Shot and killed by young minors - who is the criminal?

[lostnfound]

The 11 year old who shot and killed the 3 year old in Detoit (reported here earlier) is being charged with manslaughter.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/05/us/detroit-shooting-death-children/index.html

Eleven year olds live in a fantasy world. Even at 12 or so, I know a young boy who imagined we should have a lever to move the earth away from the sun, so it doesn't get so hot in summertime. Eleven year olds have little impulse control, and they are at the mercy of the environment in which they have been raised. This kid went to his father's house, got a gun out of his father's closet, snuck away and got in a car with a three year old who died.

Some eleven year olds have been trained to be very responsible or obedient, but they are the exception today; and every kid is different.

I just searched for "11 year old charged with" and I was amazed at how many stories there are many stories of kids that age being charged with murder or manslaughter for this act. To me, the kid did a very wrong thing, but it is the adults in society who are supposed to stop this from happening.

Charge the dad who was careless with the gun. The kid needs counseling, probably for "anger management" but also psychological help.

Yes, an 11 year old may be a messed up monster or a vicious soul already, or may just be a stupid kid with no impulse control, but we can't count on the self-restraint of 11-year olds to prevent this tragedy from happening. So who is at fault?

[Doctor_J]

1. Well, if you charged every gun owner whose weapon ended up in the wrong hands and was used to

shoot someone, deliberately or accidentally, the prison overcrowding would become even worse. In a country with 300 million guns, a lot of them are going to end up in cases like this one. The only solution that might work is to begin reducing that 300 million by a few orders of magnitude. Period.

[lostnfound]

2. Making it a crime to let your gun be accessible to an under-13 year old seems reasonable.

But I don't even think it's a crime to let children fire a gun, right?

In my town, adults who unknowingly allow teens into their liquor supply (I.e., unlocked cabinet) are considered liable add negligent.

In my opinion, it ought to be a crime, with substantial teeth in it, to fail to secure your gun out of reach of children. Whether or not it results in a shooting.

[Doctor_J]

5. SO, putting a child's life at risk didn't make this guy responsible, but a new law would????

Stop, please.

[lostnfound]

6. I don't understand your point.

Does keeping a gun in an unlocked closet in a residence where an 11-year old is able to gain possession of it automatically legally constitute child endangerment? I honestly don't (or didn't) know if it does, but apparently it does, in 27 states.

Furthermore, my other question on this is whether or not an 11 year old should ever be considered culpable enough to be tried for murder or manslaughter. Children live in fantasy worlds up until age 11 or 12. The U.S. seems incapable of protecting them from life-altering errors, as much or more than ever.

[Lee-Lee]

12. Here in NC that is the law

§ 14-315.1. Storage of firearms to protect minors.
(a) Any person who resides in the same premises as a minor, owns or possesses a firearm, and stores or leaves the firearm (i) in a condition that the firearm can be discharged and (ii) in a manner that the person knew or should have known that an unsupervised minor would be able to gain access to the firearm, is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor if a minor gains access to the firearm without the lawful permission of the minor's parents or a person having charge of the minor and the minor:
(1) Possesses it in violation of G.S. 14-269.2(b);
(2) Exhibits it in a public place in a careless, angry, or threatening manner;
(3) Causes personal injury or death with it not in self defense; or
(4) Uses it in the commission of a crime.
(b) Nothing in this section shall prohibit a person from carrying a firearm on his or her body, or placed in such close proximity that it can be used as easily and quickly as if carried on the body.
(c) This section shall not apply if the minor obtained the firearm as a result of an unlawful entry by any person.
(d) "Minor" as used in this section means a person under 18 years of age who is not emancipated. (1993, c. 558, s. 2; 1994, Ex. Sess., c. 14, s. 11.)

[Orrex]

3. I would love to see irresponsible gun owners jailed

Certainly they're more dangerous than incarcerated pot smokers or people who are jailed for failing to show up in court for a traffic citation.

[lostnfound]

4. 27 states have child access laws based on negligent storage; not Michigan where this happened

I just found a website with Child Access Prevention laws.
27 states have something for negligent storage:

State Laws Based on Negligent Storage
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Wisconsin

[Eleanors38]

8. Standard prohibitionist outlook based on overturning a Constitutional Amendment.

[Eleanors38]

7. This topic has been widely discussed in the two Gunz Groups. Why don't

you drop in to the group where open debate on gun policy is quite vibrant.

Of note, the last reporting period for data of this sort put the number of childhood (15 yoa or younger) deaths by gun accident at 62. For the Whole year. This is far below the accidental death rates by numerous other means.

[pnwmom]

9. Interesting that they report gun deaths among minors by leaving out the older teens most likely

to have access to guns.

But your number is wrong. The actual number was 100 accidental deaths among children 14 and under -- in addition to whatever number of 15, 16, and 17 year olds died that way.

And what difference does it make that children die in other accidents? Most children need to be driven in cars, for example. They don't need access to guns.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/25/child-shooting-deaths-everytown_n_5527932.html

WASHINGTON -- At least 100 children were unintentionally killed by gunfire in the year following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a new study from a leading gun control group shows.

The study, released Wednesday by Everytown for Gun Safety, is the latest sobering examination of the effects -- intended or otherwise -- that guns have in communities where children reside.

"It is preventable," said John Feinblatt, the group's president. "Too often we just say it is an accident or inevitable. But what this data shows is it's preventable."

The report, titled, “Innocents Lost: A Year of Unintentional Child Gun Deaths,” is a detailed examination of the frequency, causes and victims of accidental shootings of children. Everytown said 73 percent of the deaths it counted involved a shooter who was a minor, which it defined as age 14 or younger.

[Eleanors38]

10. I took my data from the Nat'l Safety Council, not a "leading gun control group."

Some controllers have a "liberal" notion of what constitutes a child.

Please note that the childhood death rate has been falling Faster than any number of other accidental death causes, like drowning, electrocution, poisoning, falls, fires, etc., which take far more lives. Yet, as we both know, the number of guns in civilian hands has been going up. It seems that gun-owners Are in fact taking responsible steps in securing guns by means of trigger or action locks, or the use of lock boxes and safes. Tens of millions of these devices are in use. Now, if we could better secure the Drano below our sinks...

[pnwmom]

11. Funny, I didn't see any link. And a minor is under 18. There isn't a "liberal" or "conservative"

definition of that.

[Eleanors38]

13. Actually, that is your definition of minor...

I can't readily link on this tablet, but I found this data from the CDC, as reported in the reliably gun-control USA Today:

Childhood deaths due gun accidents for 14 yoa or younger "...fell from 86 in 2000 to 62 in 2010, according to the CDC."

That was tucked wa-a-a-y down deep into the usual anti-gun screed. Seems the CDC uses age 14, not 18

The best I can do is www.usatoday/story/news/nation/nation/2013/05/11

Even the foamingly anti-gun Mother Jones in the blaring "At Least 194 Children Have Been Shot to Desth Since Newton" (12/10/13 article) concedes that the number of kids killed in Accidents was 84. They consider kids under the age of 12, and think their research is better than other folks' which have been doing it for years.

Thr trend seems downward, no matter how the big bank of gun-control MSM can torture the figures. And rarely mentioned is how the number of guns and gun-owners have grown during the time data is collected; once their data is slung out, MSM goes into a monk chant with the same stuff.

[pnwmom]

14. No, under 18 is the LEGAL definition of minor. n/t

[Eleanors38]

15. The data from various sources uses various ages. No law against that...

and no increased credibility by using a "legal" definition of "minor."

[pnwmom]

16. It's deceptive to say you are reporting the number of "minors" when you are really talking

about a subset of minors 14 and younger.

But you're right. There's no law against distorting the facts when you're on DU.

[Eleanors38]

18. Some use 12, some 14, some 15, some 18. "Better" numbers, higher you go.

[pnwmom]

21. Right. The higher you go, the more cases there would be. So by only reporting

under 14, that understates the number of deaths actually connected to minors -- which was the topic.

[Eleanors38]

23. The lower #s were used by known gun-control entities.

Perhaps even they knew that pushing for 18 and beyond was a little much?

[Syzygy321]

19. Seems most reasonable to divide statistics

By both age and intent.

There's a vast difference between a clueless youngster fooling around with a gun he found in the closet, and a kid old enough to deliberately get mom's gun from the closet and use it to scare someone or settle a score.

The problem is the age overlap between "clueless" and "murderous". If I had shot a gun at someone at age eleven, my intent would only have been murder: I knew right from wrong and did not live in a fantasy world at that age. A 17 year old with autism or mental illness or a developmental delay? Different from a 17 year old gangster.

Stats hide the facts as often as they illuminate them. But it makes sense that older teen gun deaths should be classified separately, for obvious reasons.

[pnwmom]

20. Since the subject was ACCIDENTAL gun deaths I don't see why it makes sense

to exclude any ages under 18 from the category of minors.

We're not talking about 17 year olds settling scores. And even 17 year olds can have accidents.

[Syzygy321]

22. I missed that detail!

But I still maintain it is different. An older teen who has an "accident" with a gun is no different from any adult in the home who has an accident.

What makes young kids special is that they don't necessarily have common sense or understanding that guns go blam and people go splat. If a young kid gains access to a gun without supervision, the responsible adult has obviously fucked up.

OTOH we let our sixteen year olds drive deadly weapons at 70 mph.

[madokie]

17. Easy answer, the parents