Father kills son in gun range...

[mishigas73]

Originally Posted by Mystery123

I'm just hoping. I'm not giving punishments cause I can't.
If I were a judge, yes it counts but I'm not so I am really hoping that guy gets a long jail time and never allowed to own a firearm ever.
Anything less and it just proves that gun owners are letting go off easily without any serious consequences.
I expect the same thing if I shoot and kill someone innocent, accident or not.

Here's the thing though. The law makes a distinction between accidental killings and killings with intent and malice- generally, "manslaughter" versus "murder".

Without proof of malice or intent, chances are this guy is not going to prison for decades. And why should he? Should there really be a difference between an accidental killing with a gun, and any other sort of accidental killing?

[boxus]

Originally Posted by Mr_Geek

It was an accident and it happens everyday with others things that don't involve guns (cars for example). The intent was not there, thus it was an accident.

I agree it was an accident, but this was a bit more than just a mistake, it was negligence, not gross negligence, but this was not a pure accident. A pure accident would be if he dropped the gun, had a seizure, or some other anomaly. This guy broke about every gun safety rule there is in a purposeful manner. Now if that rises to the standard of criminal, I do not know, and even if so, what punishment should be given.

[BruSan]

I'm going to go with a query as to how this dude got a casing to go down the back of his shirt collar. Either his firearm needs some serious ejector repair, he was doing the carjacker's pistol pout or the shooting stations are not set up to modern standards. Firearms that eject spent casing straight up and back are rare indeed and for good reasons.

If it bounced off a divider panel or came from a neighbouring station and was still high enough in the air to land down his shirt neck they need to address that panel as being ineffective, too close and too hard. Even old egg cartons stapled to plywood have sufficed adequately years ago to prevent these types of occurrances. They have specialty facings now that absorb inertia and the casing drops straight down after hitting the panel.

My mom used to donate her curtains every few years (so dad would have to foot for new ones) to drape between our stations on the farm but later textiles had the nasty habit of going up in flames so we went with using saved up egg cartons of the older recycled paper type. A side benefit was they dampened some noise also.

A modern range of the first order would not have this occur.