60
   

Guns: how much longer will it take ....

 
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Sat 17 Jan, 2026 07:21 am
An 11-year-old boy is alleged to have shot his own father in the United States following an argument over his Nintendo. This was reported by The Guardian, among others. According to the report, the incident took place on 13 January in a house in the US state of Pennsylvania.

US boy, 11, allegedly shoots father to death after Nintendo Switch taken away
Quote:
[...]
The affidavit, cited by WGAL News 8, reportedly states that when officers asked the boy what had happened, he replied: “I shot somebody.” The sworn police statement also said: “He admitted that he had someone in mind whom he was going to shoot, whom he identified as his father.”

According to the news outlet, the court document says that the boy told police he found a key to the gun safe in his father’s drawer in his parent’s bedroom. He reportedly unlocked it while attempting to locate his Nintendo Switch – which had previously been taken away from him – and found a gun.

The son then allegedly admitted to “removing the gun from the safe, loading bullets into it and walking over to his father’s side of the bed”, according to the affidavit. “He pulled back the hammer and fired the gun at his father,” the affidavit adds.

When asked what he believed would happen when he fired the gun, the boy responded that he was “mad” and that he had “not thought about that”, according to investigators.

WGAL News 8 reported that. [...]
Investigator
 
  -3  
Reply Sat 17 Jan, 2026 11:19 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Sounds like the father was irresponsible. The kid just as easily could have taken a knife or club to his father if he didn't have access to a gun. So one family has an issue with guns and you think it's responsible to take them all away. I wish everyone in Iran had one because they wouldn't be sitting ducks right now.
hingehead
 
  3  
Reply Sat 17 Jan, 2026 06:12 pm
@Investigator,
Let me guess who's side you'd be on if civillians started shooting ICE.
hightor
 
  3  
Reply Sat 17 Jan, 2026 08:49 pm
@Investigator,
Quote:
The kid just as easily could have taken a knife or club to his father if he didn't have access to a gun.

Hmm...it might have been easy to grab a knife or a club but it wouldn't have been as easy to inflict a fatal wound. That's why modern armies replaced primitive weapons with firearms. In the USA between 2018 and 2025, approximately 78% of homicides were committed with firearms, while only about 8% involved knives. FBI crime statistics show that 662 homicides in 2020 were committed with personal weapons, described as "hands, fists, feet, etc." Clubs and blunt objects are about half that rate.

Again, it's not so much the lethality of the weapon as it is the ease of inflicting a fatal wound from a distance. Restricting civilian gun ownership to manual reloading rifles (as opposed to semi-automatics) would probably decrease the number of gun fatalities but, ironically, could result in more people being bludgeoned to death by long guns as USAmericans seem to have lots of reasons to wish to kill each other.
hingehead
 
  2  
Reply Sat 17 Jan, 2026 10:05 pm
@hightor,
Not to mention easy access to such lethally simple weapons when tempers flare in a domestic abuse situation or sudden wave of suicide ideation.

"The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology."
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Tue 20 Jan, 2026 01:51 pm
Supreme Court seems skeptical of Hawaii limits on carrying guns
The case before the justices could have a major impact on laws in California, New York and elsewhere.

Quote:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical of the constitutionality of a Hawaii law that sharply restricts where people can carry firearms — a case that may offer a strong indication of how far the justices will go in their push to loosen restrictions on guns.

Hawaii’s law bans people from carrying firearms on private property open to the public unless they have the owner’s consent. The court’s conservatives sharply questioned an attorney defending Hawaii’s law, suggesting it unduly burdened a constitutional right to bear arms.

The decision will reverberate beyond Hawaii because four other states, including California and New York, have enacted similar laws in response to a landmark 2022 ruling by the high court that made it easier to challenge gun limits.

The default rule in most states is that gun owners can carry firearms onto private property open to the public until they have been told otherwise. The Hawaii law flipped the rule. Property owners generally have the right to restrict guns on land closed to the public.

“You are relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told Neal Katyal, an attorney for Hawaii.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the First Amendment permitted a political candidate to walk up to someone’s door to campaign, and he questioned why Hawaii could place limits on another constitutional right in the same context. He said gun rights are often disfavored.

“You say it’s different for the Second Amendment,” Roberts said to Katyal. “What exactly is the distinction?”

The court’s three liberal justices all indicated they thought Hawaii’s law probably passed constitutional muster. Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that Hawaii had long had some of the nation’s strictest gun-control laws and cited polling that indicates the restriction on public carry is popular.

“Nothing about Hawaii’s customs, tradition or culture creates an expectation that the general public carries guns wherever they go, correct?” Sotomayor said.

A trio of gun owners with concealed-carry permits and a gun rights group challenged the Hawaii law, which was enacted in 2023. The Trump administration is backing the gun owners.

The law also bans the carrying of firearms in 15 sensitive locations, including bars, parks, restaurants that serve alcohol and youth centers. The legality of those restrictions is not at issue in the Supreme Court case.

The petitioners argue Hawaii’s law violates the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen, which found “the Second Amendment guarantees a general right to public carry.”

That ruling held that any restriction on firearms must have precedent rooted in American history. The decision has sparked thousands of challenges to gun-control laws across the country, resulting in rulings that have relaxed restrictions on high-capacity magazines, age limits for firearms purchases and other rules. The decision has also created some confusion among judges about how to conduct the historical analysis.

The Supreme Court clarified the Bruen decision last term in a case in which it held states could bar people with domestic violence restraining orders from obtaining guns. The court found modern gun restrictions need not have a “historical twin” but rather a “historical analogue.”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh questioned whether Hawaii’s law was based on precedents deeply rooted in American history. “There’s no sufficient history,” he said. “Case closed.”

The court has largely expanded gun rights since the Bruen ruling, but not in all cases. In one ruling, the justices struck down a federal ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire hundreds of rounds a minute. In a major case last term, the justices upheld Biden-era restrictions on ghost guns.
WP
0 Replies
 
Investigator
 
  -2  
Reply Thu 29 Jan, 2026 03:08 am
@hightor,
You forgot to provide the statistics to indicate how many of those murderers who used a gun, would have used a knife, club, hands, car, etc. if they hadn't had access to a gun.
Investigator
 
  -2  
Reply Thu 29 Jan, 2026 03:11 am
@hingehead,
Do you really have to ask me whose side I'd be on if rioters started shooting at a federal government employee doing their job?
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  3  
Reply Thu 29 Jan, 2026 07:44 am
@Investigator,
Quote:
You forgot to provide the statistics to indicate how many of those murderers who used a gun, would have used a knife, club, hands, car, etc. if they hadn't had access to a gun.

And how would those statistics have been collected?

But to deal with the substance of your question, I'm sure many angry people have thought of throttling someone, bludgeoning someone, or running someone through with a spear, but all those require a lot more risk, effort, and physical exertion than squeezing a trigger. By the time one has gotten access to a cutlass or garrote the moment of passion may have passed or the intended victim may have escaped.
Walter Hinteler
 
  3  
Reply Thu 29 Jan, 2026 08:06 am
@hightor,
hightor wrote:

Quote:
You forgot to provide the statistics to indicate how many of those murderers who used a gun, would have used a knife, club, hands, car, etc. if they hadn't had access to a gun.

And how would those statistics have been collected?
The poster is obviously familiar with these statistics. Otherwise, he would not have written "You forgot to provide the statistics".
Of course, the question arises as to how on earth it was possible to compile these statistics. But it would be interesting to know who made them and how ...
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Sat 31 Jan, 2026 01:29 am
Was Alex Pretti allowed to demonstrate armed in Minneapolis? Experts say yes.
Trump and his people suggest no – with astonishing flexibility in similar cases. And in the case of Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the president and his people also sided with the gun owners.

Example: The same people who celebrated Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero now describe Pretti as a danger. In the case of Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the president and his people also sided with the gun owners.

Apart from the fact that I am in favour of strict gun control anyway, I find this astonishing, even for Trump and MAGA.
0 Replies
 
Region Philbis
 
  1  
Reply Wed 4 Feb, 2026 12:37 pm

as a reminder...

https://i.ibb.co/cS8RPzVB/capture.jpg
Investigator
 
  -2  
Reply Fri 6 Feb, 2026 12:43 pm
@Region Philbis,
So murder to you is getting shot and killed while carrying a concealed weapon while physically fighting with armed enforcement people after you have broken the law?
fobvius
 
  2  
Reply Fri 6 Feb, 2026 07:36 pm
@Investigator,
Why settle for one delusion?

0 Replies
 
 

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