If the person with the dangerous chemical did not know it was dangerous and there was an accident I could see your point but guns are a clearly dangerous. If the nontrained person knew the chemical was dangerous enough to cause an accident and handled it anyway they are at fault, that seems to me the logical conclusion.
I'm not saying it was entirely her fault, that guy shouldn't have had a loaded gun sitting out. I don't want the book thrown at her but she was at the very least partially responsible for his death.
I fail to see how punishing someone who has extensive gun training is any different. Imagine the exact same scenario happened except the girl had firearm safety training, what should the outcome be at that point?
If she had safety training I would be more inclined to support her being out in jail. I'm not saying I would, just that I'd be more I'd be more inclined to. Because to me, what it comes down to is a question of negligence. And that's a question that is relative. If you handed a loaded gun to a random untrained person, I would feel very concerned that I might get shot by accident. If you handed it to someone who had proper safety training, I wouldn't be concerned at all of getting shit by accident. Because the trained person should know better. It would require a mistake on their part well beyond what a sensible person with their background would be likely to make.
Therefore, a mistake by a trained person should be taken far more seriously. To take a similar example, say a criminal lawyer and some random person commit an obscure crime. A lawyer is expected to know the law better, and should be held to higher standard.
The way I see it, no matter what people SHOULD know. My experience has shown me without question that regular people in control of a gun are a serious injury or death just waiting to happen. So way it see it, the reason that is isn't relevant. Since that's the case, the fact that an accident happened isn't something I could rightfully call negligence. Because to be negligent it must be something most people wouldn't be likely to do. Even if you think people shouldn't be that dumb, fact is they are.
There is no point in punishing people for negligence if the negligence is no stupider than how most people would act. Because that means that going to jail or not is nothing more than bad luck. You didn't do anything different to anyone else, only you were unlucky enough to have it happen. So negligence should be defined (and in reality is defined) as doing something most similar people in a similar situation would know better than to do. No matter how much you and I might wish they knew better they don't.
Now. As for WHY this is the case. As I said I think the reason isn't relevant as far as punishment goes, but just for discussions sake. I think the reason is that normal people suck at risk evaluation. They don't properly comprehend just how dangerous a gun is. They see piles of movies of people pointing guns at each other, they learn from so much bad media that people point guns at each other with their finger on the trigger all the time. But very very very rarely in media is it depicted that someone shoots someone by put mistake. Generally in films and tv, people only fire guns when they mean too. So they don't realize just how dangerous such behavior is. And they don't properly evaluate the risk of someone dying compared to the risk of where they're pointing the gun and what they're doing with it. They think that an accident won't happen. Generally they don think about it whatsoever, but to the extent that they do they don't think they'd be so stupid as to pull the trigger by mistake.
I agree that just pointing a gun at someone when have no intention of hurting is obviously stupid. But people just don't think about it. You see this kind of stupid risk taking happen all the time.
I agree that it's incredible how stupid people are. I agree that it should be common sense not to do that shit. But clearly it isn't because if it were I wouldn't feel so scared seeing a gun in untrained hands. I wouldn't see them constantly handle them in such a way that they sweep people in a dangerous way all the time. Much as we might wish it, it's no common sense because people don't intuitively do it.
Which means I don't see any point in punishing her if she didn't do anything negligent behind what most risks most people would take (keeping in mind there may be more about this case I don't know about yet).
As for what SHOULD happen to her?
Well. In my ideal society. I would want it taken before a court. It would then be determined if she acted negligent in the way I defined, if she didn't. Then here's no point locking her up. She hasn't committed a crime if it wasn't intentional or reckless negligence. It's a waste of money, and I don't see how it makes anything better, and I don't see how not locking her up makes anything worse. I don't acknowledge the validity of the argument that we should send a message or placate the grieving family. I'd only agree with her being locked up if I thought by doing so we'd make society safe, or lessen the risk to them. And unless it looked like she'd be around guns again and might accidentally shoot someone again (in which case it might well be wise to lock her up cause then she poses a risk behind the average) I don't see any valid point to putting her in jail. Instead I'd want to look into providing people better safety education. Do more about keeping it from happening again.
On the other hand. If it were determined that she was negligent beyond the scope of what risk an average person would pose, then she's guilty of negligent homicide. The question becomes how should she be punished. I would want to know what suffering she's experiencing from having accidentally shot him. If she's already suffering greatly from that, I would want the system to be lenient. I would insist she get safety training to ensure she doesn't do it again since she was obviously in a position for it to happen once and if she's free she might be in such a position again. If it seems she doesn't feel horrible about what she did, if she has been trying to justify herself and similar behaviors, then I'd be a lot less lenient. I'd want her put in jail. Not sure how long. But I'd give her something.
I understand the desire to see her punished, really I do. When I first read about is and in my first posts it really outraged me that people are so retarded. And I wanted to see her punished for it. But I don't like letting my emotions control my better judgement and moral beliefs. So while I understand, my moral beliefs are opposed to jailing people to send a message. Or for no real benefit or real attempt to protect the public. Generally I'm opposed to deterrence as the rationale too. I mean I'm ok with jailing people to serve as a deterrence, but only if it works. If the deterrence isn't effective I'm not ok with continuing to use that excuse. And if the deterrence of accidentally killing someone you are about, being a killer, and all the legal hoops and huge disruption to your life weren't already an effective deterrence, the idea of going to jail won't add anything extra.
If I thought deterrence worked I'd be ok with it, but in practice... I've known a lot of criminals in my life. I don't believe deterring people through severe punishment almost ever works.
That's how I'd want society to work. And it's pretty close to how it is supposed to work in some places to varying extends,
