Much as I am opposed to the concept of mandatory training...

[Cascade1911]

You're correct, prosecution is what I meant.

[Brian Pfleuger]

By all accounts, Zambrana is a good, Christian man, long time member of the church and friend of the victims family.

I am confident that living with what he has done is sufficient prosecution.

[Gbro]

I also am not fully in agreement with mandatory training. We do have at this time mandatory firearms training for concealed carry here in MN but there is also a bill for Constitutional carry like Wyoming recently adopted. I presum the mandatory training will then not be a requirment. How then do we encourage people to take training? Would a statute that demands a ten year sentence in the event of a accidental death or great bodily harm if no training certificate be justifiable to encourage elective training, or some such carrot?
I have to refresh my EMT certification every other year and although after 32 years the required 24 hrs plus CPR and continuing education meaning monthly training gets tiring but also there is an awareness of just how much this is needed.
I believe it really comes down to attitude! I have had people come to CCC with a very negative attitude and I always start out with an apology to anyone in the class that has more firearms experience than I and confess upfront that I am not the most knowledgable firearms person around.
I have never had a bad review.

[Cascade1911]

I respectfully must say I don't share your confidence Peetzakilla.

I am really tired of the endless incidents of "oops, sorry I maimed or killed someone 'cause I'm stupid, I'm really sorry, it was an accident!". "Sorry" doesn't fix it. I believe adults should decide their own actions, take responsibility for their choices and accept the consequences if they fail in that responsibility. I don't see "living with what he has done" as sufficient consequence to completely ignoring the most basic principles of safety. Do I think paying for him to sit in a jail cell is indicated? No. How about Zambrana looses his right to posses a firearm of any sort (he has proved he is not mature enough) and maybe a nice hefty slice of community service in a ER or something of the sort.

Look around our society. At every turn we are the enablers allowing adults to increasingly dodge the consequences of their poor decisions and then we decry the decay of said society.

To sum up and try to keep this on the original topic, I believe proper training is invaluable but all the mandated training in the world will not correct the irresponsible behavior of an adult who has chosen to act like a child. (... lets sneak into a church closet and play with our guns...Really?)

[Brian Pfleuger]

Well, we can disagree but the problem is not with the consequences, it is with the foresight.

Think about it this way....

You realize you're doing something foolish and might end up shooting someone in the head. THAT is not enough to stop you but if you think you might have to do some community service ALSO, that will make you not do it?

Nope. If potentially shooting someone doesn't stop you, nothing else will.

Of course, with any sane human being, the realization that you might shoot someone WILL be enough to stop you.

That's where the problem lies. The consequences are already horrendous. I'd bet this guy would do community service for life if he could take that bullet back.

It's all about the foresight.

[Brian Pfleuger]

The young lady has died from her injuries.

[wayneinFL]

Now he has to live with killing her.

I have an uncle who killed a carload of people shortly after he got back from Vietnam. He was drunk, passing cars over a hill and hit someone head-on. I can't imagine living with that.

We have traffic "accidents" all the time. While it angers me that 40,000 people are killed every year often due to negligence, I doubt that a felony conviction every time there's a traffic fatality is going to solve anything. These people think, "it can't happen to me" right up to the point it happens to them.

And for some reason, society accepts those deaths-by-negligence as a tradeoff for transportation, but when a (very rare) death occurs from a firearms accident, society calls to put the guy in prison. Why is it the two are so different in the eyes of society and fellow gun owners?

And I'm not trying to excuse the guy for a blatantly negligent act, but wondering why there is such a disparity in perception of this negligent act and the hundreds of negligent acts that caused deaths by other methods today? Is it because of the bias society has toward firearms? Are we doing it too?

[Frank Ettin]

Originally Posted by wayneinFL

...And I'm not trying to excuse the guy for a blatantly negligent act, but wondering why there is such a disparity in perception of this negligent act and the hundreds of negligent acts that caused deaths by other methods today? Is it because of the bias society has toward firearms?...

Several observations:

[1] While causing injury or death through one's negligence/legal fault doesn't always give rise to criminal liability, it does result in civil liability. Whether involving driving a car, an unsafe product, medical malpractice or an unintentional discharge of a firearm, the negligent actor will be civilly liable to compensate his victim for the damage he caused.

[2] Things like driving a car or practicing medicine are fairly complex tasks. On the other hand, avoiding hurting someone through unintentionally firing your gun involves only following a few simple rules.

[MLeake]

IMO, the drunk driver who kills a person should also be in prison.

The level of negligence is the key; driving drunk is inherently criminally negligent.

Simple negligence is different. A person who sets a firearm down, but slips or drops it, is not the same as a person who carelessly pulls a trigger while violating several basic safety rules.

IE, it isn't the death, on its own, it's the net actions that led to the death.

[youngunz4life]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/18...ntcmp=trending

[Cascade1911]

OK Petezakilla, you've explained that community service is worthless. Is there no consequence that will make even a reckless person pause and consider the possible cost? If not, do we surrender to the Anti's and admit that the more people we allow to carry the more likely there will be similar outcomes as the OT?

And for some reason, society accepts those deaths-by-negligence as a tradeoff for transportation, but when a (very rare) death occurs from a firearms accident, society calls to put the guy in prison. Why is it the two are so different in the eyes of society and fellow gun owners?

To me, negligence is negligence. If some one chooses to drink and drive, text and drive or speed recklessly and the result is the injury or death of another there should be real consequences.

The last brings something to my mind that may argue against Petesakilla's premiss that consequences will not stop recklessness. Back in the late 70's and early 80's penalties for DWI were increased. I remember the penalties seemed harsh enough back then to give even irresponsible teenagers such as myself and my friends pause before driving under the influence. I have seen numbers thrown around about a decrease of 52% of DWI related fatalities. Though I can not attest to the accuracy of that number it does coincide with my observation that people spend a little more time thinking about how they are going to get home from a party then they did in the seventies. Of course, it could have been the increased education that came with the increased penalties but what I hear people talk about when deciding to leave the car home is the risk of loss of license and money, they "KNOW" they wouldn't hurt anyone.

To close, while I believe that most people have no desire to hurt another I believe that self interest and self preservation are stronger influences still and stand a better chance of giving a person pause before engaging in a reckless act.

But maybe that's just me.

[Cascade1911]

Simple negligence is different. A person who sets a firearm down, but slips or drops it, is not the same as a person who carelessly pulls a trigger while violating several basic safety rules.

I totally agree. There are degrees. I person who drives 5 mph over the limit and is going with the flow and gets into a wreck is different than a person driving 20 over and weaving in and out of traffic. In the first case the driver could reasonably assume he was not significantly increasing the chances of injuring another while in the second the driver can not make that assumption. That being said, a little or a lot, an adult must take responsibility for his or her choices.

[Brian Pfleuger]

First, accidental shootings by CCers are not a national epidemic. We have to be very, very careful about involving the nanny state to solve all our problems. Once they're involved, they just want to get more involved. They're already too involved. DWI was and is a national epidemic. It unfortunately needed to be addresses by the government.

I don't believe there necessarily is or needs to be a solution. Yes, these events are horrific. Every one understands that, but it's like winning the lottery in reverse. It is so rare as to nearly defy imagination. A whole series of events has to go wrong in just the wrong way at just the wrong time or nothing happens at all, or it's just another negligent discharge that we never knew happened.

I do believe there needs to be a change in the way we teach the 4 rules. I don't know how the high dollar, voluntary, pay to go classes handle gun safety training but I do know that every class I've ever attended gives no substantial explanation being presenting the 4 rules.

What I would think would be common sense, and is in fact "common" in the sense of availability to everyone, is unfortunately not used by everyone. Instructors need to teach not just what the rules are but also the simple fact that there are times and places where one or more of them CAN NOT be followed. There simply are times and places where there is NO safe direction to point a gun. In those times and places, the solution is to keep your hands off the thing. Leave it in it's holster where it belongs.

No one that I have experience with teaches those things.

That's our only solution. We don't need yet more nanny state interference. We don't need enormous, bureaucratic solutions to isolated, extremely rare problems.

Now, I'm off to church, with my gun, which shall remain in it's holster, as it should be, "in public", always, unless life is at stake.

[Cascade1911]

I don't think our viewpoints are very far apart. I'm not advocating "Nanny State" intervention, far from it. I am very much a libertarian with existentialist leanings. The reason we have a "Nanny State" is because people are not willing to take responsibility for their own decisions and actions. That is when mommy has to come in and make the decisions instead. I believe a citizen should have the right to chose to defend himself. When a citizens decisions recklessly injure another citizen, THEN a bag of hammers needs to drop.

I think I've made my position as clear as I can.

The only thing else we can do as gun owners and enthusiasts is to preach safety and address unsafe behavior where ever we see it.

Say a prayer for Hannah Kelley Peet.

[Pond, James Pond]

I can see the arguements against mandatory training, but I can also see that there is a benefits.

Seeing some of the absurd manoeuvres on the roads here, I sometimes I feel an IQ test minimum would do more for safety than any amount of training, be it for the car, or the firearm....

Still, if people are against basic training, yet want to improve safety, what about advertising campaigns?

Since the 90s, in the UK, there have been a whole series of graphic, shocking adverts designed to illustrate the immediate and not so immediate consequences of driving while under the effect of alcohol. Since then there have also been adverts to promote the awareness of drivers regarding cyclists and motorcyclists, wearing seatbelt etc...

It's all worked. The incidence of DUI dropped significantly, the culture of the "designated driver" rose and the general attitude toward DUI shifted from acceptable (and macho in some cases) to "uncool" and stupid.

In France, I also remember similar education ads that tried to lighten the subject with humour and metaphor. Drink driving there is still bad. Not as bad as it is here, but still pretty bad.

Something, gritty, real, shocking yet plausible. Something that viewers can relate to. I don't mean ads saying guns are bad: on the contrary. I mean ads that say that guns are only as bad/good as the person operating it...

Some gun owners might start to consider things they'd always thought as "never happen to me" situations, and perhaps some anti-firearm people may realise the difference between the gun itself and the actions of the operator.

If you can't appeal to someone's common sense, then making it an issue of "face" can work wonders!!

It's an option....

[treg]

It's an option....

But you can't fix stupid.

Technology has made it possible for people to live among us who 500 years ago would have starved or froze to death.

Train them as you will, they'll still be unable to process logical thought.

[Pond, James Pond]

But you can't fix stupid.

So perhaps the minimum IQ idea has legs after all!!

In all seriousness, evidently, based on the change in public attitude to drink driving such campaigns do garner benefits.

You can't make people smarter, but you can encourage them to use the brains they've been given.

I feel that there are many smart people out there that do stupid things because they don't take the time to think about it, or question their own attitudes.

There is a difference between not thinking and not being good at it, even if the results are often indistinguishable!!

[TenRing]

This is a tragedy that can be minimized but not eliminated through training. I like the training requirement because at least it points out the responsibility of safe gun handling, even if the training is poorly conducted and even if the trainee does not absorb 100% of the information. Gun training is a lifelong process that only begins with the course.

People who value safety are capable of being safe with a firearm but unfortunately, even a lengthy training course won't add any IQ points to someone who thinks all they have to do is load up and strap on to be safe.

People gladly register for a six week Driver's Education course and pay several hundred dollars for the privilege. But when it comes to gun training, many people look for the cheapest, fastest course that offers a guarantee of successful completion.

The part of the article that I hate the most is when it states "The gun went off and fired through a wall, striking 20-year-old ...". The gun didn't just go off since it has no mind of its own. The gun owner must have pulled the trigger, breaking several safe gun handling rules including the one about keeping the finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.

[treg]

I feel that there are many smart people out there that do stupid things because they don't take the time to think about it, or question their own attitudes.

Those were the people smart enough to cut wood to heat themselves but didn't think about the upcoming winter and therefore froze to death.

[Cascade1911]

Do you think it's a matter of IQ or is it attitude? I've seen people with limited intelligence perform demanding and sometimes dangerous tasks. If anything they take the task at hand very seriously and pay more attention then I would. The people to beware of are the "smart" know it all's. They won't mess up. They are in control.

[Double Naught Spy]

And I'm not trying to excuse the guy for a blatantly negligent act, but wondering why there is such a disparity in perception of this negligent act and the hundreds of negligent acts that caused deaths by other methods today? Is it because of the bias society has toward firearms? Are we doing it too?

Yes, we are doing it to. We hold a set of rules in very high esteem and think that everyone in the world should adhere to these rules which would be nice, but not everyone sees the same importance in the rules as we do. We have folks that will fly into violent rage if somebody shoots at another target while we are down range checking our hits, even if the target being shot at is 50 or 60 feet away, but we will take nearly for granted almost getting run down at high speed by a guy running a red light that passes within a foot or two of us in a crosswalk. We shake our heads, have a few unpleasant thoughts about the guy, and continue across the street.

So who was in more danger? Was it the guy in the crosswalk or the guy at the gun range?

[Pond, James Pond]

Those were the people smart enough to cut wood to heat themselves but didn't think about the upcoming winter and therefore froze to death.

Yes, but that was Cro-Magnon 30K years ago, and this is now.

We now have the means of deseminating information. Some may take it on board, some may not.

I'm sure some that survived a harsh winter learnt from their lesson and stocked wood for the next one..... Those are the types that might benefit from what I'm mooting.

[Pond, James Pond]

Do you think it's a matter of IQ or is it attitude?

I guess both, and sometimes at the same time.

Attitudes are often a product of upbringing, when we tend not to question what we are told/shown....
I feel that the smarter someone is the more likely they are consider their own attitudes now and again.

Whether they change them for the better is a different story, but self-reflection is a good start and sometimes well produced ad campaigns can nudge people in that direction, with good effect.

Its an alternative and, based on the examples mentioned above, that I've witnessed, I wouldn't see it doing any harm, if done properly.

[Brian Pfleuger]

It's not a matter of IQ.

Raise your hand if you've never done anything REALLY stupid.

Any hands up? Keep them up. I'm going to point out all the liars. They're the ones with their hands up.

It's a lack of foresight. Maybe some "it can't happen to me" attitude. Maybe naivety.

It's not because people are stupid.

[Pond, James Pond]

It's not a matter of IQ.
It's a lack of foresight. Maybe some "it can't happen to me" attitude. Maybe naivety.
It's not because people are stupid.

And yet intelligence facilitates making better judgements on likely/possible consequences than not.

It is over simplistic to suggest that intelligence does not play a part in how you handle a potentially dangerous object/situation.

Yes, we've all done something stupid in our lives, but the difference between smarter people and those not so smart is that the former are more likely to realise it was stupid, in retrospect, and change their behaviour. They are also more likely to see a potential for mishap, before they start.

Those less blessed may never realise it was something stupid in the first place...

After all that is what intelligence is in essence, a complex problem solving program...