Why Americans Don't Treat Fatal Gun Negligence as a Crime

[flamin lib]

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121632/why-are-states-so-reluctant-prosecute-gun-negligence-crime

Every year many gun owners . . . unintentionally cause death and injury yet face no legal consequences. In criminal and civil courts, the legal system often fails to hold negligent gun owners accountable for such harm.
-------
The past decade has seen legal measures to prevent gun negligence systematically dismantled. The 2005 Protection of Legal Commerce in Arms Act statutorily inoculated gun manufacturers and dealers from most claims of negligence in gun deaths. This is even more dangerous than it may first sound. Many people unfamiliar with guns assume that they are designed with simple safeguards against unintentional shootings, but this is not always the case. Glock handguns, for example, have no external safety: If a round is chambered and the trigger is squeezed, the gun fires. As Aaron Walsh, a criminal defense attorney in Augusta, Georgia, put it, “With any other product in the world there would be no Glock company because they would be sued out of existence. You don’t have a safety? That can’t be right.”
----------
Because the firearms industry enjoys exceptions from normal liability, more of the burden for preventing negligence falls to gun owners. Until recently, responsible gun ownership has to some extent been enforced through gatekeeping: State laws limit who can own guns and carry them in public. But advocates for expanded gun rights have been shifting away from an older gun lobby talking point—that we should stop passing new gun control laws and simply enforce the laws we already have—and toward a strategy of dismantling existing legal safeguards.
--------
In civil law, negligence is a category of tort, or cause of harm to someone else. Crimes, on the other hand, typically require criminal intent. There are exceptions: The law has designated some kinds of unintentional harm as crimes—for example, child neglect, which society understands is a significant harm to the state that the law should forcefully deter. Specific statutes define child neglect, so prosecutors feel mandated to pursue charges against negligent parents. Few statutes define gun negligence, though, leaving more discretion to district attorneys. Where district attorneys or judges are elected, the gun lobby and local attitudes toward guns can affect whether the state wants to claim that leaving a loaded gun lying around deviates from normal, responsible behavior. “Remember, the prosecutor is elected,” said Korey Reiman, a criminal defense attorney in Lincoln, Nebraska. “If he starts ringing up people who accidentally shoot their buddy hunting, he isn’t going to be prosecuting long.”

Four paragraphs can't do justice to this article. There are numerous examples of egregious negligence by gun owners that go unpunished.

A man borrows a rifle, goes into his back yard, shoots at a brush pile and hits a four year old girl in the head. No criminal or civil blowback.

A man practicing quick draw with a loaded gun shoots and kills his girlfriend's daughter. No charges.

A dumbass twirling a gun on his finger shoots and kills a pregnant woman. Nothing, butkus.

A gun owner leaves a loaded pistol in his unlocked truck parked on the street. Kids find the gun and play with it, killing one of them. Both the owner and gun survive unscathed.

To make matters worse, none of these incidents cost the idiots their right to own, carry and misuse guns.

Guns are soooooo special and so are the idiots who misuse them. Seems the second amendment confers a right to be negligent.