A MAN 's HOME IS HIS CASTLE

One point from all of that (I can try to find the article back) is that having easy access to guns is dangerous in terms of suicide and murder because of the hot state aspect.

David, Bad or distorted studies in the past do not make all studies bad or distorted.

That's the same as the ad hominem argument.

One idiot Republican doesn't make all Republican's idiots.
One bad study does not make all studies wrong.

baltimoresun.com
Shootings highlight questions about kids who kill relatives with little warning
By Ben Nuckols

The Associated Press

8:27 AM EST, February 6, 2008

Authorities offered no further insight into the motive of a teenager accused in the shooting deaths of his father, mother and two brothers, but experts say such crimes are not unprecedented -- and they often come without any obvious warning signs.

Nicholas W. Browning remained jailed without bond after confessing early Sunday that he killed his father, John Browning, his mother, Tamara, and his younger brothers, Gregory, 14, and Benjamin, 11, according to Baltimore County police.

Browning, who turns 16 on Saturday, had no history of violence, mental health problems or drug problems, according to court documents. His father was a highly regarded business attorney, and the family lived in an affluent suburb. Browning played golf and lacrosse, was active in his church and was close to becoming an Eagle Scout.

Those details were not surprising to Paul A. Mones, a defense attorney for children accused of killing their parents, who wrote a book about his work called "When a Child Kills."

"This happens to kids in middle- and upper-middle-class, even upper-class homes," said Mones, who practices in Portland, Ore. "It happens in families that, from the outside, look like normal, typical, great families."

In the United States, about 300 children a year are charged with killing one or both parents, Mones said. Cases where a child kills the entire family, known as "familicide," are less frequent.

Louis B. Schlesinger, a professor of a forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said familicide is more commonly committed by a depressed or jealous father.

Slayings of relatives by teenagers "are usually spontaneous sorts of things," Schlesinger said. "With the brooding, depressive male adult, it's not spontaneous, it's much more thought through, with obsessive rumination prior to it. With a teenager, it's almost always impulsive, spontaneous, and there happens to be a loaded gun around."

Mones said slayings are typically motivated by one of two factors: "extreme family dysfunction in terms of physical and emotional abuse, or severe mental health issues that pervade the family, whether it's the perpetrator or the parents or themselves.

"There are cases where kids just snap out of the blue and go on a rampage, but it's really, really rare."

Bill Toohey, a Baltimore County police spokesman, said Browning told officers where they could find the gun used in the slayings, which he tossed into some bushes near the home. The gun belonged to John Browning and was kept inside the home.

Experts said easy access to guns was a common thread in cases where children kill their parents.

"The biggest risk factor that was not prevented was his access to firearms, and I think that's the biggest tragedy," said Dr. Anandhi Narasimhan, a Los Angeles-based child psychologist.

Narasimhan noted that because mental health records are confidential, it's impossible to know for sure whether Browning was suffering from mental illness or had shown other warning signs, such as bullying at school or cruelty to animals.

Mones hypothesizes that such slayings are more frequent in affluent families because wealth makes abuse easier to conceal.

"If you look at reports of abuse and family problems in upper-middle class families, it's really low, because the walls between the families and the world are very, very high," he said. "In lower-income communities, the police and social service agencies have a major presence, so it's nothing to call 911 when a kid's being mistreated or a neighbor hears screams."

And yes, I can already hear you saying "but I'm not going to commit suicide."

to add to what soz said :

Quote:

baltimoresun.com
Shootings highlight questions about kids who kill relatives with little warning
By Ben Nuckols

The Associated Press

8:27 AM EST, February 6, 2008

Experts said easy access to guns was a common thread in cases where children kill their parents.

"The biggest risk factor that was not prevented was his access to firearms, and I think that's the biggest tragedy," said Dr. Anandhi Narasimhan, a Los Angeles-based child psychologist.

Experts on WHAT ?
Were these experts perhaps anti-gun fanatics BEFORE
thay expressed their opinions ? Is that the reason that THEIR opinions
were selected for reference and publication ?

Do counter-experts hold contrary opinions, or is that a unanimous opinion among " experts " ?

It is a fact that many experts, on cross-examination of their testimony
in court are shown to have been in error, been caught in deceptive statements
by adverse counsel, and have found it necessary to admit in front of juries,
but these " experts " were not ( so far as we can see ) subjected to
any form of verification.

Let us ASSUME for the moment that their allegations are accurate:
how many of the killers wud have used other means to accomplish
the same result ? Is it a lot NICER to be killed with a Molotov cocktail ?
or several of them ? or some other explosive device ?

Do Molotov cocktails have to be licensed by the police ?
Must their possession be registered with them ?

And yes, I can already hear you saying "but I'm not going to commit suicide."

Well, in that, case, i would revise my remark to read: "Scenarios in self-help books are hardly a plausible answer to the questions which the Wabbit and i asked."

If one is enjoined to listen to one's intuition, then my response would be that both my intellect and my gut feeling tell me it is dangerous to keep firearms in the home unless the firearms or the ammunition are locked up--in which case they are not going to be useful in dealing with intruders who surprise the home owner.

DrewDad wrote:

And yes, I can already hear you saying "but I'm not going to commit suicide."

Actually no, I wasn't going to say that at all.

I was going to say....they wanted to commit suicide, they did what they set out to do.

I don't see the problem.

Homicide and suicide are the second and third leading causes of death among teens ages 15 to 19, after accidental death.1 Firearms were the instrument of death in over 80 percent of teen homicides and about half of teen suicides in 2004.2 While almost one in four youth firearm injuries results in death, nonfirearm injuries result in death in only one out of every 760 cases.3

set, did you not read my last post?

you asked for scenerios, I gave you 2 that were not in any book, but from my own life.

If your gut and your intellect tell you what you said above, then that's what you should do in your home.

Honestly garg? I have had 2 instances where a person has broken into my residence, when I was there.

In the first instance, actually the intruder was already in my apt, and I came home unexpectedly during the day and caught him there. Without going into a long story, he was there thinking there was a large quantity of drugs there. When I realized what was going on, I ran out. Unfortuanately, we couldn't call the police, or they would have found our medium size quantity of drugs.
I figure someone breaking into your house, posing as a service man, to steal drugs, might very well be dangerous enough to attack me.

The 2nd time, this maintenance man at an apt I lived at started stalking me. I'm not going to devulge any details of that one, suffice it to say I wish I'd had a gun.

For people who are worried about intruders,
a dog makes much more sense than a loose, loaded gun.

Every would be thief who appoaches
your house can tell if you have a dog
but not if you have a gun.
They're going to avoid a house with a barking dog.

Even if they still want to get you your dog has given you ample warning
so that you can open the safe and load the gun.

Dogs are 100 times better than guns when it comes to home protection.

Dogs are not reliable.
Like people, thay are thinking beings who
are unpredictable in how thay will act ... ...

I guess my dogs have always been smarter than your dogs because they
have always been reliable and predictable.

Reliable and predictable is the very nature of a dog.

I just knew you were going to have a shot dog story.
If my dog didn't greet me at the door I wouldn't even go into the house
without calling someone to check it out with me.

But then again, my dogs have always been reliable and predictable.
I'd know right away something was wrong.

david wrote :

Quote:

Dogs are not reliable.
Like people, thay are thinking beings who
are unpredictable in how thay will act ... ...

give "unpredictable" people a gun and ... ...