currently attempting to go through a data collection sea change to match FBI recommendations.
*Need to note, the pandemic crime levels went absolutely insane everywhere, and just about the entire country saw general crime rate increases in the 30-50% range, this is specifically a discussion of gun violence.
This would never have happened if the sister had had a gun of her own : she would have been able to retaliate, and kill her brother before he could kill her, and we would have gotten a happy ending. I just don’t understand, it seems so simple to me : just issue a gun to every child over the age of 5 (months)! There, done !
muricaaaaaaa!!!111!!
The 23 year old sister should’ve had a gun also, to protect herself from 14 year old boys /s
[The 14-year-old boy has] been charged with first-degree murder, child abuse and being a delinquent in possession of a firearm, police said. “These young kids — 14, 15 years old — routinely carry firearms…”
This is where USA culture feels alien to me. It is well known that children at that age tend to have poor emotional regulation, and underdeveloped physical and mental skills. The adults have duty of care, and they’ve allowed the child to wield a gun and kill someone. I would think that surely the parents have been criminally negligent in this case. But no, in the USA it’s apparently totally normal for children to carry around lethal weapons as though they were a toy. The outcome is sad, but unsurprising.
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Unclear why second brother being charged with attempted murder but it is presumably because there was a delay between the two shootings.
