Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yes, there have been a few cases. Manslaughter, no. MURDER. Period.

Dilemma:  

I support harsher penalties for gun owners who don't secure their guns and they wind up being used in these horrific tragedies.  Not murder charges, as Badger notes, murder is a very specific charge and it doesn't apply, but harsh penalties with severe sentencing nevertheless. 

I also have one pistol that's pretty quickly accessible to me in our bedroom, and my reasoning is that's why we have that one, for midnight burglars when I can't waste time getting into a safe.  (That's never happened and hopefully never will, but better safe than sorry and all that.)  Where it's kept, a child of less than 12ish years or so could not retrieve it, and it's hidden from view and not anywhere we think would ever make anyone assume "Oh, I bet there's a gun there, or any object, I should check that out."  And nobody even knows about it except for me and my wife.  Yet I consider it quickly and easily retrievable for me, should I ever need it. 

We don't have kids in the house.  Just one stepson in his 20's.  I still don't know if we did have kids if it's a good idea.  I also don't want all my home defense weapons in a safe.  I mean, if I wake up in the middle of the night to trouble, the intruder already has the drop on me, I don't want to be at a further disadvantage.  I don't know if I have a good solution or not.  It's worked for us with no problems thus far, but like I say, we don't have kids.  

I feel pretty fortunate in thinking our unit would be very tough to access.  Maybe I'm wrong.

The firearms are locked up.  

Gun control = control your guns(s). It ain't that hard.

Much like SM, mine are locked up. Anyone but me and my wife would have a hard time even finding the safes.

(Except the 44 I keep in the nightstand, which gets put away if we have young visitors.)

And attaching strong laws to make folks control them is fun control legislation. 

(I enjoy this place because it was helpful to learn the most folks here are for gun control as a concept, just not a particular kind of vibe that gets attached to it)

I think everyone is for that.

My form of gun control is to control my legal guns. I don't need someone else to control them for me. You know, my vibe.

You also said the government needs to have draconian penalties if you don’t. So someone else is helping. 

I'm not in favor of just convicting the parents off the jump.

Yup, some level of gross incompetence or negligence or indifference should be demonstrated.

Say the gun was locked up, but the kid worked out the safe combination, or stole the key, or drilled it out, or even that the owner just failed one time to completely lock the safe, or the kid assaulted the owner (somehow) to obtain the weapon.  Shades of light black.

We're in a 24-hour gated community with a Lee County Sheriff assigned to work the gate in the evenings (this is not cheap).

I doubt I'd ever need it, but we have societal issues that make me uncomfortable.

My neighbor is a retired police chief from Illinois.

We're probably good.

I'm in the deepest part of my development on a cul de sac. My neighbor next to me is a federal judge one of the requirements of the city is having a squad car check on his house 3 times a day, so i'm probably good but my only concern would be bitter criminal tracks him down and gets the wrong house. My 2nd safe is 6 steps from my bed with a Mossberg 590a1 ready in case of emergency simply because I'm too nervous to keep anything else around the nightstand since the kids have gotten older. My close friend is a former special forces sniper and put together everything needed on my Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 so if the shotgun wasn't the right item, there would be a nice option.

That being said, anyone that has any sort of firearm and kids and doesn't have it safely secured, should absolutely be charged in situations like this.  Don't punish the responsible humans, punish the idiots. And good god, don't let our politicians talk about a topic when they're clearly dense on it, throwing out words like assault weapons.