Gun fires from girl's purse in Cheyenne Starbucks

[SecularMotion]

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Police in Wyoming say nobody was hurt when a small gun that was inside a girl's purse fired while she was in a Cheyenne Starbucks.

The bullet went through a chair and into a wall and narrowly missed several customers.

Police say the mishap occurred while officers were at the coffee shop around 7 a.m. Monday. They found a gunshot hole in the purse and a small, Derringer-type, double-barrel .38 Special inside.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5giZ9S0-G7uMJnFK0tFhQhmKja2BA?docId=eb5ee0f1117c448a8fa70b7899607710

[spin]

1. A father gives his under 18 year old daughter a handgun to carry for protection...

They must live in an extremely dangerous neighborhood. While Wyoming does not have a Juvenile Possession Law, legal concealed carry requires the individual to be 21 and have a permit. Bad dad!

The article says she didn't have any formal firearm safety training. That course should be mandatory in all high schools in a nation with over 300,000,000 firearms. Of course, first aid should also be a mandatory class.

[Hoyt]

5. Sure -- let's glamorize guns so every kid will want to carry one just like a cell phone.

[PavePusher]

6. You really need to take a position on training and stick to it.

You've claimed that carriers don't get enough training to carry in public then, when we advocate training, you claim we're trying to learn to kill people. And now you claim that training is an effort to "glamorize guns so every kid will want to carry one just like a cell phone".

You have officially passed from the ridiculous to the sublimely inconstant. Congrats.

[Hoyt]

7. As long as training shows a lot of photos/videos of babies shot, innocent kids shot, suicide, etc.

I'm all for it.

But, you guys will want some obsessed "gun culture" fool doing the training.

At least 50% of training should be about how to live without a friggin gun; harm guns do to society; the sordid reasons people become obsessed with guns and carry them; why a small percentage of populations can't walk out their door without one or two; why going without a gun is cool; and much more. Maybe Brady can do a video showing how guns fucked him up.

Is that OK with you?

[PavePusher]

11. You pay for, I'll watch it.

Put your money where your mouth is. Literally, in this case.

[ellisonz]

13. Amen.

I think responsible gun owners should encourage a fair and balanced discussion and not just here's how to not blow your head off with a gun type "training"

[AtheistCrusader]

33. A fair and balanced discussion?

You must have meant to respond to a different post..

[DanTex]

20. Yes. It is important to teach people to be able to feel safe without a gun.

The gun culture likes to circulate stories of brave gunners shooting down bad guys, but more careful examinations of the actual risks and benefits of keeping a gun generally show that, for most people, the risks involved are greater than the safety benefits.

In fact, a lot of the supposed safety benefits of guns in terms of self-defense are illusory and psychological. People may feel safer, but there is little evidence that owning or carrying a gun reduces their risk of being a victim of a violent crime. There is also very little evidence that attempting to defend oneself from a criminal with a gun produces a better outcome -- the evidence generally shows either that other self-protective measures are just as effective, or that a gun can actually exacerbate the situation.

None of this is quite as sexy as the "don't mess with me I'm packing" ideology that might appeal to certain young people, but it is the sober reality. It is true that the illusion of safety, and the accompanying peace of mind, may be real benefits, but a better way to achieve this is simply for people to be able to feel safe without a gun.

Here's a useful survey of some of the academic research on risks and benefits of gun ownership.

This article summarizes the scientific literature on the health risks and benefits of having a gun in the home for the gun owner and his/her family. For most contemporary Americans, scientific studies indicate that the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit. The evidence is overwhelming for the fact that a gun in the home is a risk factor for completed suicide and that gun accidents are most likely to occur in homes with guns. There is compelling evidence that a gun in the home is a risk factor for intimidation and for killing women in their homes. On the benefit side, there are fewer studies, and there is no credible evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in. Thus, groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics urge parents not to have guns in the home.

http://www.iansa.org/system/files/Risks%20and%20Benefits%20of%20a%20Gun%20in%20the%20Home%202011.pdf

[gejohnston]

49. I think it is more important that

people make their own informed decisions based on objective, real science, deep thought, and their own value system instead of debunked nonsense financed by the Joyce echo chamber via a propaganda mil like IANSA, VPC, NRA, etc.

[DissedByBush]

23. You sound like a pro-lifer

People should be educated about abortion...

When in reality they want to shock young women into not having one.

Gun safety was mandatory in my junior high. We had much classroom time and walked around with empty BB guns until we were bored. Boredom + kids = playing around, and the teacher was watching to see if we played around with the guns, pointed them in unsafe directions.

It was a good semester, and it neither glorified nor denigrated the guns themselves. It was just, well, school.

Unlike you, they had a goal to educate kids, not indoctrinate them to a political view.

[Union Scribe]

25. Immediately what I thought of as well.

Maybe he'll even buy a bus and paste huge gory photos on it, too.

[Hoyt]

27. Driver training used to include a lot of gory films.

[Union Scribe]

36. And that obviously worked well.

As we all know, traffic fatalities only started appearing after those red pavement films stopped being shown.

[SteveW]

39. I saw those old "Suicide Club" movies. Gone! over 50 yrs. ago. nt

[BiggJawn]

52. Yeah, I remember those.

Had the effect of scaring the kids so damn bad that they'd most likely freeze up and cover their face with their hands instead of trying to drive out of the situation.

Stupid 1950's Psychology. Kind of like taking "at risk" boys to prison and letting the inmates threaten to butt-fuck them.

[Hoyt]

26. Yea, look what all that "training" and gun revelry did to you.

[DissedByBush]

29. What did it do to me?

I've never been involved in a gun crime. The only place I've ever been anywhere near a serious gun accident was in the Army (it was the shooter's fault he hurt himself). My owning guns has never caused the slightest negative impact on society, and it has helped the economy.

As far as the class, I was shooting guns long before it. I started around four or five.

And I came from a straight, middle-class suburban family. We didn't even hunt. At the time target shooting was to me a sport like any other. The guns went from the home, to the range, and back.

Then I moved to the mountains where that class was.

Most of the people there hunted. Many families literally depended on scoring that elk or deer to help them get through Winter. Many carried if they weren't in town because of the mountain lions and other assorted dangerous critters.

That town had two murders the five years I was there, and neither were by gun. I don't even remember a gun accident hitting the local paper.

[beevul]

32. What did it do to him, hoyt?

Whats the matter, cat got your tongue?

[Union Scribe]

35. ...add me as another curious party. nt

[SteveW]

40. Now's your chance, Hoyt: Tell us. nt

[Hoyt]

28. Pro-lifer? You guys sound quite right wing too. In fact, "gun culture" is largely right wing.

[DissedByBush]

30. "Gun culture" is neither wing

In the past, the only time the Democratic party tried to ban guns was back in the racist days when they were trying to keep guns out of the hands of blacks.

Restrictive gun laws were never considered to apply to whites.

It was only in the latter 1900s that this supposed right/left split happened. The Democratic Party ran by those in the city who were against gun rights made abolishing these rights part of the platform, and the Republicans saw an issue they could polarize against them.

That was funny, Republicans after the Southern Strategy actually finding themselves on the side of constitutional rights.

At least on the face they give to the voters. Remember, these right-wing Republicans are also behind the Brady Bunch.

[SteveW]

41. Eleanor Roosevelt? "ring wing?" Such powers of conferrence from a .38 nt

[Hoyt]

43. I was thinking like McVeigh, Weaver, KKK, TParty, NRA, compound dwellers, Cheney, Perry, Palin, etc.

And all the fuckers at the gun store when Obama was elected.

[SteveW]

44. So you weren't thinking of Fannie Lou Hammer either?

Because if doesn't fit into your well-shaped bucket of spit?

You will have to justify your animosity for 80,000,000+ millions gun-owners and for the millions more who have access to guns.

Hard to win an election with such global culture war.

[Hoyt]

47. I'm more concerned about those who have to strap a gun or two on before venturing out.

[DissedByBush]

45. Or the Pink Pistols, the gay gun rights group?

Horrible right-wingers they are.

[friendly_iconoclast]

46. Or the Deacons for Defense and Justice?

Who knew?

[BiggJawn]

53. And all those people piss, too.

Gee, maybe I should tie-off my Urethra so I won't be like THEM....

[Fair Witness]

51. I nominate that one for a GUFY (or at least a DUfus) award.

[ileus]

38. That's training for ME's, we're talking safe handling and use training.

Firearm safety doesn't require identifying cause of death.

[spin]

12. Not teaching kids about firearms doesn't reduce the glamor...

Kids watch TV and movies and guns are definitely glamorized. A gun safety course wouldn't have much effect on causing a student to develop a desire to own firearms. First person shooter games are owned by almost every teenage boy and they love to play them. Even some girls enjoy such games. My daughter, for example, was an expert at Castle Wolfenstein 3D in the 90s. Today the games are MUCH more realistic.

At first I enjoyed such games until I realized that they were training me to shoot without careful consideration.

You might lecture your children about just how evil and bad firearms are and once they leave the nest they may decide to buy one. Kids are attracted to forbidden things and they often think their parents are full of crap.

It would be far better to teach high school kids firearm safety and a section of the course could deal with how firearms are misused by irresponsible people. I would have no problem with that as long as a portion was also devoted to how responsible gun owners use their weapons in shooting sports such as competitive shooting events and hunting.

Like it or not, firearms are ubiquitous in our society. Sooner or later almost everyone will be exposed to one. Such a course could have many benefits, for example the training would enable a student to recognize when a person who was showing him a firearm was handling it in a stupid manner.

[Callisto32]

31. It is an odd moment when you realize the conditioning...

"what are you doing?"

"shooting everything vaguely human shaped...*blink*."

The above is a transcript of a real conversation I had with myself when I decided to actually contemplate what was going on in an FPS.

[SteveW]

42. Good points. Most of these games are no Hogan's Alley. nt

[Remmah2]

16. Great, make life more dangerous for kids.

http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cell-phone/statistics.html

Texting while driving fatalities on the rise, firearm fatality accidents on the decline.

FAIL!

[Hoyt]

17. Always room for improvement.

[Remmah2]

19. By the twisted logic theorem we need to ban cars. nt

nt

[Hoyt]

22. No. But we can help next generation realize we are better off without guns, especially in public.

Kind of like promoting rapid transit, alternative fuels, etc., for the betterment of society.

[DissedByBush]

37. More efficient transportation does sound good

I'm in. I'd like to promote more efficient guns for the betterment of society.

[Hoyt]

48. What exactly is a more efficient gun -- something that makes it even easier to shoot someone?

I suspect you covet the latest tactical weapons and accessories. We have at least one gunner here who likes those "assault" weapons for their ergonomics. I think he envisions himself sitting on the porch in his recliner blasting away at some unarmed teenager stealing a cell phone charger out of his car or something.

[DissedByBush]

50. I for one would like to rid them of powder, or at least clean it up

Too much gun smoke makes me gag. For that reason I never shoot indoors, since the ranges are never ventilated well enough for me.

"We have at least one gunner here who likes those "assault" weapons for their ergonomics."

I do too. A pistol grip is much more comfortable for me than a standard stock. Standard stocks make you bring your arm sort of up and over, twisting your wrist a bit forward, with your elbow sticking out. Pistol grips let you hold your hand naturally and keep your elbow at a more comfortable position. I shoot more accurately with a pistol grip or thumbhole stock, and have less fatigue at the end of the day.

In addition, many of these pistol grip stocks have an adjustable length butt. My arms aren't all that long, so this feature is great for me. Below is a good example, as it also comes with an adjustable cheek rest.



Remember, a standard-looking semi-auto rifle becomes an "assault weapon" simply by changing the stock out for a more ergonomic one. That's What the above is. Pretty stupid.

The only reason anti-rights nutters fear them is because they look "military" and are afraid criminals will use them to shoot from the hip. I wish all criminals would use these and shoot from the hip, because their likelihood of hitting anything will go through the floor.

[Hoyt]

2. Naw, doesn't happen according to "gun culture" propaganda.

[ManiacJoe]

9. The only ones who every say it "never happens" are the anti-gun folks.

And it is always the same strawman argument. The correct phrasing is "it rarely happens".

[ileus]

3. Holster, Holster, Holster...

[ManiacJoe]

8. Being a Derringer-type pistol did not help any either.

[Logical]

10. Shouldn't someone lose their right to carry for this for a year or so?

[ManiacJoe]

15. The girl did not have the right to carry in the first place.

She is too young.

[ellisonz]

14. Frankly, I'd rather see the father charged with a crime...

...and her let of the hook with a stern warning to obey the gun laws.

[spin]

18. Sounds reasonable to me. (n/t)

[DissedByBush]

24. What happened here is a criminal offense for the parent in many states

Unfortunately I don't think Wyoming is on that list.

Still, some general criminal negligence charge could be worked up.

And the shop should sue for damages and lost business.

[AtheistCrusader]

34. They both committed a crime.

Break the law, pay the consequences.

[ileus]

21. rude gun firing itself in public...