Cultellus wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:42 am
Alf'Omega wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:32 am
[blatant and unimaginative personal attack removed -cp-]
Typical for you. What’s your point?
So a man points a gun at someone and pulls the trigger, is it an accident if the bullet hits the target?
If the gun had discharged unpredictably, that could have been accidental. But in this case, someone pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.
Alf, calling this
negligent as opposed to
accidental is understandable. The idea is fleshed out a bit more thoroughly in this short piece at the link below (having nothing to do with this incident specifically):
https://www.eaglegunrangetx.com/police- ... tor-error/
The counter argument to this is, if we are considering whether or not the person handling the firearm had any understanding that it could realistically harm anyone. Think of a situation where a child accidentally discharged a weapon, harming themselves or another person. The child may have placed their finger on the trigger but would not necessarily have had any knowledge of personal harm possible from doing so. Negligence would still come into play, but the charge might be levied at the owner of the firearm, or whoever chambered it, assuming that it wasn’t the child.
This argument grows significantly weaker once we move up in age to adults, but there is probably an expectation that a firearm to be operated as a prop would not be capable of killing someone at fairly close range - either because it might be assumed to not operate as an actual firearm, or because the person wielding it may not have knowledge of the potential lethality of ‘blanks’. In other words, an actor/actress used to dealing with props might be overconfident of the assumed safety of those props
as prepared for them by others whose job is to ensure safe operation, specifically because of their potential for harm otherwise.
And yet, the possibility that this firearm may have been purposefully loaded with a standard round (labor dispute shenanigans by someone who may never have expected this serious of an outcome), and the case for ‘accidental’ then becomes more valid.
Just my opinion, so sharper legal minds may need to step in and correct me where I’m going astray.