[url]http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/limit-u-s-gun-insanity-article-1.1919590[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;381648][url]http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/limit-u-s-gun-insanity-article-1.1919590[/url][/QUOTE]

[quote=New York Daily News]Guns don’t kill people.

Nine-year-old girls with ponytails and pink shorts on summer vacation do.[/quote]

Couldn't do irony better myself. First class!

[QUOTE=ewmayer;381594]Latest Darwin Award candidate:[/QUOTE]

I agree with you.

It was the instructor who changed the setting on Uzi from single shot to fully automatic, and then told her to pull the trigger.

Oooops....

[QUOTE=ewmayer;381594]Latest Darwin Award candidate[/QUOTE]Too late. He's already reproduced.

Unless you're proposing retroactive birth control, visiting the sin of the fathers on the sons to the third and fourth generations.

[QUOTE=xilman;381656]Too late. He's already reproduced.[/QUOTE]

Yes, but given that he was close to his reproductive prime, this is still natural selection at work. As you know it only takes a tiny overall reduction in fecundity associated with a particular set of personality traits to drastically reduce those traits over a few hundred generations.

While it has not been demonstrated, it is my sincere hope that "gun nuttery" is such a trait, in the larger bin of "excessively risk taking" personality types.

My main worry here, though, is that for all their self-inflicted casualties the gun nuts may still be killing off a similar (or larger) fraction of non-gun-nuts.

At least in this case, however, we know that was not the case, hence an award nomination is merited.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;381662]At least in this case, however, we know that was not the case, hence an award nomination is merited.[/QUOTE]

Come on! At least in this case it is waranted.

"Give me a single shot! Good girl!

"Now lets go automatic...

"Ooooppps....

[url]http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/shooting-raises-instructor.html[/url]

Common sense at last prevails: They’ve raised the age limit to 12.

As we know 12-year-olds are much more capable of handling such responsibility - that's why we let them drive, vote, join the military, marry, and buy liquor. (Not nec. in that order, though).

Word now is that the [URL="http://www.news10.net/story/news/nation/2014/08/28/range-where-instructor-killed-by-girl-drew-concerns/14738249/"]Bullets and Burgers range has closed [/URL]indefinitely, to the relief of some of its neighbors.

[url]http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865610697/Taylorsville-teacher-injured-after-her-gun-discharges-in-school-bathroom.html[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;382861][URL]http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865610697/Taylorsville-teacher-injured-after-her-gun-discharges-in-school-bathroom.html[/URL][/QUOTE]
To start with I read this article with some sympathy for the teacher who, I guessed, felt safer from her potentially violent students if she carried a gun at school. (Not that I thought she would indeed be safer, quite the contrary. But I still had a smidgeon of understanding, having many years ago taught 15-year-olds myself and by no means always felt completely safe.)

Then I looked at the picture. The kids look about 8-10 years old. And I read more carefully: it's an "Elementary school".

Maybe she feels unsafe from intruders due to the spate of school shootings in recent years in the USA?

But anyway, wouldn't a blanket Federal ban on all guns in schools be a good start to changing the mentality of gun ownership in the USA? Perhaps that measure would get popular support?

[QUOTE=Brian-E;382887](SNIP)

But anyway, wouldn't a blanket Federal ban on all guns in schools be a good start to changing the mentality of gun ownership in the USA? Perhaps that measure would get popular support?[/QUOTE]

Popular support is meaningless. Large majorities already support universal background checks, but you'd never know it, looking at the law books.