A 14-year-old boy allegedly fatally shot his older sister in Florida after a family argument over Christmas presents, officials said Tuesday.

The teen had been out shopping on Christmas Eve with Abrielle Baldwin, his 23-year-old sister, as well as his mother, 15-year-old brother and sister’s children, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference.

The teenage brothers got into an argument about who was getting more Christmas presents.

“They had this family spat about who was getting what and what money was being spent on who, and they were having this big thing going on in this store,” Gualtieri said.

  • lingh0e@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I have never said anything about gun control, for it or against it.

    You’re apparently saying that we shouldn’t be focusing on guns because mental health is more important…

    But sure, keep focusing on guns. Let’s put all of our effort into that. That’s clearly more important than free, publicly funded mental healthcare.

    We can surely do both at the same time, don’t you think?

    • NAK@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I really don’t.

      The whole topic, in the current political environment, is so polarizing and so toxic, I think it torpedoes any progress that could be made in reducing gun violence.

      I believe gun violence will go down if people have better mental healthcare, better access to housing, and better job prospects. My personal belief is people who commit violence against others are doing so because of mental disease. If you reduce their stress, make their future prospects better, and tell them they have a future, their prospects, and mental health, will improve.

      America is more polarized now than it ever has been. A conservative and a liberal will never agree on gun control. They just won’t. But I do think a liberal and a conservative can agree that violence is a problem, and that conservatives would be willing to consider solutions to it that aren’t simply making firearms illegal.

      It obviously wouldn’t reduce gun violence to 0 like a ban would, but focusing on it as a mental health issue, and addressing that, would reduce other forms of violent crime too. Less muggings, stabbing, rapes, etc. I believe, taken as a whole, there would be less crime and drastically less violent crime, doing that, than any kind of firearm ban could achieve.

      Edit: the downvotes prove my point. American politics right now care more about winning whatever hot button issue someone has, rather than cooperating to make meaningful change.

      How about everyone reading this does a mental exercise. Let’s say liberals decided not to care about gun control, and that issue wasn’t relevant in American politics for the last 20 years. Do you think the current supreme court would look the way it does? Do you think organizations like the NRA would have anywhere near the funding and power they have now? How many single issue conservative voters did simply not show up to vote if there was 0 chance a liberal majority would “take their guns”