Should people who knowingly keep loaded and unsecured firearms in the house, when there is a mentally ill person living in the house, be charged as an accessory if the mentally ill person goes on a rampage and kills a bunch of people?

Good question. I’d say they should have some kind of responsibility. They should at least be charged with having no common sense. (For those that are going to tell me that’s not a crime, I know. It’s a joke)

Reckless endangerment, which is the same thing as no common sense, but in this case that lack caused deaths.

Not only for this but I think they should be held accountable if a young child is able to access the gun(s) and ends up harming or killing themselves or playmates.

It is so easy to prevent young children’s access to firearms that there is just no excuse for failure to do so. If a young child finds your gun and does harm, it should not be classified as an ACCIDENT. It was ENTIRELY forseeable and preventable.

In Canada the person who owns the firearm could be charged with insecure storage of a firearm.

It sounds good, but in practice won’t amount to much. The thing about the mass shootings is that they are invariably well planned, and the killers always heavily armed. The shooters may be crazy, but rarely stupid. There are just too many available weapons in too many places. Those of us who’ve never touched a gun could figure out a path to ordinance suitable for a weapons platoon within 20 minutes of booting up a computer, and I doubt if any of us are more than 2 phone calls away from an assault rifle.

No one should keep loaded and unsecured firearms in any house. Is this a trick question?

Involving young children yes, but the mentally ill, not so sure. Depression is classified as a mental illness and a lot of these shooters conceal their issues well also. If someones, seemingly “normal” 19 year old kid steals dads rifle and goes on a shooting spree I think it is not dads fault. Just because you know your kid might be struggling with depression does not mean they are going to go on a mass shooting spree.

No parent thinks their child could do something like that, I’m not even sure I’d call it denial, It just is unfathomable to entertain for many even if their kids have some issues they are aware of.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One I’d agree but, there are places where that happens. Like where I live. My neighbor does not have any children in the home but he keeps a loaded rifle on standby for shooting rattlesnakes around the property. In a suburban home no, in the country/mountains it is common practice.

@Coloma I’m from a small town in the country and it was pretty common practice to not do that. It really doesn’t take long to load a firearm. I can’t imagine a snake would “get the jump on you” because you had to slap a few rounds in.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One I hear you, and I do not keep fire arms, but, just sayin’ that a lot of people in the country do keep loaded and unsecured weapons around. This has been a bad year for snakes so I guess my neighbor wants to be ready. haha’
I don’t know, just sharing the mindset of some people out here. Hey, I’m the animal nut, back to nature, hippie cowgirl , no gunslinger here, I blast ‘em with the garden hose or get a shovel. lol

@Coloma Yeah, I know what you’re sayin. It’s just crazy. I learned to respect firearms. When to load them, where to point them, what to aim at, to treat it as if it was loaded even if you are “certain” that it isn’t… that stuff was all instilled when I was about 10 years old. It’s really, really, difficult to put myself in the shoes of those who treat them so carelessly.

And putting loaded weapons in a house with someone who is mentally ill? That sounds like a mentally ill thing to do..

@Grumpy

I so agree with you that no one should keep unsecured firearms in the home. But the number of very young children (9 yrs. old or less) who end up dead or seriously maimed for life is shockingly high. I don’t have exact numbers off the top of my head, but the yearly totals are staggering. It’s hard to comprehend that there are that many stupid gun owners.

And there is such overwhelming sympathy for the parents that it overrides common sense to the extent that no further penalties are imposed.

What keeps being overlooked is that it was ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE. If you’re gun can be found and used by a five year old, then you certainly dont take gun safety seriously.

And often it’s not just the parents’ own child who gets killed but one of their playmates. If your kid ends up killing someone elses kid with your gun that should be mandatory jail time IMHO. There is absolutely no excuse.

Stupidity and negligence should not be sufficient reasons to avoid consequences for something so monumentally stupid.

Well, in these modern times, while I agree with not having children have access to firearms, obviously, the thing is, what has changed in the last 150 years or so?
There was a time in the past where firearms were part of everyday life and were kept around, casually, mounted on a wall or behind a door, on on a mantel top and I don’t think there were many instances of children shooting themselves or each other.
Maybe it is education and children from bygone eras were taught, early on, to respect and stay away from weapons, maybe because they witnessed, first hand, their father shooting a deer or rabbit or turkey and saw the outcome of what a bullet could do.
As @Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One mentions, he was taught a healthy respect as a 10 yr. old kid.

I’d be curious how many children were killed or accidentally killed others in those eras.
What were the gun death stats in 1855, 1870, 1885, 1900, 1915 amongst children?

@Coloma

That’s a good question. But one thing to keep in mind is that in those eras most of the guns in households were hunting rifles RATHER THAN the handguns which are so prevalent today.

Logistically speaking, it’s a whole lot easier for a child to shoot themselves or a playmate with a handgun. Its so common for (very young kids especially) them to hold a handgun facing themselves and peering down the barrel. So, if it’s one of those with a hair trigger (like Glocks), that pretty much insures a fatal headshot. Obviously not possible with a long gun.

So, it’s really an apples and oranges situation in terms of comparisons.

I think you could replace “guns” with a lot of dangerous things and the common ingredient is still how people are educated. An educated person (one who is sane that is) doesn’t murder people.. or keep unsecured firearms in a house.. or drive a car backwards down the freeway..

So many issues today, in my humble opinion, could have been avoided with a decent upbringing. Typing this right now makes me so grateful that I had one. Perfect? Absolutely not.. but certain values and practices (like firearm safety) made it into my young brain because my parents gave a crap about my future.

I’m not saying there aren’t anomalies… there’s always someone with too many chemicals bouncing around in their brain that do stupid things (even with the greatest parents on earth and a decent upbringing). However, as a whole I think it’s true.

@Buttonstc True, rifles vs. handguns, apples and oranges but still piques my curiosity of bygone eras where guns of all kinds were super prevalent. Lots of Colt 45’s and Derringer pistols and other hand guns way back when too.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One Maybe more violence in entertainment as well and the numbers game. More humans, more nut cases. Of course the past eras of western themed TV and movies displayed a lot of gunfire but it wasn’t as glorified perhaps as some of todays action flicks where guns and violence are portrayed as making one a super bad ass.
It was more about the good guys vs. the bad.

@coloma, you said you weren’t sure because people hide it so well:

Newtown….“Adam Lanza: Lanza was diagnosed with a sensory-integration disorder at the start of elementary school. When he was thirteen he was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with Asperger syndrome, according to his father, Peter Lanza. Adam also had obsessive-compulsive disorder, being referred in October 2006 for treatment for his conditions, when behavioral-based therapy and the antidepressant Celexa were prescribed. Following objections from Nancy Lanza, the treatment was discontinued after four visits, and Lanza stopped taking the medication. In a 2013 interview, Peter Lanza said he suspected his son might have suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia in addition to his other conditions. Lanza said that family members might have missed signs of the onset of schizophrenia during his son’s adolescence because they attributed his odd behavior and increasing isolation to Asperger syndrome.”

In the recent Oregon shooting, which is linked in my details above, “Ms. Harper,....appears to have been by far the most significant figure in her son’s troubled life; neighbors say he rarely left their apartment.”

Eric Harris, the shooter at Colombine: In one of his scheduled meetings with his psychiatrist, Eric Harris complained of depression, anger and possessing suicidal thoughts.

@Dutchess_III Oh yeah, I know these particular kids had well known issues, but Aspergers and OCD are not known to be associated with violent killing sprees as far as I know. I meant the average, angsty, sullen, mopey, teenage moments most parents would attribute to the typical, moody teenager stuff and not suspect their kid of being on the verge of a mass murder mission.

@Coloma
I don’t know if the violence in entertainment thing is actually a problem. However, I would agree that garbage in tends to lead to garbage out.

It’s a fundamental world and even bible principal.

Philippians 4:8

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

I think so yes. There are always signs of severe mental illness, no matter how much someone tries to hide it. You just have to know what to look for.

And about the statement “no one should have loaded, unsecured guns in their home anyway,” yeah I disagree completely. I have a handgun, for protection, and mainly for when my husband is out of town. If someone were to break into my home, my children and I would already be threatened before I had time to open a safe/lockbox and load the damn thing.

If you have a gun for self-defense, keeping it unloaded and locked up makes zero sense. In your panic and adrenaline rush, you’d be fumbling to get the bullets in by the time you’re already pinned and being beaten or raped.

You have to educate your kids on what can happen should they decide to mess with it. We’ve taken our teenager for target practice so she knows how to aim should she, God forbid, be forced to do so. BUT we also drilled it into her head that she is never to touch the gun unless we tell her to, because she could accidentally kill someone. We told our basically youngest the same thing, that it’s for protection only, and if we catch her around it, there will be hell to pay, and she should just forget that it’s even there. It stays up high where she can’t reach it without a makeshift ladder, but it remains loaded and ready to go, should the worst-case-scenario present itself.