With a gun! Because playing with guns is cool!
So a gun-fondler invited his girlfriend’s kids to watch while he showed off his important skills with a gun. I think you can guess where this is going.
Barrow County Sheriff’s Capt. Matt Guthas said Lewis was trying to determine how quickly he could take apart and reassemble his loaded 9mm handgun. He asked his girlfriend’s children to time him. At one point, Lewis pulled the gun’s trigger. A bullet hit the 9-year-old girl, who was sitting next to him.
The victim, whose name was not released, was rushed to an Atlanta-area hospital. She has undergone several surgeries and remains in critical condition.
He’s now facing charges that are inadequate.
Lewis was charged with four counts of reckless conduct, three counts of second-degree cruelty to children, and one count each of firearm possession during the commission of a crime and marijuana possession with intent to distribute. Guthas said police found the marijuana while executing a search warrant at the house.
Do the penalties for any of those crimes involve a lifetime prohibition from ever owning or using a gun? Because that ought to be the bare minimum punishment this idiot deserves.
Jebus. Shouldn’t there be a law against too stupid to be allowed to be walking around unsupervised?
Drug charge might revoke right to own a gun. Shooting kid probably not.
Most states don’t allow felons to possess firearms. That is one of the things a background check is supposed to turn up but states also weakening background checks (especially at gun shows)
She must have deserved it or Jesus would have prevented it.
Okay, let’s get the check-list out:
[x] Irresponsible handling (here: showing off)
[x] Somehow chambered round during dis- and reassembly drills
[x] Playing around with the trigger
[x] Using the trigger while not pointing in a safe direction
[x] Safety catch not used or missing
No doubt gunlovers will point out this wasn’t a responsible gun owner anyway. That’s a very exclusive club and you can never tell who’s a member. Membership lasts a lifetime or until a fraction of a second before the misfire.
He was probably sitting down, which is fine and lawful. It’s just everything else he was doing wrong.
Fortunately for me I have a decent moat – the Atlantic – protecting me from this particular facet of American freedom. Even the notion of having to deal with crap like this is beyond me. I feel sorry for the family and hope they get through all right, considering the circumstances.
P.S.: Is it too cynical to assume the drug possession will get Lewis into more trouble than shooting a child?
komarov @4
Possession with intent to distribute (which usually means possession of more than a minimal amount of the drug) is a felony in Georgia. If convicted then Captain Guthas will almost certainly be fired from his job and lose his pension, as well as facing the usual legal penalties for being convicted of a felony. Reckless endangerment can be either a felony or a misdemeanor, depending on how the prosecutor feels. So it is possible Guthas will face a greater penalty for the marijuana possession than for shooting the child.
The malignant motherfucker had the gun disassembled, so he had to deliberately put the bullet in it and shoot the girl next to him. I think this establishes intent, which means he should be facing attempted murder charges.
No.
@5: Correction: Guthas is the county sheriff being quoted. The gun-fondlers’ name is Tyler Lewis.
I would go for something like:
Accidentally wounding someone:
* 5 year prohibition from owning a weapon/ammo;
* Can only be reinstated if no criminal record and person passes a DIFFICULT† safety course.
* Going forward, required to
* store all weapons and ammo separately,
* store all weapons in an approved, locked gun safe at all times the weapon is not being used/cleaned.
* submit to random inspections to verify; violations result in loss of all privileges.
Accidentally wounding someone (second offense):
* 10 year prohibition; same reinstatement requirements;
* may not own anything larger than a .22
Accidentally killing someone with a gun:
* Lifetime ban, no reinstatement possible and we mean it.
† Where 80% fail the first time they take it. Like my damn Wave Physics course… grrr, I hate you Fourier!
If he is convicted of either of the two known felony charges (possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and possession of drugs with intent to distribute), under federal law he would be bared from the purchase, ownership or possession of a firearm for the rest of his life.
Eamon Knight @8
Thank you for the correction.
@6; if the gun was disassembled he could not have put a round in or pulled the trigger to fire. The most likely situation was that the idiot pulled the trigger to put the hammer and firing pin in the proper position for disassembly without checking and double checking that there was no round in the chamber. When I was in Marine Corps boot camp we had speed drills to see how quickly, accurately and properly we could disassemble and reassemble the M-16 and I can remember the first thing to do was to make absolutely sure that there was no round in the chamber by checking visually an physically.
Convictions for felonies and domestic violence carry lifetime ban from gun ownership under federal law. If any of these are felony charges or considered domestic violence under the state law and he’s convicted of one or more, he should be prohibited from owning, possessing, and using firearms.
I’m going to guess he’s going to do time for marijuana and possessing a firearm while possessing marijuana, and get a slap on the wrist for shooting a kid. Just a guess.
Except that “Tyler Lewis” is not an unlikely name for a black person. If he is in fact black, the prosecutor may decide to get all the kid-shooting charges to actually stick.
Is *that* too cynical an analysis?
numerobis,
Yes, he’s black.
In cases like this, there is no such thing as too cynical.
Goddammit people! Every fucking time you pick up a weapon,
CLEAR IT FIRST! Every. Fucking. Time.
You have to be pretty fucking stupid to disassemble a weapon and not realize it’s loaded.
P S They’re not toys.
Usernames @9 – if that link is to your course materials, I pity you. Horrible notation, disorganized development, and lack of overall theoretical framework. A terrible way to teach a beautiful subject.
marcus @16:
From the OP:
That’s what’s not clear to me. Did Lewis have any firearms training at all? Was he disassembling a loaded gun out of (1) ignorance (no training), or (2) stupidity (didn’t think he needed any), or (3) thoroughly messed up even when he knew better? Or did he know exactly how dangerous that would be and was (4) showing off his bad-assedness by deliberately defying the simplest of safety rules? #1-3 are bad enough, but if it’s #4, he should never again be allowed in the same room as children (at least — possibly with anyone) with anything more deadly than a soft pillow.
It is negligent to leave to a round in chamber around kids. This makes it a negligent discharge.
Gun safety isn’t hard. The rounds are never in the chamber unless you are ready to fire the weapon. But then, this is why carrying in public is intrinsically unsafe.
Americans worried about collateral damage? I’m surprised.
You are aware PZ Myers is an American, right?
@19
that is the catch 22 of carrying a loaded gun around for safety
to safely carry a gun it should not have a round in the chamber
but to be ready to fire at the drop of a hat the gun needs to be loaded and have a round ready to fire for a semi-auto that is in the chamber therefor caring it unsafely.
which is true with the more popular large magazine semi-autos as in this case.
still even if you switched to a double-action revolver with the more limited capacity cylinder. it is still unsafe with a round chambered.
to be of any use the access needs to be easy and quick unless the idea is to be like the Hollywood cowboy the whole idea is too complicated and unworkable.
uncle frogy
I think that ship has sailed.
More than the comparison between marijuana and guns, I’m curious to see how the combination of gun owner while black will play out.
David @17: You write,
The link appears to be to supporting material for one lecture (the 14th of 23) for a graduate course in mathematics (not physics, though pitched on the website to as “also contain[ing] important topics necessary for physicists and engineers”) with this syllabus. I’m not sure that it’s possible to diagnose “disorganized development” or “lack of overall theoretical framework” from such a small sample. As to the notation, I gave up my original plan to become an analyst (specifically, in several complex variables) in early 1970 (because I had and have a terrible tendency to get my inequalities going to wrong way around…), but it seems unexceptionable to (long-out-of-date, far-out-of-specialty) me.
I have no reason to believe that the course as a whole isn’t “a terrible way to teach a beautiful subject”, but I think more evidence would be needed to make a convincing case that it is. If you find the time to look at the syllabus perhaps you will report back here.
komarov:
Well, it might have been a Glock, which figures that if you pull the trigger cleanly, you know what you’re doing*. There’s no separate safety catch.
* Which is frequently not the case, of course.
As I see it, assuming the mechanism was in good shape and extractor working, failure to clear the weapon, the very first lesson in handling 101, wasn’t the issue. You can prove this for most automatics using a dummy round. When you pull the slide to remove it during disassembly it pulls the round out as the barrel comes out of battery.
I suspect that he may have cleared it but after reassembling it he slid in a loaded magazine and had the trigger pulled as the slide went into battery. The insertion of the magazine disengaged the slide lock so the first round was driven home as the slide came forward. This is pretty standard for a lot of designs. Rank stupidity and carelessness that he had the trigger depressed and the weapon pointed in anything but a known safe direction. Never, ever manipulate a firearm with the muzzle pointed in anything but a known safe direction.
Many police departments and military units have installed bullet traps which provide a known safe place for the muzzle while weapons are cleared. It is also highly recommended that you have a few inert, dummy, rounds available for function checks and practice.
Practice is good, assuming you do it right. If you are going to own a firearm you need to be intimately familiar with the design, all functions and all inherent weaknesses. You should know whether or not inserting a magazine disengages the slide lock. There should be no surprise. Surprises with firearms are never good.
These are instruments of destruction, not toys, not props, not symbols. IMHO about half of those with firearms shouldn’t be trusted with a sharp knife, much less a firearm.
Half? The first question on any test should be “Is it intrinsically safe to care a weapon with chambered round in public?”. And answer of “yes” results in no firearm license.
I keep being surprised at the lackadaisical attitude of Americans towards firearms. You’d think that in a nation that fetishizes firearms to that degree and have them so broadly available, you’d also have a general appreciation of the danger and the necessary safety procedures.
Apparently not.
Yep, the Old Western film/TV mentality is rampant.
I don’t know. To me it seems more like a Dunning-Kruger effect: too many gun-owners mistakenly think themselves to be very responsible and above all extremely competent gun owners, when they’re really nothing of the sort.
leerudolph @31
The Gunning-Ruger effect?
so if guns don’t shoot people, people do then how can this be treated as an accident?
“so if guns don’t shoot people, people do then how can this be treated as an accident?”
Not to say that I agree with that old NRA spew about ‘guns don’t kill people’, but tangentially, I’ve stopped thinking of any unfortunate event (gun related or otherwise) as an accident. The only ‘accidents’ are unforeseeable and unpreventable events; the results of chaos and nature. Otherwise, when something bad happens, there are ‘errors’, in design, use, or both. (And with that take on failure analysis, I hereby out myself as a mechanical engineer. I trust scientists on evolution, climate change, the age of earth and the universe, and most everything else, I swear. I trust them when they say they’ve fed the cat too, since I live with a physicist.)
As a gun owner, I’m embarrassed by Mr. Lewis criminal stupidity. Sitting in a bare jail cell the only thing Mr Lewis should see is medical photographs of his child’s gun shot wound and surgery. Upon release he needs to register as “An Irresponsible gun offender.” Being bar from entering any department store or sporting good store that sells firearms.
Re: Moggie, #26
Thanks. In a previous gun thread someone kindly explained to me that there are indeed weapons with out a separate safety catch. As I said then, I regard this as an awful design flaw.
A good safety device is, as far as I am concerned, is a separate button ‘far’ away from the trigger that needs to be pushed deliberately before the trigger will budge. Ideally you need the trigger finger to do it. Of course you aren’t suppose to touch the trigger anyway unless you’re about to fire but that’s another thing gun-toting laymen don’t seem to get. I literally wouldn’t touch a gun without a safety catch, let alone buy one.
I see Ranzoid, a typical gun nut, can’t imagine a penalty that actually impairs his ability to own guns, and thinks a little embarrassment before setting him free is sufficient.
As far as I am aware, the “gun safety catch” I favor does not exist: You can’t fire the gun if it is loaded.
LykeX @ 29:
If Americans had the latter, they’d lack the former.
How about your own stupidity? Do you ever carry a loaded gun in public? One with a round under the hammer? If so, you are being a bad, unsafe gun owner. You are endangering others with you own arrogance and stupidity. You are not a responsible gun owner. You shouldn’t be able to own weapons. REACTIONARY is owning weapons you don’t need just to own them, and then endanger other people with irresponsible ownership.
PZ @ 37:
But of course not!
Ranzoid’s not an irresponsible gun owner!
…yet.
@komarov #36
Glocks use an integral trigger safety as part of their “Safe Action” system, thus requiring the trigger to be squeezed in order to release the safety and fire. The responsibility is still the user’s, as with all firearms, regardless of design–a responsibility once again recklessly and tragically neglected.
I can’t think of any design that would ever be able to totally prevent all possibilities of a negligent discharge and still function as an actual firearm. A smarter thing, besides the obvious tactic of not doing it in the first place, or at least doing it alone, is to use to dummy ammunition or no ammunition at all (you could still perform a functions check). And yes, it’s mostly wishful thinking to say such things, but living in a country so well armed and enamored with guns, I figure it doesn’t hurt to repeat it.
On a side note, some older, cheaper designs rely on pretty crude safety mechanisms. For example, the WWII-era M3 submachine gun uses the dust cover as its only safety (the weapon was designed to be a cheap, simple replacement of the Thompson submachine gun). Of course that was the WWII, and a lot of weapons of that period (up to and including the first atomic bombs) had some features and flaws that we would consider extremely risky by today’s standards.
Unfortunately, I think he’ll get the more time for the weed than for shooting the girl.
Ranzoid is a gun owner?
Oh fuck. That is probably the most terrifying thing I’ve heard this year.
Yes, what the adult did here is stupid. But the point is that is just another example of gun owner negligence and yet another example of children suffering injury or death due to gun “accidents”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/27/3206581/kids-gun-violence-killed-injuries/
Trying to No True Gunowner your way out of this shit, or pretend it is just One News Story, one bad person instead of a single notable example among a large group, a large trend, is just loathsome and dishonest.
When I encounter right to carry proponents I usually tell them that I’ll accept their position if they can justify accidental shootings.
I have yet to be convinced.
Who the flying fuck takes apart a loaded gun? *sigh*
Everybody, including Ranzoid, needs to keep in mind there is no such thing as an accidental discharge (misfire) or shootings, unless the weapon is hit by lightening. There are only negligent discharges caused by lack of proper gun safety. The weapon handler is always at fault.
@ Usernames #9
I would suggest that this ought to be the bare minimum for owning a gun in the first place.