Teen accidentally shoots friend with gun. Should the parents be charged?

[prolesunited]

Should the child be charged?

The godson of a co-worker was recently shot by his best friend and died. The two 13-year-olds were at the friend's house and found a loaded gun under the parents' bed. In a minute, their friendship ended in an accidental gunshot.

My question is, do you think the boy should be charged with involuntary manslaughter? What about the parents? What could they be charged with? Should they?

The mother of the boy who was shot has shown incredible grace and courage. The child lived long enough to say goodbye and they agreed to donate his organs. At the memorial service, she asked for prayers for the boy who shot her son.

It's almost incomprehensible how quickly so many lives can be changed in just a second.

[Champ]

1. I am not sure

But definately not the parents. It's not smart to live a gun around but the parent had nothing to do with the death except leave the gun therefore the parent shouldn't be charged. Now, I've been around and seen guns before I was 13 and knew what kind of damage a gun can do.

[goddess40]

2. Were the guns properly locked up, if not charge the parents

More so the parents then the 13 year old. The child shouldn't have had access to the gun.

[pnb]

3. If there was going to be a gun around...

...the child she have been properly schooled in the use and dangers of firearms. I don't know if that's a chargeable offense though.

[jobycom]

10. Neither matters one little bit

I'm always surprised that people are surprised by these types of accidental shootings. Where I grew up in Mississippi they were quite common. Everyone at my high school could point our someone they knew who had shot a friend, or in one case, someone who had been shot by a friend and lived (he lost his arm). Usually once a year someone I knew would be killed by guns fired accidentally by friends. It outnumbered traffic fatalities by a big margin.

That's what happens in gun cultures. Anyone who argues otherwise did not grow up around guns.

And everyone kept their guns locked up, and everyone taught their kids proper firearm ettiquette, and many hid their bullets in separate lockboxes, and all of our parents took us out hunting and shooting quite frequently, so we all knew what we were supposed to do with guns.

At 13, a kid is smart enough to get into a locked box (usually by figuring out where their parents hid the keys or by watching for the combination). He or she is also reaching the age of rebellion, testing limits, trying to look grown up, etc. We all broke into our parents' gun collections, we all showed them off to each other. Some of us did really stupid things. I watched my girlfriend (later my wife) shoot at her brother's friend for spying on us. She's lucky she missed, though as good a shot as she is, I doubt she was trying very hard to hit him.

If we are going to have guns, these things are going to happen, and charging anyone isn't going to help, because no one believes it will happen to them, anyway. If we want to stop these things, ban guns and be done with it. For myself, I won't own them, I won't let them in my house, and I won't let my kids go to a friend's house if that friend has them. My heart's been broken enough by those things (oh, and I'll say "by the various people who kill with them," to appease the friggin' NRA bastards.)

[Southpaw Bookworm]

16. Ditto

I grew up in an area where gun training was a mandated part of the high school curriculum, but nonetheless some kid getting drunk, playing with a gun, and blowing his buddy's head off was an annual event. Less often we had someone accidentally shoot someone while hunting because a human was mistaken for a deer, or a small child found daddy's police revolver and decided to play cops and robbers.

[JHB]

17. Hey, I grew up around guns, as did my cousins...

...and such accidents were NOT as common as they seem to have been to you. Hay-zus Krismus!

But I'll agree that if a gun was in the house, the kid should have instructed in its use (and the ways you DON'T use it). Hell, you want to keep kids away from guns, make them learn how to clean it long before they even hold it empty, much less fire it. Nothing will dispell any mystique guns may have like making them a chore.

[jobycom]

24. Where?

People always say they grew up around them. How many, and where did you grow up? Did all of your neighbors own them? Was it as standard as owning a kitchen knife, as standard as the NRA wants it to be? I keep hearing NRA types (not you, just in general, I mean) say that if more good guys had guns everyone would be safer. But I grew up where EVERYONE had guns, and several per family member, often. I learned to shoot a BB gun when I was three. Most kids did. And there were a lot of gun deaths. My sister's boyfriend, my next door neighbor, my school librarian and her husband (they were the parents of my oldest brother's best friend), a couple of friends from church, the older brother of a good friend in high school, several friends from school that I had lost contact with before finding out they were dead. More than that, even.

On top of that, I had my brother (who's schizophrenic) point a loaded shotgun at my head, I've had my father come to the door with a gun because I was trying to sneak in quietly one night when he didn't know I was still out. I had a girlfriend (NOT the one who shot at her brother's friend) whose old boyfriend came to my school and sat out in his car with a gun for an hour, and no one knew whether he wanted to kill me, my girlfriend, or himself. (He didn't kill anyone, he had a permit for the gun, and he wound up just leaving.).

I did know one guy who may have saved his life with a gun, though. Someone chased him down after a fight and tried to cut through his front door with a chainsaw. This friend shot through the door with a shotgun and killed him. The last time I saw this friend he was still in therapy over killing someone, but that was decades ago.

That's a gun culture. I don't know where you grew up, but none of this seemed even unusual to any of us growing up, nor to my parents. ANd it was almost always kids who got shot.

[goddess40]

11. Teaching kids about guns has been shown not to work

Even little kids that are shown guns and told how dangerous they are will pick up a gun if left unsupervised around a gun. Accidents can't happen if guns are properly stored, no excuses.

[JHB]

18. Shown where? Certainly not anywhere in my extended family.

[jobycom]

26. Have patience

It may one day.

And if not, not every family I knew lost a kid, just enough to make it a true community tragedy.

[Book Lover]

4. My two cents

The boy allegedly committed manslaughter - he should be put through the legal process.

The parents stored their weapon in an incredibly stupid place and stored it loaded like absolute idiots. Because of the gun-nuts, excuse me enthusiasts, who run the NRA and lobby our lawmakers, their actions are not deemed criminal per se. Were I a DA, I'd try to get depraved indifference to stick.

Guns are tools, people. If you want one, do it right - else these are the consequences.

[Blue-Jay]

5. I'm all about responsibility, but it's an accident.

A tragic accident, granted. If any charges are filed, it should be along the lines of reckless endangerment to the owners of the gun. Manslaughter is a bit harsh in my opinion.

[Junkdrawer]

6. Cease Fire Chicago...

http://www.ceasefirechicago.org/

[AP]

7. Should the parents be charged with what?

If there's a crime and they satisfy the elements of the crime, they should be charged.

They can't be charged with the shooting, since they didn't do it and didn't intend it (I presume). But it may be a crime to knowingly leave a gun unsecured in a home where children can get at it. If that's a crime, the parents should be charged. But there's almost no chance that they will satisfy the elements of involuntary manslaughter.

That's how criminal law works in America. You're can only be convicted of crimes which you intend to commit.

Now, negligence -- civil law -- is a different matter. Generally, parents aren't responsible for the negligent acts of their children. But they are responsible for their own negligence. If it was negligengt for them to leave their gun where the kids could find it, then they could be civily liable. You can sue children for their own negligence too, but you can't recover the damages from the parents (I believe). You'd have to renew the judgment (if any) against the kid until he had the money to pay.

I wouldn't believe anything I just wrote, however -- state law could be different, and who am I to give people opinions? I could be TOTALLY wrong.

Your friend should talk to a good lawyer. It's important to make sure that the costs of things like this are allocated properly so that, in the future, people will take care.

For example, if the defendant's insurance company ends up settling for a million dollars thanks to the negligence of their insured, they'll probably make sure that their future customers lock up their guns, and the state might even step in and pass laws which address this kind of thing.

[outinforce]

9. I Might Be Wrong Here.

It HAS happened (I mean, my being wrong) once or twice before.

"That's how criminal law works in America. You're can only be convicted of crimes which you intend to commit."

Isn't there something called "criminal negligence"?

Isn't the concept behind "criminal negligence" something like things you never intended to happen, but which, through your negligence, you allowed to happen?

Couldn't a person reasonably argue, if these are the facts of the case, that leaving a loaded revolver within reach of a 13-year-old and then leaving the 13-year-old alone in the house, somehow "criminally negligent, if so doing means that the 13-year-old -- even by accident -- kilss another human being???

[AP]

12. There are some crimes for which recklessness is enough for the

mental state requirement (some states might call it criminal negligence) but generally you need to have EXTREME, wanton disregard for the consequences of your actions. You may not have intended the consequences, but you were so reckless about something so obviously dangerous, that you practically intended the consequences. (It's the fine line between accidents/negligence/not taking care (ie, civil law) and doing bad things intentionally (criminal law).)

A child finding a hidden gun is very unlikely to result in a conviction for murder of the friend (but it may be a separate crime to leave the gun "unlocked" and loaded).

An example of a situation which would lead to a conviction of criminally 'negligent' homicide might be if the parents were in the room and gave guns to the kids and stood there and watched them shoot at each other and didn't care to check to see if the guns were loaded, knowing that they probably were.

But, really, it all depends on state law.

[outinforce]

21. I Was Thinking

of those cases where people have (I think) been charged with a crime because they failed to lock the gate to their backyards -- in which there was a swimming pool.

A small child comes into the backyard, through the unlocked gate, gets into the pool and drowns.

I had thought that in cases such as that, the owners of the backyward containing the swimming pool were actually charged with criminal negligence. -- They did not intend that anyone drown in their pool, but through their own neglect to ensure that safeguards were in place, someone did.


If there are such cases, then it does seem to me that they are similar to the case of parents leaving a loded pistol in the reach of a 13-year-old AND leaving the 13-year-old alone in the house with the loaded pistorl

[AP]

29. Leaving the gate unlocked is the crime, not the death of the child.

I presume.

I'm not familiar with those laws, but I'd be surprised if you'd ever be charged with murder if your only crime was leaving the gate unlocked.

And I could be wrong, but I supspect that laws about securing your pool are probably not punished with incarceration. They're probably civil ordinances that result in fines.

If anyone is familiar with a state or municipality with such a law, it would be interesting to look at the text of it and see how it is written (ie, what it specifically requires, forbids, and what the punishment is).

[outinforce]

30. I Just Read Your Most Recent Post

where you detail how the civil system deals with negligence.

Thank you for such a well-thought out and clear explanation.

It occurs to me that I may have been thinking all along about civil cases of negligence that were somehow mis-termed "criminal" negligence.

In the case of the unlocked gate and the swimming pool, I, too, assume that the crime is leaving the gate unlocked -- and that the owners of the pool would be charged with that crime -- certainly not with murder.

I would compare the case of the unlocked gate and the swimming pool to the case of parents who may have had an obligaton to ensure that their pistol, if kept within the reach of a 13-year-old child, was either locked or unloaded.

[dsc]

36. You are both civilly and possibly criminally liable for not gating

your pool due to the doctrine of attractive nuisance.

[AP]

39. "attractive nuisance" relates to civil liablitly. I'm not sure we've...

...established whether not locking your gate is crime. It would have to be a statute, and I've never heard of anyone getting convicted of not locking their gate.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if it were a civil offense (like disobeying a traffic sign) or ordinance (like letting not trimming your hedges on a corner lot, which obstructs views of traffic) and punishable by a fine,

[prolesunited]

13. If you check my original post

I asked if the BOY, not the parents, should be charged with involuntary manslaughter. I agree that you couldn't build a case for manslaughter against the parents.

The people involved in this situation are good, loving people in a nice middle class home who just totally screwed up. They are totally devastated because the two couples were good friends and they consider the child who was killed as a second son.

I almost think the pain and guilt that they will be going through the rest of their lived is punishment enough.

I guess my basic question is, should parents be accountable if children gain access to their firearms if they were not locked and appropriately stored? If there were harsher penalties, do you thinking parents would be more careful.

It seemed that when people realized getting nailed for DUI started exacting a heavier toll, people became much more aware and careful. Couldn't the same thing happen with guns in the home when children live there?

[AP]

28. Well, you have two ways to make people take greater care: civil and...

...criminal law.

Criminal law is tough -- you can be denied your liberty for breaking the law. So you want to be careful when you make things crimes. You want to make sure you get people for things they intended to do (or were INCREDIBLY reckless, and where the dangers are apparent).

You can make the criminal law reach farther and farther down to prevent people from doing things that may seem minute, but have serious consequences (like, say, revealing the name of a spy who's working undercover).

The problem is that, although ignorance of the law isn't a defense, it's hard for the criminal law to do the job of preventing people from doing bad things when they don't know what they're doing is a crime, and occurences of the action is so rare that you don't really have adequate notice. If you do too much of that, the law becomes more about trappign people and exacting revenge than about creating a fair and functioning society.

We have a society which says that you can defend yourself with deadly force if your life is threatened, and we have a society which allows people to own guns and amunition. Therefore, it is hard to tell people where the line is drawn between possessing guns in your home lawfully and unlawfully.

The civil law usually does a great job in cases like this. Unlike criminal law, which is codified, negligence isn't. Negligence is just an analyis of whether you have a duty to behave a certain way, whether you failed to meet that standard, whether there were damages, and whether there was a causal connection between the damages and your failure to act with the required standard of care.

I think that fits this situation really well, and negligence is almost always available in situations like this (unless the legislature establishes some other way to deal with a specific matter). It also helps to have civil penalties which are punished by something less than incarceration like we do with traffic fines -- which is actually a very useful paradigm for dealing with guns.

Cars, like guns, are very dangerous, but they also have some utility, and you generally want to encourage people to use them in way that doesn't endanger other people. There are some things you do with a car which could send you to jail (driving drunk, stealing, etc.). But there are also many things you do in a car, which, although dangerous, don't result in incarceration (speeding, driving on the wrong side of the road). There are also plenty of things people do to each other in cars which the government doesn't deal with, even though you might have broken the law, and are settled in civil courts. Like, you rear-end someone at a stop sign. If the police didn't see it, they might not ticket you. But you can sue each other in court to recover your damages. This collection of criminal law, civil fines, and civil law (ie, negligence) provide a pretty functional legal landscape for dealing with the dangers and the benefits of automobilies.

Perhaps the answers to your questions about gun ownership are answered by thinking of things within that paradigm. For example, say a parent has a car with faulty breaks, and they're sort of negligent about getting the car repaired. Say they think it's enough to hid the keys from their child, but never tells the kid not to drive the car. Say the kid has his friend over and they take the car out, get in accident caused by the faulty breaks, and the friend dies. Does it makes sense to make this into a crime? Perhaps they missed the state inspection for the car which would have forced them to fix the breaks. It seems like making a crime of letting your child drive a car with breaks that you know are faulty would be a little too much, but the combination of the inspection law (for which they'll be fined) and negligence suit agains the parents would be enough to try to get people to not do stupid things like this.

[No2W2004]

8. Having a gun in the house is one thing, but

There's no excuse for having a loaded gun under the bed.

None.

At the very least, parents should be charged with child endangerment.

[Bandit]

14. Chalk it up to friendly fire.

Hey believe it or not Guns do Kill.

[qb]

15. Parents should be charged for criminal negligence and then sued

for wrongful death. There's a reason 13 year-olds don't have all of the privileges of adulthood. They can't be trusted to make the "right" choices all the time. That is why they don't get drivers licenses, and why they shouldn't have unsupervised access to firearms. Period.

[gulfcoastliberal]

19. 100% Agree

If the parents are too STUPID to lock up their guns because they think their kid would never lok under the bed/mattress, they should be arested. In Florida when you buy a gun, it plainly states in huge font that if you don't lock up guns and something like this happens, you are liable. Damn, they should've at least had a cable lock or trigger lock or somethinig on there. Absolutely ridiculous.

[seabeyond]

20. no......the word accident

shit happens. everyone learned a lesson. and there are going to be the parents and the thirteen year old boy that live with this for the rest of their lives because of their accident. it is their punishment and it will hurt, and they will be in pain and guilt forever. what more do we want. we want revenge on, we want to create more and a greater suffering. this is what i am often talking about with what we become in this world. a woman had an accident, the child in a car seat, it was her fault, but bottom line an accident. her daughter died. authorities want to charge her with murder

there is no grace anymore for anyone. better walk a perfect line or punishment and no mild punishment, will be as harsh as this harsh society can make it.

at what point do we stop it.,

this is how we have become as a nation as a whole created the whole mess of judgement from fundies to judgement of pc'er to the revenge of all muslims and iraq war and allowing of abuse because of 9/11.

what we do as individuals feeds and grows as a society

this mother that can show grace and love and forgiveness to this family, in her pain, and in that families pain, is a hero, and she feeds and honors the love and beauty we are as people

[outinforce]

22. "Grace"

I take your point.

But isn't "grace" actually the same thing as "not getting the justice you deserve"?

"Grace" might be a good way for some societies or organizations fashion a legal system, but I'm not too terribly sure I would want to live somewhere where justice was never meted out.

[prolesunited]

31. I agree

It's up to the people involved to have the "grace" to forgive. It is up to the legal system to ensure crimes are punished.

For example, someone whacked out on drugs kills my loved one. I could chose to personally forgive that person, but are you saying that they should not also serve time in jail.

I do understand what you are getting at with the death of a child in a car crash, but I also think you would need more details. Was the driver impaired in any way? Was their a history of reckless driving? Was this the first major accident? I think if a pattern was shown, you would have a stronger case.

Indeed, it is a fine line. I think when you are able to forgive, it does more for you because you no longer hold that hate and anger. Nonetheless, people still need to be punished according to the law, with sentences varying on the circumstances surrounding the case. This is why I think mandatory sentencing laws do a disservice to our justice system.

[seabeyond]

32. what if the woman was a really bad driver

i have known people that arent good drivers. my husband has had more accidents then i (i havent had any and i am 42, but i have tons of speeding tickets, so am i a bad driver). so he gets in an accident with a child that they die, we go back check it out and send him to jail

no, this woman simply had an accident that was her fault. the senator that ran the stop sign and killed the man will go to jail

watch you butts people

the crazy on drugs, even in that state, his intent was murder. yes prosecute for murder

the woman who had to jump in shower and the child out side got tangled in the rope of the swing, does she go to jail.

the child that got into asprin. ass to jail

the child that slipped in the tub, jail

gosh, we just have got to build ourselves more and more and more jails, pretty soon more will be in jail than out

revenge, justice, it feels good

[chelsea0011]

23. A loaded gun under the bed? The parents are responsible.

[Selwynn]

25. It depends on the context, but usually I say no - its a tragic accident

[xultar]

27. Yes, both parents and child. n/t

[Angelus]

33. Yes, bot the parents and the kid should get charged...

It's a parents responsibility to lock up the loaded gun. They neglected to do that, so they should get charged for that. Also, the boy took the gun and shot his friend and killed him. He should get thrown in prison for manslaughter.

[seabeyond]

34. my 5 year old boy asked if we are sent to jail for accident

we had driven past one and saw police, and i was about to say no, you dont get put in jail for accident baby, the mere definition that it is an accident, means you dont go to jail,. but i had to stop myself. even though i excuse the spilled milk as it is ok jonas, was just an accident. you didnt mean to. lets learn and be more careful next time. i told son, thinking of the s dakota senator going to jail for an accident and another woman in town being charged for her accident

and the many many more people that want to look at an accident and see how we can get it to be a crime.

told jonas, if it is an accident it no longer counts in this country. we are wanting you about perfect, and if you cant be that,......your in trouble

thanks for validating this lesson to my child, the world we create for our children

[prolesunited]

35. There are accidents

and there are "accidents." I don't think some of the accidents you cited in your previous posts are in any way equivalent.

Leaving an unlocked, loaded gun accessible to children within a household is a little more serious than spilled milk. Don't you agree?

I really do understand your point. We don't want to go too far and jail people for everything, but that's why we have a court and jury system — to sift through those gray areas.

That senator is deservedly going to jail because he repeatedly drove his car in a reckless manner. The fact that he finally killed someone was no "accident," merely the laws of probability coming into play.

Accidents happen, but they are not accidents when people are criminally negligent.

[AP]

37. As noted above, "recklessness" can be criminal if your recklessness

shows a wanton disregard for life and if the consequences of your actions should have been very clear. If you're speading (and you've intended to speed) and you run a stop sign which you saw and disregarded, the consequences are obvious: you could kill someone. You'll could be convicted of manslaughter, or second degree murder (or whatever it is that your state's law sets out as reckless homicide).

Running a stop sign you didn't see while not speeding, although it results in someone's death is not reckless homicide. You didn't even know you were doing something wrong, you were trying to follow the law, and you had no idea killing someone would be the consequence of your actions.

[DU GrovelBot]

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