ReadingPhilly wrote:

threecount wrote:In 22 minutes I turn 50 years old

uhhhh happy birthday?

mozartpc27 wrote:

Slowhand wrote:If the kid fell into an alligator pit and they shot and killed a gator nobody would be talking about charging the parents. It certainly sucks that it happened, but the only reason people are up in arms wanting to punish the parents is because it was a cute, endangered gorilla instead of an ugly, scary reptile.

This is the right line of thinking. More realistically, if the kid had simply wandered off and gotten separated from Mom for, let's say an hour - and it took a couple of zoo staffers an hour to find the kid, but then the kid was found and everything was OK - it would never occur to anyone to charge the Mom. In fact, I'm sure that exact scenario happens at least once every couple of months. Kids get separated from their parents in big, open, public spaces where there are lots to distract the kids and the parents, especially when the parents in question have more than 1 or 2 kids. How many of us wandered off on our parents at some point in their youths? I know I did (at the Village Mall in Hatboro). I equally know that my Mom was no criminal.

It's always frightening for the parents when it does happen, and stressful for employees of whatever establishment it happens in, but it happens all the time. That this particular kid managed to work his way into the gorilla habitat rather than just wandering off to look at an another animal on another side of the zoo is happenstance - the cause is the same. If one is a crime, they both are. But one is obviously not; it's only because things went particularly wrong in this case that anyone thinks that this is or should be. Unless you are willing to charge every parent who ever has to call for help to find a kid who wandered off, regardless if the kid is found safe or not, you can't charge the Mom in this case. If the zoo wants to sue the Mom for the loss of the gorilla, that's another matter - but of course I'm sure she'll get a lawyer who will advise her to sue the zoo for not properly securing the habitat so what happened couldn't happen.

I of course think, as I said in my original post, that in general as a society we've taken the blame culture too far. Recently I read about a child who managed to shoot himself with his father's gun, which he found under his father's pillow. The father kept it there so it would be at the ready should he need it to defend his home. I'm sure there were laws against this - impractical laws, because, as many have pointed out, having a gun for protection that has to be locked away, unloaded, with a safety on is of little value when you NEED it - but he defied them in order to make the gun more useful as an object of self-defense. Of course, authorities will be charging him with various counts of negligence.

This, to me, is completely unnecessary. Besides being an object lesson in why you should NOT have a gun in a house with children, this is another example where the consequence is the punishment. Clearly, the father did not want his child to die. This, it can therefore be assumed, is totally devastating to him. What is the earthly point of charging him? You can't hurt him any worse than he's been hurt without killing him. I am quite certain this guy will never keep a loaded gun in the house again, even if he never does spend a day in jail.

702 wrote:

Slowhand wrote:It's possible for all sorts of horrible shit to happen. Most of it astonishingly unlikely. Like falling into a gorilla habitat.

Plenty of prior instances of humans falling into animal habitats that make it not "astonishingly unlikely"

702 wrote:

Slowhand wrote:It's possible for all sorts of horrible shit to happen. Most of it astonishingly unlikely. Like falling into a gorilla habitat.

Plenty of prior instances of humans falling into animal habitats that make it not "astonishingly unlikely"

pacino wrote:

mozartpc27 wrote:Besides being an object lesson in why you should NOT have a gun in a house with children, this is another example where the consequence is the punishment. Clearly, the father did not want his child to die. This, it can therefore be assumed, is totally devastating to him. What is the earthly point of charging him? You can't hurt him any worse than he's been hurt without killing him.

what this vastly more eloquent guy said

you've converted me on how i view many accidental gun deaths by children! someone swayed someone on the internet.

Doll Is Mine wrote:Happy Birthday!

pacino wrote:Yes, it's to prevent others from doing it since they are killing items. Good point.

Bucky wrote:

pacino wrote:Yes, it's to prevent others from doing it since they are killing items. Good point.

correct. Sadly people as a whole aren't smart enough to use just other's misfortune as motivation to modify their own behavior.

"Watch my kids so they don't fall into a gorilla cage? I guess".

"Watch my kids so I don't go to jail! GIMME A LEASH!!"

WilliamC wrote:Positive that I stuck my arms right in poison today when I was mowing. Getting sick of weeds under a dogwood and tried duck/basically crawl through it but there was a lot of ivy. Hustled to the shower. Still waiting for something bad to start happening. Should have used a weedeater.

WilliamC wrote:You sold me on that stuff already even if nothing happens. I used to get it pretty easily when I was a kid and sometimes really bad that was because I was always crawling through stuff that I shouldn't have been. It's been a while and people say you build up an immunity but maybe that is crap.

I know people who seems to balloon if they even breath air near it.