This is why we need an assault weapons ban.

"Accidentally discharged." Sure, sure. This is how it really went down:

"I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba I've got his money...."

Of course this happened in a steakhouse.

the logic of @1:

dumb people are hurting other people with ALL kinds of guns and doing much more Harm than they could ever do Good with said guns of all kinds...

...therefor we shouldn't ban even a small amount of guns.

/trolling or sarcasm or actually sincere @1?

Premature. He needs to learn to hold it longer, maybe take some tantra.

@4,
it was trolling and sarcasm.

i find this an acceptable price to pay for freedom.

@6.

ah.

and pretty decent trolling/sarcasm, too, since it's actually a milder version of the sincere attempts at logic from gun nuts, e.g. "A man stabbed 22 children in a school and china (and none died) so how dare you ban assault rifles!" oh and "HAMMERS!"

The fact that there hasn't been a mass shooting at this steakhouse definitvely proves that would-be mass murderers are too scared to go on a killing spree anyplace that isn't a weapons-free environment. Just one of the many ways that random weapons discharges in public places make us all safer.

So, Dan links to a story on an accidental shooting that did not result in death.
In Kansas.
So where are the links to stories about shootings in Seattle for the past 2 weeks?
No one here can name the first (or latest) brown person wounded or killed in Seattle in 2013. Without looking it up.
Judging by the coverage in The Stranger, there haven't been any.
Yet there will be stories posted about shootings across the nation.

Who is shooting whom with what and why?

It'll be interesting to see whether the police there count how many employees and patrons were in the immediate vicinity, and whether that has any bearing on filing a charge of reckless endangerment.

Kitsap County sheriffs seem a bit wishy washy on the matter.

@11: Maybe you should take it upon yourself to make such stories more visible, rather than copy + pasting the same tired screed multiple times a day? It would be more productive than what you're doing now, and probably more satisfying too. Paste the links into comment threads, or email them to the guys at the Stranger directly.

This is why we need to ban the kinds of dummies who love guns.

Holsters. For the sake of your wife's knee, or your own testicles, for the love of God, holsters. They sell 'em right next to the fucking gun you just bought. Despite what Hollywood has taught you, your pocket (or, God save the stupid, the waistband of your sweatpants) was not designed to safely stow your gat. So if you don't like accidental discharges, and you like your nuts, invest in a goddamn holster.

If cars were like guns, not only would there be no drivers licenses, brakes would be optional. There would be no car insurance, no seat belts. Filling your tank with open buckets of gas with a lit cigarette stuck to your lip would be your right as an American.

@1 "This is why we need an assault weapons ban. "

No, this is why we need a "fucking idiots carrying guns around with them everywhere they go and don't even know how to properly carry them" ban.

There are other reasons why we need an assault weapons ban.

@13
"It would be more productive than what you're doing now, and probably more satisfying too."

Does it bother you that you can't even identify the first brown person shot in Seattle in 2013 without looking it up?
How does that fit with your "liberal" beliefs?
But you shouldn't feel too bad, should you?
Judging by the coverage in The Stranger, there haven't been any.
Yet there will be stories posted about shootings across the nation.

Who is shooting whom with what and why?

@17,
So, ban stupid people?

I could get behind that.

@18: Well, you gave me an answer, at least. Of a sort. I'll leave you to it, then.

@19,

No. Throw them in jail when they recklessly endanger other people's lives.

Yep; clearly our qualification standards for gun ownership are waaay too high.

Although I guess we could all ask fifty-two-eighty whether the dipshit from this story will be useful in this upcoming race war he seems to think is going to happen.

I can't stop thinking about how ridiculous the "Open Carry" twats at the Ceasefire march yesterday looked, with their knee holsters wobbling as they walked. And not the only thing wobbling on some of them; gun nuts are by and large not attractive people, in so many ways. And such snappy dressers; I especially like the black shirt/purple tie/suedehead look on the roly-poliest one. He looked like he was trying out for the role of Hermann Goering Wanna-Be #2 in a play about concentration camps.

@18, can you identify the first white person shot in Seattle in 2013 without looking it up?

I can't tell you the names of any person shot in Seattle in 2013 without looking it up, regardless of the race. I'm sure most people who are not related to the victims are in the same boat.

FairlyUnbalanced makes a halfway decent point that we aren't galvanized for action when kids are killed by ones and twos across the country over many days. Most of kids killed in such circumstances are brown. A bunch of cute white kids are killed and the nation sits up, pays attention and starts yapping about the need for change.

However, that doesn't mean that the need for change isn't real. Does it suck that this is what we needed to get our sustained attention? Sure. It's still a good thing that we're now doing something about it.

Also: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p…

@21 Exactly. Start by requiring proof of a working knowledge of how to properly store and operate a gun before letting anyone buy one. Sort of like we do with cars.

And sure, @19, just because people know what the safety on a gun is (and how important it is) doesn't mean they'll engage it before plopping it on the front seat with their kid in the car. But at least then it's documentable recklessness.

Try killing your kid/passenger in a car while driving recklessly or without ever possessing a license. You are fucked. But reckless gun owners have a valid excuse: ignorance.

It's basically like a driver saying, "It's not my fault! No one told me what the BRAKE PEDAL was for!"

@25
I think you missed the point that the outrage is rather specifically focused on situations where children or white people are the victims.
When the victims are not-children and not-white then the outrage does not exist.
At least until those not-children and not-white victims have had the brown washed out of them and turned into sanitized statistics.