626
4-Year-Old Fatally Shot By Woman Who Was Teaching Her 'Firearm Safety,' Authorities Say
(www.huffpost.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
626 points (96.4% liked)
News
23259 readers
3474 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, IANAL but I think it's pretty easy to argue that anyone with the bare minimum knowledge of firearms and intent to teach safety would know that:
You presume the gun is always loaded.
You check the chamber, even after pulling the mag. And then still treat the gun as loaded.
You don't start the lesson by putting the barrel of the gun to anyone's chest and pulling the trigger. Because you don't do that when treating a gun as if its loaded.
With those three points, which again, I would argue constitutes the bare minimum to anyone attempting to teach firearm safety, a skilled prosecutor could argue there was some sort of intent. She would have known those things, yet didn't do those things, and so behaved in a way that indicates other intent. Easier to argue manslaughter, of course, but it's just so egregious I can see why they'd push for 1st degree.
The standard for first degree murder is higher than the mens rea required for most crime. It's not just an intent to kill, it's a premeditated plan to kill.
I think they pushed for first degree because most people see murdering a child as the most bad murder you can do and first degree murder as the most bad murder charge you can convict someone of. To do any less would invite political attacks for being "soft on crime" but I think it's a lot to try to argue that this person must have intended to kill this child because no one could possibly be that stupid. Any time I've ever thought "no one could possibly be that stupid and cruel" I've been unpleasantly surprised.
Yeah, honestly I think first degree might be a mistake and she may go free for it. If they have other evidence, fine. It just seems like a stupid person who maybe has anger and self control issues. They probably shouldn't have access to a firearm in the first place though with good mental health evaluations. This girl didn't need to die.