On Sunday, a man at a Florida gun range accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old son. While William Clayton Brumby was firing at a target, a spent shell had bounced off a wall and fell into his shirt collar. When he reached back to remove it — using the hand that held the gun — he accidentally fired, hitting his boy, who was standing directly behind him, in the jugular. Even in his grief, Brumby holds to the NRA line:
“The gun didn’t kill my boy. I did,” he told CNN.
“Every round in the gun is your responsibility. When it fires you need to stand to account for it it. That’s what I’ve spent the last two days doing, accounting for my operating error.”
No word yet on whether the law will hold Brumby accountable for his operating error. Should charges be filed? I don’t know; this isn’t a straight-up case of negligence like leaving a gun out where a toddler or madman (or woman) can easily access it. He almost certainly reached back for the shell instinctively because it was hot.
The possibility of this sort of incident — even in a “safe” space like that gun range — seems like a good reason to choose hobbies that don’t involve products that are designed to kill things, especially if children will participate. But you know, even activities like scrapbooking have their risks too, amirite?
schrodinger's cat
He should be charged with manslaughter.
PsiFighter37
Comey on TV – will see what happens here…
Matt McIrvin
I don’t know how practical it is, but I kind of liked Jim Wright’s proposal that we should run with this: make the gun-safety rules explicitly advocated by the NRA into enforceable law.
bogart_83
“Every round in the gun is your responsibility. When it fires you need to stand to account for it it. That’s what I’ve spent the last two days doing, accounting for my operating error.”
And if the NRA didn’t have every legislature in America by the balls, it would be this kind of operator error that would revoke your right to ever make one like it ever again.
A negligent discharge should disqualify the person who made it from owning firearms. Period.
Barbara
You never know when a paper cut will penetrate a major artery.
Capri
I actually agree with the guy. He was in a gun range after all, presumably trying to do the right thing and teaching his kid how to shoot safely, but had an error in judgement when he pointed a loaded gun at something other than a target. The problem is that accidents involving guns are often lethal.
p.a.
Actually, your son has done the accounting. Sleep well.
trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
Hasn’t he suffered en…oh fvck it, the charade will continue as before.
Barbara
Capri, when I go to the batting cage with my son, only one person is allowed in the cage (so you don’t get hit with a bat or a foul ball). It just seems to me that the entire culture surrounding gun ownership is a resolute denial of needing to consider the kinds of things that nearly everyone else routinely does in order to keep their far less dangerous products safe.
mb
I cannot imagine a world in which I kill my 14 year old child and then make a statement defending my gun rights. Just don’t think my gun rights would be a priority right then. Don’t think I’d ever want to see a gun again.
Fair Economist
The only way he’s responsible is that he was trying to teach his son to shoot a gun. It’s true that he’d been willing to let his son not use guns his son would still be alive. But otherwise, it’s an accident, and it *is* the gun’s fault, because this wouldn’t have happened with a better designed gun.
scav
Ah, accounting. A whole two days and it’s all been number-juggled into place, with a care taken not to harm the real victim of the event, the gun or the NRA. Rather like parents choosing to protect the priest and the reputation of the Church in cases of religious sexual abuse. Priorities, people.
raven
No charges recommended,
1
2
3
wingnuts explode!
ET
Operator error, etc. has always been my problem with guns, to many stupid, careless, amoral people have them.
trollhattan
@Barbara:
The little girl plugging the gun range employee with the Uzi he’d just switched over to full-auto was everything I need to know WRT gun range safety. They’re entertainment facilities, not places for sober reflection on the obligations that come with ownership of killing tools.
rikyrah
Involuntary manslaughter should be the charge.
Lizzy L
I can’t see any purpose in charging and prosecuting the man. Also, in months & years to come, he may end up feeling differently about guns. Anything he says now should be taken as the utterings of a disturbed mind. He’s effectively drunk — with pain and grief.
DCrefugee
I’ve been in that gun shop, but not to use the range. It’s in an older strip mall on one of the city’s main drags, in a blue-collar area, and I never thought it large enough to support a proper shooting range.
Those I’ve seen/met there are definitely hard-core ammosexuals: angry white guys just looking for an excuse to ridicule anyone who doesn’t share their gun culture. A sad bunch, and they can’t leave the populace fast enough, though I’d hope it would be from old age and not a firearm discharge.
trollhattan
@Lizzy L:
It’s Florida, they’ll give him a medal for stoicism, pat him on the back and tell him coulda happened to anybody. They won’t, for insurance, declare him unfit to own or handle guns on accounta the coulda happened to anybody rule.
The end.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@schrodinger’s cat:
Involuntary or negligent manslaughter, and I agree because no evidence has surfaced that he had any intent to shoot his son.
@Fair Economist:
How would a better designed gun have prevented this when the pistol functioned as designed.?
The operator inadvertently pulled the trigger with the safety mechanisms disabled and it fired.
celticdragonchick
Actually, that is true.
When you hear of serial killers talking about their crimes, you often catch details like “My hand reached towards her” which makes it sound like part of their body developed independent mobility and intelligence. Of course, it is a mechanism to insulate themselves from their actions.
The father here did not do that. He correctly notes that his action was responsible for what happened. The gun did not suddenly become sentient and work on its own.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@mb:
Clearly you’re not a gundamentalist. The blood of innocents is required to protect our precious 2nd Amendment Freedumbs. He just gave a child for the cause.
bogart_83
@Lizzy L: Bull and shit. If you hit someone with your car you get charged with involuntary manslaughter and you go to jail. This should be no different. I’m tired of the ammosexuals treating these death machines like they’re toys. Guns are not toys, they are a solemn responsibility and if someone proves themselves unfit for the responsibility then they should be prosecuted and made so that they are no longer entrusted with a gun.
celticdragonchick
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):
You can make a case for negligent manslaughter since by definition he broke the safety operating rules of the range when he pointed a loaded weapon away from the approved target area, even if it was by accident.
A jury may be reluctant to convict given the circumstances, since it is nowhere near being cut and dried like leaving a gun out for a toddler to find.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@bogart_83:
Unless you or your family is rich and influential of course.
Affluenza, anyone?
Other than that minor quibble, I agree with you 100%.
celticdragonchick
@bogart_83:
Oh? because I can think of a lot of instances where a pedestrian gets hit because of their own carelessness or stupidity and the driver is not at fault. Hell, I have seen a couple of news stories where a drunk has passed out in the middle of a road and been hit while unconscious. No…the driver was not charged.
PaulWartenberg2016
Should 14-year-olds even BE in gun ranges?!
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@celticdragonchick:
This kind of thing is why I’m not a fan of mandatory sentencing.
A jury might disregard the evidence if they feel the punishment outweighs the crime.
I don’t know all of the circumstances surrounding this case, but my gut feeling is that he should get a felony conviction for negligent homicide and a light sentence due to his remorse and acceptance of responsibility.
VOR
Sounds like the gun range has some design issues. A spent shell bounced off a wall and went down his shirt? The walls of the range are too close or need padding to prevent shell casings from ricocheting into shooters.
Lizzy L
@bogart_83: I respect your opinion, but your statement about cars/manslaughter/prosecution is nonsense. People who hit other people with cars unintentionally — while suffering a stroke, for example — are rarely prosecuted. Hell, they rarely lose their driver’s licenses. This man did not intend to kill his child.
celticdragonchick
@PaulWartenberg2016:
I had my first deer rifle when I was 12. Most Boy Scout camps have ranges for .22 rifles and black powder muzzle loaders and those are used by 11year old boys and up.
Strict adherence to safety is mandatory, however. I do not know why this genius reached for the damned brass like he did. I have been burned by brass fired from the person next to me so many times on military ranges I couldn’t begin to count it. I DID NOT start to flail around and point the fucking M16 away from the target.
celticdragonchick
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): I agree.
Gex
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): How is it that guns are so easy to fire accidentally? Household cleaners and over the counter/prescription medications have, because of product liability and tort, been forced to design containers that aren’t super easy to open, such that intent and a certain level of skill are required to accomplish the task. Yet 20+ toddlers have shot people, when they’d never be able to open those containers.
Maybe it’s hard to design a gun that adults can fire only with deliberate attempt and not just randomly as they move their arm around. But we’ll don’t know because they have never been forced to make the attempt.
LAO
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Yes. If parents own guns, children need to be taught gun safety. While I am no fan of 2nd Amendment dead-enders and guns in general, I was raised in a home with guns and first visited a gun range at 8 years old. Firing a gun taught me, quite clearly, that guns were not toys.
Also, the 14 year old didn’t shoot his father — the father shot his son.
pseudonymous in nc
“Seven kids. Homeschooled. Still got six now. What’s the big deal?”
The actual statement is so fucked up, like someone in a hostage video, or at a show trial denouncing themselves. “Don’t blame the gun, it was raised well, it should have been defending against tyranny or black people.”
Fair Economist
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):
There are guns now that will only fire if the owner’s fingerprint is on the trigger.
boatboy_srq
Involuntary manslaughter at minimum. Also a good opportunity for DCF to do what they are supposed to do for a change.
catclub
@bogart_83:
really?
Not if: they were on a bike.
Not if: there was no other infraction – like speeding or drunken driving.
Not if: you are old, distracted,(white), and accidentally hit the gas rather than the brake.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Fair Economist:
I’m guessing that his finger was on the trigger when it went off.
Fingerprint recognition wouldn’t have prevented that kind of negligent discharge.
catclub
@celticdragonchick:
Similar thing to know for bike riders: If a bee flies into your helmet, do not start flailing. Steer the bike!
trollhattan
@celticdragonchick:
Comparison fail, unless you believe the son was the equivalent of a jaywalker or drunk by virtue of standing behind his moron dad.
low-tech cyclist
@mb:
This. If I accidentally killed my son, I wouldn’t be making public statements about anything. I’d probably be incoherent from trying to drink enough to kill the pain.
Barbara
Will people please stop acting as if they are experts in criminal prosecution. This guy is almost certainly not criminally responsible. He was at a gun range and most likely reacted involuntarily to being hit by a shell (WTF?) and his gun fired accidentally when his hand flew back to remove the shell. He wasn’t even being negligent, unless he altered the gun to make it easier to fire. The responsibility lies with the range (if shells are flying around it is not safe) or with gun manufacturers (there are probably a thousand design changes that could make a gun safer), but this really and truly appears to have been an accident. No one is going to convict this guy.
dnfree
The father is 64 years old. Many people that age are beginning to have “senior moments”. (They happen to younger people as well, but not as often.) This reminds me of the 70-something sheriff volunteer who pulled out his gun instead of his taser and killed someone. In my state (Illinois), drivers over a certain age have to go in for an actual behind-the-wheel test every year. Maybe there should be something similar for guns. (Just kidding, NRA!)
Bill
So here we have the “responsible gun owner.” Trying his best to use guns in a safe way. He goes to the range – a controlled environment – to teach his son. Probably the safest possible environment for that kind of thing. And still an innocent 14 year old dies.
Even in the best case scenario gun use results in the death of innocents. Can we please get an anti-NRA group to put that on a billboard?
PST
Scrapbooking isn’t dangerous, but many hobbies and other activities include a low but persistent level of accidental death. Driving, diving, gliding, hiking, biking, eating, bathing, home repair, etc. We tolerate risky activities up to a point. No gun legislation that is even remotely possible in the current political environment will prevent the occasional shooting range fatality. We need work on measures that might avert mass slaughter and take guns out of the hands of those proven crazy or criminal.
CWolf
What a schmuck.
They just took the gun from his kid’s cold dead fingers and all this yahoo is concerned with is his image.
Adam L Silverman
@PaulWartenberg2016: You want them learning this stuff on the street? With no adult supervision? And no way to know if the product they’re using is good or has been cut with that cheap Eastern European gun powder?
trollhattan
@PST:
Other than driving everything on your list is solely a conceptual threat to the participant, not innocent bystanders. And gunshot deaths are deathly close to traffic deaths now, because cars and roads are safer and continue to improve. Are you suggesting the same can never be true for guns?
Matt McIrvin
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):
There may be good reasons not to do this, but off the top of my head, it seems to me it’s technically possible to design a gun not to fire unless it’s held upright.
Keith G
@PaulWartenberg2016: @celticdragonchick: Yes, some time around my 12th year, I finished the final round of training for the care and use of firearms. I say final round since my dad was a gunsmith, so guns were always apart of my environment – and learning how to live with them were early lessons.
I am agnostic about charging the guy.
I understand the logic of being consistent in how the law treats the taking of a life through an act of negligence. I also imagine that it is likely there is no penalty that a state can impose that can be more torturous than the penalty that this man has inflicted on himself and his entire family – for as long as the remainder of it stays intact….and beyond.
Adam L Silverman
@VOR: Spent brass does funny things. This isn’t a design flaw of the indoor range in as much as its simply an indoor range reality. Brass ejects from the firearm. If it – the brass – hits something it will ricochet. But sometimes it just ejects funny. When I was first taken for training in order to qualify before I deployed we got an entire section of the safety briefing (Day 1: Safety briefing and classroom instructions on the firearms only including functions, assembly/disassembly, safety rules, emergency response procedures, etc.) dealing with what to do if hot brass hit you or went down your shirt. The instructors – one retired US Army Military Police colonel, one retired US Army Green Beret shooting medic senior NCO, and one current SWAT officer from one of the Kansas City municipal police departments – all made it clear that even in a properly maintained weapon ejecting brass may not always go where its expected/supposed to. The issue here is that the guy at the firing line, when the hot brass hit him, reacted badly. Rather than keep the gun pointed down range with his shooting hand and using his stabilizing hand to get the brass out of his shirt or even better putting the gun down on the shooting bench pointed down range and using both hands to do so, he reached with his shooting hand/dominant hand to deal with the brass that had gone down the back of his shirt. That’s not a shooting range design flaw issue. That’s not maintaining proper safety procedures.
lumpkin
I’ve shot a lot of guns and had hot objects go down my shirt. I’m absolutely certain that I would never react the way this sorry sack of shit did. And the right way for him to account for his operating error is to point that same gun at his own neck and pull the trigger.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: No, I want them doing those drugs under my eye so that I can supervise them!
Wait a minute…
LAO
I can’t fathom any theory of criminal prosecution here. IMO, no criminal charges are warranted and none will be filed.
Adam L Silverman
@Gex: Since I haven’t seen any reports on the type of gun, I can’t speak specifically to this individual’s handgun. Depending on the make and model it could have a thumb (manual active) safety that has to be flipped up or down in order for the shooter to be able to fire (this is what most people think of when they here that the gun has a safety); a grip safety, which depending on who you as is in between an active and passive manual safety that ensures that the gun will not fire unless the shooter is gripping the gun properly; or a trigger safety – this is a safety built into the trigger that will only allow the gun to be fired if the shooter’s finger is on the trigger correctly as it depresses this safety.
1911 and 1911 style handguns have thumb and grip safeties. Many non 1911 service pistols, the various P series from SIG or HK, have one or both as well. The Beretta 92/M9 and several other Beretta models have thumb safeties. Springfield’s service pistols come with grip and trigger safeties, while GLOCK’s only have the trigger safety with the exception of some of their duty pistols for specific law enforcement agencies that required a thumb safety. Smith and Wesson and Ruger’s pistols have different models, often of the same gun, with different safety combinations, which is also the case with SIG Sauer. Revolvers do not generally come with external safeties, though there have been a few models at different times and from different manufacturers that have done so. Almost all modern handguns, whether pistol or revolver, have one or more additional internal passive safeties, often referred to as drop safeties. These are intended to prevent the firearm from firing, even if loaded and a round chambered, if they are dropped or thrown.
Despite all of the engineering, and even if one has a firearm that has thumb and grip manual, external safeties, the gun should always be treated as if it is loaded, with a round chambered, and the safeties are off. This means pointed away from everyone and everything that isn’t the potential target (pointed down range), not pointed at anything you aren’t prepared to kill or destroy, finger off the trigger at all times until you have made the decision to shoot, and you are aware of what your target is/you are aiming at and what is behind it. In other words do not do anything with it that you wouldn’t be doing if you were making the conscious decision to pull the trigger. The failure in this case was that the shooter tried to use it as a back scratching tool.
Adam L Silverman
@Fair Economist: That’s sort of a misnomer. The most recent design example I’ve seen reported on uses a fingerprint reader to drop a manual lock that prevents the trigger from being pulled, off the gun thereby allowing the shooter to access the trigger. Triggers do not have enough surface area to be used as a fingerprint reader. This is not an argument against pursuing biometric safeties.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: This was actually a failure of the range officer. The son, even if he was waiting his chance to shoot next, should not have been allowed to stand directly behind his father or anyone else at the firing line. The only time someone should be behind you at the firing line is if you are working with an instructor and even then I’ve never seen an instructor stand directly behind someone. Usually they are to the right, where they can manually block the trainee from turning with the gun, and a little bit behind.
lumpkin
Any weak-ass mf that starts flailing around with his gun, rather than his free hand in this situation should not be trusted with a deadly weapon. I have zero sympathy for this guy. Thankfully it was his own kid.
Cacti
@Barbara:
Could you walk me through the part of your negligence analysis where the shooter was exercising the due care of a reasonably prudent person?
Adam L Silverman
@Barbara: He was negligent. Both the range rules, and the general rules for safe firearm handling, indicate that the firearm is to be pointed down range (towards the target) at all times. I’ve seen range officers reprimand, as well as bounce people out, who don’t do this when unpacking their firearms. The rules for safe firearms usage also indicate that one does not point the gun at anything he or she is unwilling to kill/destroy, that you must be sure of your target and what’s behind it before pointing the trigger, and that one’s finger should be off the trigger until one has made the decision to fire. That’s why you’ll see video of firearms instructors holding the gun tight to their body, muzzle (business end) pointed to their left, with their right index finger prominently displayed off the trigger lying flat against the slide of the gun so that anyone watching sees that they are safely handling the gun while momentarily pausing what they’re doing to provide verbal instruction.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Methinks the Lady doth protest to much…
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Dude, the analogy was thine, not mine. I just ran with it/
Roger Moore
@Gex:
They are difficult to fire accidentally when they are treated properly, i.e. kept with the safety on and no round chambered. In that case, you have to take a series of steps before the gun will fire, and it is very rare for it to happen accidentally. The problem is that too many people neglect that kind of elementary gun safety and keep their guns ready to fire the moment the trigger is pulled. This is common among Walter Mitty types, who insist their guns have to be ready to fire at a moment’s notice for when they need them to stop crime. This guy was unfortunate to be in the middle of firing, so his gun was not safe.
Cacti
@Adam L Silverman:
Based on the article’s description of him, the standard of care for the shooter in this case would also be that of an experienced marksman, rather than an average Joe from the street.
celticdragonchick
@trollhattan: I did not make the original comparison.
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: That was my take, that he was experienced in the use and handling of firearms. He was negligent. That said, as LAO indicated, I don’t expect charges to be brought or filed.
Trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Good to know, and am not surprised that professional (i.e., military and law enforcement) didn’t figure out how to operate safely eighty years ago or whenever shooting ranges came into being. It would seem recreational ranges aren’t universally held to a similar standard.
I can’t imagine how they ever get insurance.
Barbara
@Adam L Silverman: If we are to believe the father’s statement (and so far no one has said it isn’t believable) his son was standing DIRECTLY BEHIND him at a firing range when a shell bounced back from the floor or the target or whatever and hit him (the father) in the back, going down his shirt. He reached back with a gun in his hand to get the shell and the weapon discharged. It might not be as innocent as firing a weapon as you clutch your heart during the course of a heart attack, but it’s close. A person is supposed to protect against things they can reasonably foresee happening, and this probably wasn’t reasonably foreseeable. Being hit by a shell at a firing range is something that probably should not even happen at a properly constructed firing range. He reacted spontaneously to something that he did not reasonably expect. The weapon went off during the course of his spontaneous reaction, and that, itself, was not something he controlled (unless he made the gun easier to fire or had removed a safety or something of that nature). And no one should be standing directly behind someone firing a weapon at a firing range. I mean, if being hit by a shell is something the father should have expected then everyone should expect to be hit by them, including bystanders. I could be persuaded by additional facts but this really seems accidental, except for the negligent operation of the range.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara: Weapons don’t just “go off.”
LAO
@Trollhattan:
It’s my understanding, most gun ranges obtain insurance through the NRA. See this site
ETA: Also, ranges with memberships require those members to join the NRA so that the range can obtain insurance.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s more what I was thinking — why was the kid standing within the line of fire to begin with?
In a reasonable world, that firing range would be getting a visit from a very stern police office or city inspector to explain why they shouldn’t be shut down immediately for ignoring safety rules (or allowing their customers to ignore safety rules). As Barbara said above, it’s weird that the batting cage seems to be more strict about who’s allowed to stand where than the GUN RANGE is.
They probably also need to do a full investigation of the dad to see if he allowed his son to stand in that unsafe spot, but in a lot of ways, this was a freak accident, unlike the cases where people allowed their kids access to guns when they shouldn’t have.
@celticdragonchick:
Well, yes, but you have actual training, not just some dude at the gun shop showing you how to load it.
FWIW, I was about 12 when I took my hunter’s safety course and learned to shoot a .22 rifle, so 14 is a reasonable age to be learning this stuff. But I’m pretty sure my dad made me wait outside the bulletproof window to watch him shoot and did the same when it was my turn to shoot. (It was a very small in-store range with maybe 3 or 4 booths.)
BruceFromOhio
Whether he is charged or not is immaterial to him, no court or jail term will ever punish this man as much as he will punish himself, every day, for all his days. The very worst possible thing that can ever happen to a parent is to bury a child.
As for the law, seems to fit manslaughter, though I don’t see any jury convicting, or any judge doling out any harsh penalty if he pleads out.
Barbara
@Omnes Omnibus: The problem you are going to run into is that if it was foreseeable at all it was foreseeable to the range operator and the son as well. You just can’t blame all of this on the guy holding the gun. Believe me, I don’t empathize with this guy but unless you intend for the gun to go off I don’t see how this can be considered to be negligent homicide.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara: Did I say it was negligent homicide? No, I did not. I took issue with your passive voice gun just went off phrasing.
Miss Bianca
@BruceFromOhio: I guess my take on it is that it needs to be investigated, whether or not charges are actually filed- and no, in this particular case I can’t see charges being filed.
Barbara
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s kind of a given to me that the guy pulled the trigger or let go of the safety or whatever, but okay, it’s true, weapons don’t fire themselves, although some gun nut will probably chime in to tell me how, yes, it can happen.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara: ::eye roll::
cleek
guns: an inherently unsafe product.
Adam L Silverman
@Barbara: Let me try this again. It wasn’t a shell, the guy wasn’t shooting artillery. It was the spent casing, sometimes called a shell casing. Usually this is brass for target ammo, but sometimes if the guy was shooting cheap imports it can be steel. Everyone I know that has been taught how to shoot has been taught the “hot brass dance” in case an ejected, spent casing either ejects directly back at you or bounces off something back onto you. I once shot, at a training session, a low round count GLOCK – as in within a year of purchase and with less than 5,000 rounds through it. That thing continuously ejected brass directly back into my face. At the first chance I got I put a ball cap on so that it would hit the bill rather than either my forehead or my eye protection safety glasses and then trying to find a way down the front of my shirt. And this was on an outdoor range. These things happen. The return spring likely needed changing or the ejector needed adjustment. Regardless, you don’t use the firearm as a tool to get hot brass out from between your shirt and your body. Doing so is negligent.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Only thing I’d argue here is he wasn’t in the line of fire. The line of fire is between the shooter and the target down range. What he was was in a poor position behind the shooter.
Barbara
@Adam L Silverman: You and I will have to disagree on this. But the bottom line was that — referring again to the example of my local batting cage — someone should not stand behind a person firing a weapon. A long time ago, prosecutors in Florida tried to prosecute a father who drove a car while his daughter sat on her mother’s lap in the passenger seat, even though Florida law required her to be in a car seat. The car was hit by another vehicle and the daughter died. Not only did the jury not convict, the prosecutor had a hard time finding jurors who would even consider convicting the father. In this case, anything this father did or failed to do can just as easily be pinned on the failure of the gun range director to instruct him to do it or not let him shoot without doing it or to make it possible for his son to stand behind him while he was shooting. Civil liability is totally possible here, but I don’t see criminal responsibility. Not even based on what you are describing.
Adam L Silverman
@Barbara: There’s no agree to disagree here. There is safe/best practices for firearm use and there isn’t. Anything that isn’t is somewhere between negligent and criminal depending on intent.
Here’s the Range Rules for the High Noon where this happened. I’ve never shot at a range, even for a supervised training event, where I didn’t have to sign that I’d read and understood the rules:
http://www.highnoongunrange.com/
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Barbara:
Guns aren’t soft balls. If the gun user is an idiot no were is safe.
J R in WV
At many indoor ranges, you stand in a booth like area with a shelf in front of you on the down range side of the booth. There is no back to the booth, but the 2 sides appear to be heavy enough to protect a shooter from a unintended discharge by a shooter in the next position. These booths are about a yard wide, and you can place extra boxes of ammunition, pre-loaded magazines and other guns on the shelf. No one is allowed in front of their shooting position, ever, as long as anyone’s weapon is closed. Open weapons can’t be fired.
Given the narrow size of these booths, it’s pretty common for shells to bounce around against shooters. I have stood behind and slightly to one side of friends or trainers shooting to watch their shooting closely. I never felt in danger doing that.
Outdoor ranges are different, usually without barriers between shooting positions, and with targets taken to a downrange position when shooting is stopped by a range master with a loud PA system, and all guns are opened and laid down or put away. Indoor ranges usually have an electric line that you use to run your target out as far as you want, up to the limit of the range, usually 25 yards or so.
Most ranges have distances marked at every 5 yards (15 feet).
The best indoor range I’ve ever used was near Camp Lejeune, the range master was an ex-Marine trainer. But this accident could have happened there. I’ve seen young Marines showing their girl friends/wives how to shoot, and some of them weren’t that experienced.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: The young Marines or their wives and/or girlfriends?
Paul in KY
@Barbara: He had another arm & hand to use.
PIGL
@Fair Economist: I hope you’re kidding, because otherwise you’re one sick evil twisted motherfucker.
Barbara
@Paul in KY: No, you guys, I get it — I totally get it, I hate guns and gun culture and this was a totally avoidable death. But if you get hit by anything you react by using your dominant hand for the same reason you always end up breaking the wrist on the side you write with when you try to break a fall. The question here is how sudden, how unexpected the event was, and whether the guy was going about this activity in an unsafe manner, not whether in a split second occurrence he used the wrong hand. That’s not criminal conduct. This is my professional opinion. And as for guns not being softballs — the whole point is that in any other commercial activity, the commercial establishment goes to sometimes extreme lengths to avoid injuries. Not letting someone in the cage with the batter is what they do. Not letting another person stand right next to the shooter would seem to be a minimal requirement here. There is no freaking way society should have to rely on whether a gun owner is an expert marksman to avoid injury. Not when any idiot can own a gun, which any idiot can. I am not holding a guy criminally responsible for what was pretty clearly an accident because he couldn’t command a perfectly calibrated response when he was hit by a hot casing or shell or whatever it was.
sunny raines
It sounds like in this situation the gun owner wasn’t breaking any laws or being particularly reckless. However:
1) it would be infinitely reasonable to ban minors from being anywhere near guns, just like they can’t drive, or drink, or engage in other “adult” activities.
2) requiring gun owners to buy death and dismemberment insurance to cover their victims might help to persuade a few more people that gun ownership is not worth the liability.
PST
@trollhattan:
No, I’m suggesting priorities. Gunshot deaths are overwhelmingly deliberate when you include bystanders killed in murder attempts. Accidents, tragic as the are, are in the 2 percent range. Yet measures to reduce accidents have to be aimed at the ordinary owner, and thus are likely to trigger fear that “they’re trying to take our guns away.” In the current political environment the target of opportunity is crime and terrorism. We can do more good setting our sights on semi-automatics with large magazines and loopholes that make it easier for madmen, criminals, and potential terrorists to arm themselves. Taking on safety before this is done will likely recoil.
VOR
Hmm, some discrepancies in witness statements. According to an article (http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/accidents/father-accidentally-kills-son-at-sarasota-gun-range/2284099) When Clayton Brumby fired his last shot, he said a smoking hot casing flew out of the pistol and went down the back of his shirt. Both arms flailed up in the air, he said, his finger still on the trigger. The gun fired. …The father said the bullet he fired ricocheted off the ceiling and struck the 14-year-old’s jugular vein.” In other words, the gun was pointed upwards.
Yet the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office says “William Brumby was positioned in the last shooting lane where there was a solid wall on his right-hand side. After firing a round, the spent shell casing struck the wall causing it to deflect and fall into the back of Mr. Brumby’s shirt. Brumby then used his right hand, which was holding the handgun, in an attempt to remove the casing. While doing so, he inadvertently pointed the firearm directly behind him and accidently fired. The round struck his 14-year-old son, Stephen.” So the police are saying he pointed the gun behind him, while using the gun hand to search for the hot casing (!!!), while he and his family are saying he pointed upwards.
The Tampa Bay Times article above says the weapon was a Ruger SR22 semi-automatic .22 pistol. Interestingly, the article says the family has already set up a gofundme.com page.
maya
@Barbara:
Bingo!
I’ve had over 9 years of experience on rifle and shooting ranges with college level team small bore competition, skeet and trap ranges and was a range instructor @ Camp Lejuene N.C. That kid should never have been allowed to stand behind, or next to, an active shooter. Period. These fun and game amusement park like shooting galleries, or whatever they are, appear to have no basic sensible regulations at all. Bring the kids and family and your guns and have fun. Wheee! Profit motivated, obviously.
There are better and safer ways to teach someone how to shoot, if that’s what the guy was trying to do. Learning about guns first should involve dry firing. i.e. practicing how to hold and squeeze a pistol or rifle unloaded, no magazine, no rounds anywhere near. Shouldn’t even have to be on a range. Then you teach proper safety procedure on the range. When the trainee is deemed ready to shoot, he or she gets on the range, or in the range pocket, by themselves alone and learns by doing. An overall range instructor should be nearby for voice commands via megaphone or radio, if necessary. This was just plain dumb.
Adam L Silverman
@VOR: The Sheriff’s Office statement was informed by watching the closed circuit video from the range. As for the gun being a .22LR, that doesn’t mean anything. .22 is a small, light bullet and can travel very, very fast. While it doesn’t leave a hole the way a .45 ACP will, at that range and because of its speed, it wasn’t going to make any difference. Any size bullet can kill if it hits at the right place and at the right angle and velocity.
And before anyone asks the SR22 has an ambidextrous thumb/manual safety.
VOR
@Adam L Silverman: I agree, a .22 absolutely can be lethal – as this incident proves. It is not a toy. But people were asking what kind of weapon it was, so that’s why I provided that bit of information from the article.
Mostly I’m just struck by the discrepancy between the police account and the family version. It would seem that even while admitting responsibility the shooter is still trying to claim it was an accident.
Barbara
A more likely reason is that eyewitnesses see things too fast to register fine details and almost always “backfill” details to conform to what their intuition tells them must have happened. The sheriff, on the other hand, is looking at actual video, slowly, after the fact, with no specific ideas about what happened.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Criminal conduct is not the question here. Safe gun handling is. This was not safe use of a firearm. That he reacted with his dominant hand is explainable but immaterial.
The point is whether he exercised safe use of a firearm. He did not. Period; the end. Anybody can argue, professionally or otherwise, whether there is criminal liability. What there was not, unequivocally, was safe gun handling. Fatal unsafe use of a firearm.
Paul in KY
@Barbara: It was a hot .22 casing. Not a boomslang or toxic botulism or sulfuric acid. It hurts, but it’s nothing that would be life threatening.
Paul in KY
Based on him being at a range, etc. etc. & not drunkenly showing off, I would say no charges.