Parents who buy their children guns at all need to all be evaluated. There is seriously something wrong with giving children something whos intended purpose is delivering lethal force.
I don’t find it weird for hunting, but giving a child unrestricted access to firearms is insane to me given children are not able to assess risk the same way adults do.
Oh, I don’t mean temporary custody under controlled and hopefully educated circumstances, but those who hand it over completely. A kid simply does not need that power nor have the responsibility for full time custody.
Hell, the government wants people 18+ before they’ll hand someone a gun and let them go die for something…
Smoking and drinking age is 21. Maybe gun ownership age should be bumped up too.
then so should the voting age.
Why is that?
if you can’t make the decision to drink, buy a gun, or whatever else because you’re supposedly not “mature” enough to do, why the fuck should you be trusted with choosing who makes those laws? while you’re at it, raise the age to enroll in the military. if you can go die for your country at 18 you should be able to buy a beer, vote, and buy the gun they’ll hand you at boot.
conversely if you want to lower the voting age, as some democrats suggest, then so should the drinking age, gun purchasing age etc.
there’s simply no logic in being ‘mature’ enough for one and not the other.
It’s not about principle of freedom or maturity. The legal age of drinking is where it is because of young adults drinking and driving. You can have layers of maturity that isn’t give/take all responsibilities. An 18 year old should be allowed to vote because they’re just as responsible as any adult to provide themselves their own food and shelter. Unless you think it should be illegal to kick someone out until they’re 21.
Agree. It should be 98.
They’ll take you at 17 with parent’s permission.
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Before he passed away, my kids’ grandfather bought all his grandkids their first 22 rifle. Some of the cousins were still infants but he wanted to buy them something. He was a prolific hunter and marksman. My kids guns all lived in the safe until they were old enough to shoot them, and now they live in the safe when not in use. You can give guns to kids all day long, that’s not the problem and the gun is not the problem.
You can give guns to kids all day long, that’s not the problem and the gun is not the problem.
The problem is not appropriately assessing whether the child in question she be allowed the gun. Are they responsible, are they going to use it for valid purposes. This holds true for, well, everyone always. A lack of reasonable regulation is the actual problem. I am glad you have responsibly managed the distribution and use of firearms for your children. We should do that for everyone.
A lack of reasonable regulation There are hundreds of firearms laws on the books. What new law is both reasonable and would accomplish anything?
Mandatory psych eval and home inspection every 5 years.
lol. how? the logistics of personnel alone is never going to happen.
It’s almost like we should be getting something for our tax dollars other than a pittance at retirement and a genocide in the middle east.
Fuck that, no way in hell people would allow authorities to inspect their private property inside their homes as a prerequisite to exercising a constitutional right.
The “Constitutional” right to have weapons on you 24/7 and use them the second you are afeared is brand new. The actual text has a whole other half making clear that it’s for a well regulated militia. I had my room and weapon inspected in the military. So can you if you want that gun. If you have a problem with order and discipline then you don’t get a gun.
If this heartwarming story of responsible gun ownership is actually true, Mr/Ms Anonymous Voice On The Internet — y’know, because I believe every anecdote I read on social media — you are probably one of <1000 people in 336,000,099 (the 2024 population of the United States).
Less than 1000 responsible gun owners? We’re just making up numbers now?
Oh, absolutely. Where would you put that impossibly quantifiable number? 10? 10,000,000? More? Less?
My point being that every gun-owning household in the United States isn’t like yours and with almost weekly occurrences like the Oxford school shooting, the Michigan State University shootings of 2023, the Perry, Iowa school shooting, even the Detroit five-year-old who shot himself in the face among his playmates while their parents were out of the home, or the Lansing toddler who did the same with his father’s gun…
…it’s hard to believe that your family is anywhere near the norm. You are 0.1% of 0.1% (yes, I made that up too).
This, friends, is a great demonstration of why math and science courses are so important. Science teaches critical thinking skills. A lack of critical thinking skills often leads people to make things up to explain phenomena instead of questioning their assumptions and seeking factual information.
Mathematics, especially statistics, provides a framework by which people can critically evaluate the validity and significance of numerical values as well as generate realistic, informed estimates. A lack of basic math skills causes many people to be unable to evaluate relative proportions and effect sizes of event drivers.
“A lot of “adults” don’t seem to assess the risks either.”
Your frontal lobe on average fully develops at 25 and for some when they’re older.
That is when your brain stops really growing and developing, it’s not some threshold of social or intellectual maturity.
If anything, people become less adaptable, less open-minded, and less cooperative after that. It’s not something we get to lord over young people, it’s a mark against us olds for being less capable of growth.
Decision Making and Reward in Frontal Cortex
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3129331/
Your frontal lobe contains brain areas that manage who you are — especially your personality — and how you behave. Your ability to think, solve problems and build social relationships, sense of ethics and right vs. wrong all rely on parts of your frontal lobe.
Experts know this because of a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage. In 1848, an accidental explosion at a railroad construction site propelled an iron rod through Gage’s head, destroying the left side of his frontal lobe. Before the accident, Gage was a calm, respected leader among his coworkers. Gage survived, but after the accident, his personality changed. He would lose his temper, act disrespectfully and constantly use profanity.
However, Gage’s personality changes weren’t permanent. Four years after his accident, Gage moved to Chile in South America and became a stagecoach driver. Somewhere in late 1858 or early 1859, a doctor who examined Gage said he was physically healthy and showed “no impairment whatever of his mental faculties.”
While Gage mostly recovered from the accident, he died from seizures in San Francisco in 1860. The seizures were very likely the result of damage from the accident. However, his case remains one of the most useful in modern medicine’s understanding of what the frontal lobe does, especially when it comes to your personality.
The Pre-Frontal Cortex
One of the biggest differences researchers have found between adults and adolescents is the pre-frontal cortex. This part of the brain is still developing in teens and doesn’t complete its growth until approximately early to mid 20’s. The prefrontal cortex performs reasoning, planning, judgment, and impulse control, necessities for being an adult. Without the fully development prefrontal cortex, a teen might make poor decisions and lack the inability to discern whether a situation is safe. Teens tend to experiment with risky behavior and don’t fully recognize the consequences of their choices.
I find it weird they don’t just lend a gun to their child for hunting. Why give them their own personal gun? What’s the point?
Hunting is a cultural thing for many, and you often start with a smaller caliber while you’re young and learning. I guess I would compare it to a parent buying their kid their first baseball/softball glove. Parents often pass down a love for sport, most just don’t involve killing stuff.
There’s literally nothing stopping them from passing down their cultural love for hunting while only lending their children guns.
You’re not wrong, but it’s still why they do it as far as I can tell from having friends that hunt and were taught by their fathers.
Well I grew up with a dad that hunted and took me hunting, I was even an Eagle Scout, but I didn’t actually own a gun until later in my 20s. There’s just no good reason for kids to have their own guns and it needs to stop.
Also, gotta be honest, now that I’m older I think hunting is kinda fucked up in itself. I’m not gonna try to fight that battle tho lol
For families who participate in hunting and shooting sports, I can see giving the child their own gun, make it their responsibility to clean and maintain it, choose what optics or other accessories they put on it, etc.
I don’t support letting them have unrestricted access to it as a minor though. It should be locked up whenever it’s not in use under adult supervision.
I have a casual interest in guns, don’t currently own any but may someday when my budget allows (it’s pretty low on my priority list.) I do have a lot of friends who own guns though, many of them have had their “own” gun since childhood. All of their parents though were very strict about gun safety, none of them had free access to any guns or ammo until they were adults, and sometimes not even really until they moved out and took their guns with them because even as adults living at home with their parents some of them didn’t have the key/combo to the gun safe, so in a sense they still kind of had to ask for their parents’ permission if they wanted to take their guns out to go hunting or shooting into their 20s.
Shame it didn’t go this way for Rittenhouse.
I think rottenhouse was charged with 1st degree only and not 2nd degree, which was ridiculous. Trying to prove he had a premeditated intent to kill that night was a bad strategy by the prosecution. They would have gotten a conviction if they charged 2nd degree or even manslaughter, negligence resulting in death, or whatever.
Its hard not to have conspiratorial thoughts when realizing that the only reason rottenhouse got off scott free was because he wasn’t properly charged. They could have charged him with 1st, 2nd, and manslaughter and let the jury decide, but for whatever reason they only charged 1st, even though they couldn’t prove intent.
From the moment that trial started I was so frustrated because I knew they wouldn’t be able to prove intent which was necessary for the charges. I’ll never understand why they didn’t properly charge him.
So that’s why the guy went free ? I did wonder but never bothered to research it
that and the judge wanted to adopt him as a son
what
yea it was crazy i watched the whole stream for some reason
He wasn’t charged with 1st degree murder, that’s nonsense. He was charged with two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment.Here’s the wiki.I watched almost the entire trial live, and it was clear as day that his actions were textbook self defense. The prosecution had essentially no evidence - at one point they argued that Kyle had a desire to shoot people because he plays Call of Duty. I’m not making that up.
Everyone I’ve talked to about this incident who believes he should’ve gone to jail were unaware of what actually happened. The media lied about what happened and smeared his character leading up to the trial, so I’m not surprised that people think he’s a murderer. I am extremely disappointed though that the media blatantly lies this way in order to push a narrative or agenda, and people who consume it do little to no research to check it’s accuracy.
Edit: Clarity below
Incorrect. The Wikipedia article is not specific on what type of murder charges he faced.
All murder charges come with a degree. He had 6 charges, all first degree. Search for Kyle Rittenhouse Charges and the first result should be the AP article.
First degree charges require that intent and/or premeditation be proven.
I agree he wasn’t guilty of intent, but they would have had a conviction if they went with a lesser murder charge. By entering a riot with a loaded open carry firearm, against curfew ordinances, crossing state lines with a firearm he was not allowed to possess, they could have easily proven 2nd degree homicide, not premeditated.
They were trying to prove intent because that is what they charged him with.
I also watched every moment of his trial.
I’m sorry, looks like I got that wrong. I didn’t realize the wiki omitted that.
The NPR article I found that explained this also says that the jury was asked to consider lesser charges but still acquitted. I’m not sure what lesser charges exactly, but I assume it was second degree accounts. For first degree intentional homicide, Wisconsin law lists “mitigating circumstances” that downgrade first degree charges to second degree charges if proven true. It’s 940.01, found here.
No worries, the case was complex for sure.
The lesser charges were 2nd degree intentional homicide and 1st degree reckless homicide.
For the 2nd degree intentional charge, the prosecution would still have to prove intent. The key difference is that with 1st degree intentional, the prosecution would have to prove that the defendant was not acting in self defense. With 2nd degree intentional, they would have to prove that he had the belief that he was acting in self defense but that his belief was unreasonable.
For the 1st degree reckless, they would have had to prove ‘utter disregard for human life’, which I don’t believe is what happened in this case.
The lesser charge that the prosecution asked for but was ultimately denied was ‘2nd degree reckless homicide’. It is my personal opinion, having watched the whole trial, that they would have gotten a conviction on that charge.
Without an intention to kill, and without an utter disregard for human life, he recklessly put himself into a situation where he believed he was acting in self defense, but that belief was unreasonable. 2nd degree reckless homicide, 25 years.
The judge denied that lesser charge because he said that he thought it would be overturned on appeal… not really his call but that’s the way it played out.
Why? The circumstances between the two are very different.
I feel like a lot of people who hold this opinion are unaware of what actually happened with Rittenhouse. The media painted him as a careless kid who used a gun law loophole to take part in riots, where he committed a mass shooting in a state he didn’t live in and got away with it.
What actually happened, is that he went to Kenosha (where his Dad lives, like 10 minutes from his Mom’s house),to help protect his family friend’s business, help peaceful people that got hurt during the riot/protests, and to clean messes left by disorderly people like graffiti. Later that night, he tried putting out a fire that rioters started near at a gas station, and they attacked him for doing that. Someone threatened to kill Rittenhouse, started chasing him, cornered him, grabbed his gun, and only then did Rittenhouse shoot him. He then immediately went for the police, but was chased down and attacked by more people, where one clubbed his head and another pulled a handgun on him. He shot and killed one, then shot another but backed off after he was clearly no longer a threat.
This was textbook self defense. We can discuss whether what he did was intelligent in regards to his own safety, or whether the laws he followed should be changed, but point is, a mob was literally running him down with clear outspoken intention to murder him, and Kyle only defended himself when running away was impossible.
And he wasn’t charged with 1st degree murder, that’s misinformation. A five second search clearly shows this. He was charged with two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment. These charges have much lower bars than 1st degree murder, yet a jury (who judged him based on real facts, not bullshit media narratives) acquitted him of all of them.Edit: He was charged with first degree accounts, the wiki doesn’t state this. However, the jury considered lesser charges and still acquitted. Here’s an NPR article that goes into more detail.
Thanks for this. I knew some of this but for some reason just adopted the “Rittenhouse bad” brain worm. Maybe it was things like how quickly he fell into the arms of the alt-right crowd and seemed to be fine embracing them. Who knows. But thanks for the refresher. I think I needed that.
He’ll get what’s coming to him
edit: jeez guys I was just trying to lighten the mood but yeah you’re all spot on
I mean, has George Zimmerman gotten anything that’s “coming to him?”
Seems like he’s been in a total shit storm of events, but suffered consequences for nothing.
Rittenhouse will have his nose so far up the maga go fund me grift should anything ever happen, he’ll never know anything more than a minor inconvenience.
and what, pray tell, is “coming to him”?
A job at Fox News
money and celebrity status and whatever he wants to do with that basically. kill some libs and get away with it and you’re a hero to conservatives
i wonder how you feel about the guy that literally approached him with his gun out? or the guy that tried to smash his head in with a skateboard? are they ‘heroes’ to liberals? how are they any better if so?
the kid was out looking for people to shoot, and had just shot someone. the pistol came out in an effort to get the assault rifle out of the kids hands.
ok so you didn’t pay attention to anything that happened, nor did you listen to any of the testimony given from either side. i now understand you’re arguing from a place of feeling not logic or facts. have a good day.
I watched the whole goddamn trial as they streamed it in real time
unfortunately he won’t
Have you seen any pictures of him lately? I saw some last summer and he looked like shit. Put on 40 lbs and his face was flushed red. Looked like a young Alex Jones in the making.
I watched the whole trial. The verdict was definitely just, but her lawyer didn’t do her any favors. At one point, in a moment of frustration, her lawyer exclaimed ‘I’m going to kill myself’, at a trial for a mother of a kid who killed a bunch of kids.
She ‘opened the door’ to a whole bunch of evidence that had previously been ruled inadmissible, including the defendants infidelity and the entire text communications between the defendant and her husband.
She said “I’m sorry” about a thousand times, which I am convinced was an intentional strategy to associate the defense with being sorry.
They weren’t supposed to use the shooters name but she used it three times in her opening statement.
Most of her objections were not valid legal objections, but just argument.
The whole thing was a train wreck, I actually feel bad for her (the attorney not the defendant).
You:
She ‘opened the door’ to a whole bunch of evidence that had previously been ruled inadmissible, including the defendants infidelity and the entire text communications between the defendant and her husband.
Article:
But, during the defense’s questioning, Smith suggested that police intimidated and threatened Meloche into providing his testimony, so prosecutors pushed back and sought to allow the judge to include evidence that the two had an affair. Prosecutors argued that Meloche was not pressured, but that he didn’t want information about their affair to become public.
Smith was the lawyer. Sounds like the lawyer fucked up.
You’re saying the same thing as the OP? “She” being the lawyer.
Maybe read the first paragraph
🤦♂️ might want to work that bud
The defense opened the door by going down a line of questioning which would permit the prosecution to cross based on texts which were previously ruled off limits. She was given a chance to move on to a different line of questioning, but she (defense attorney) insisted on continuing with that line of questioning, with full knowledge that all of the texts would then be admitted, just so she could make her point about the witness potentially being intimidated by the police.
She was trying to say that the witness was threatened with loosing his job, in reality the witness was intimidated about his wife finding out he was having an affair with the defendant.
After the dramatic exchange between defense and prosecution where the prosecution insisted that the judge force the defense to clearly state that thy are ok with the full text exchange being admitted, she agreed, saying “I have no problem with all of the texts being admitted, I have no problem with opening the door”
Her next question to the witness was “did you feel that the police were intimidating you by telling you that you might loose your job”… he responded “no.” So there was no payoff for the defense on that line of questioning. Then the prosecution asked during cross “were you worried about your wife finding out that you were having an affair with the defendant” and he replied “yes”.
Classic case of don’t ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to.
I didn’t read the article, I watched every moment of the trial.
Waiting for conservatives to tell us the 2A protects a child’s right to own a gun. Come on, they’ve earned it guise!
Thumbnail looks like Mitch McConnell has reconsidered his stance on drag.
There’s things they chose to be that are far worse than “unattractive”.
It’s more the facial expression than a comment on attractiveness.
It makes sense that if there’s one confirmed turtle person, there’s probably more than one out there
This was the case where the parents decided to be tried separately right? I wonder if we’ll see both end up in the same sentence.
There’s a good chance the father takes a plea deal. The general consensus was the mother was the harder trial. There was some poor performance by her lawyers, but I doubt it counters the father being the one that purchased the gun.
She can get fukt
Justice done, but ultimately this doesn’t solve anything.
Good. Piece of shit should have never had kids.
Now go for the gun manufacturers next!