That sentence also stood out to me. Somehow the article is lots of pages about what he did on his phone. And then half a sentence about the gun, and he's dead. No further questions about that.
Comment on Character.ai Faces Lawsuit After Teen’s Suicide
RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He put down his phone, picked up his stepfather’s .45 caliber handgun and pulled the trigger.
A tragic story for sure, but there are questions about the teen’s access to the gun he used to kill himself.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 weeks ago
RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The mother was on CBS this morning and while the story is sad my wife and I looked at each other with the same question when the mom stated the teen shot himself. Gayle King would have been terrible to start questioning the mother on the gun question but you kind of wish she would have.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 weeks ago
Sure. Once you start blaming people, I think some other questions should be allowed, too...
For example: Isn't it negligent to give access to a loaded handgun to a 14 yo teen?
And while computer games, or chatbots or loneliness can be linked, that's rarely the underlying issue, or sole issue to blame. Sounds to me like the debate on violend computer games in the early 2000s, when lots of parents thought playing CounterStrike would make us murder people.
geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I understand what you mean about the comparison between AI chatbots and video games (or whatever the moral panic du jour is), but I think they’re very much not the same. To a young teen, no matter how “immersive” the game is, it’s still just a game. They may rage against other players, they may become obsessed with playing, but as I said they’re still going to see it as a game.
An AI chatbot who is a troubled teen’s “best friend” is different and no matter how many warnings are slapped on the interface, it’s going to feel much more “real” to that kid than any game. They’re going to unload every ounce of angst into that thing, and by defaulting to “keep them engaged”, that chatbot is either going to ignore stuff it shouldn’t or encourage them in ways that it shouldn’t. It’s obvious there’s no real guardrails in this instance, as if he was talking about being suicidal, some red flags should’ve popped up.
Yes the parents shouldn’t have allowed him such unfettered access, yes they shouldn’t have had a loaded gun that he had access to, but a simple “This is all for funsies” warning on the interface isn’t enough to stop this from happening again. Some really troubled adults are using these things as defacto therapists and that’s bad too. But I’d be happier if lawmakers were much more worried about kids having access to this stuff than accessing “adult sites”.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
When a kid dies it’s natural for parents to want to seek someone to blame but sometimes there not a lot you can do. However sad it is and it’s definitely sad you just need to accept it as something that happened, isn’t always anyone’s fault.
There is a bare minimum one could do and I would have thought that gun safety would be covered under that bare minimum. Especially once they start throwing around accusations at other people.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Yeah, that’s not on the app/service.
Could the kid have found another way? Absolutely. But there’s a fucking reason guns stay locked up and out of access for minors, even if that means the adults can’t access them quickly. Kids literally can’t exert full self inhibition of urges, so you make damn sure that anything as easy to make horrible impulse decisions with is out of their hands.
Shit, my kitchen knives stay in a locked case. Same with dangerous chemicals. There’s a limit to how much you can realistically compartmentalize and keep locked up, but that limit isn’t hard to achieve to the degree that nobody can reach things on impulse. Even a toolbox with a padlock on it is enough to slow someone down and give their brain a chance to inhibit the impulse.
My policy? If the gun isn’t on my person, it’s locked up in a way that can only be accessed by the people I want to access it. Shit, even my pellet guns stay in the main safe. The two that are available for the other adults are behind fingerprint locks. Even my displayed collection of knives is locked up enough to prevent casual impulses.
I’m not trying to shit on the parents here, but it isn’t hard to keep a firearm locked up and still accessible to the owner rapidly. Fingerprint safes and locks have been around long enough that the bugs are worked out. They’re not cheap, but if you can afford a firearm in the first place, you can damn well afford keeping it out of someone else’s hands without your permission or a lot of hassle.
dirthawker0@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Safe? Clearly no. Trigger lock? Cable lock? If one were there, there should be a mention of picking it or cutting it. Unloaded? Also clearly no.
There are so many ways, any of which take a whole 20 seconds, the parents could have used to prevent this from happening.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I don’t know a whole lot about gun safety because in my country gun safety amounts to, your are not allowed to have one. Seems like the best gun safety possible.
But I was always under the impression that there was a requirement to have the gun in some kind of lock box, preferably without ammo stored with the gun. I thought that was a requirement of owning a gun license.
socphoenix@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Many states have little to no rules on storage. You also don’t really need a license to buy one just to carry it concealed in public (some states don’t even require this step). Of the states that have storage laws like my own, I’m unaware of any that require you to prove safe storage though. The laws only offer a punishment after the fact when something bad happens.
femtech@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Yeah, like he just picked it up? Mine is locked and was he in therapy?
RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Earlier this year, after he started getting in trouble at school, his parents arranged for him to see a therapist. He went to five sessions and was given a new diagnosis of anxiety and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.
Sounds like he received some therapy, but this can be an expensive and difficult to access form of healthcare for many.
Grimy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It makes it seems worse. His parents knew he was having problems and still left a gun within easy reach.
freeman@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
She is a 40 yo lawyer. I doubt that she couldn’t afford something more. I find it plausible that she couldn’t devote more time to the kid.
theneverfox@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Therapy is also about fit. It takes something like 5 tries to get a good match - both the kid and the parent need to be on board, or the whole thing will end up as a bad experience for everyone involved
j4k3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What kind of monster family had a kid with mental health issues, in therapy, and has an accessible gun around unsupervised?
RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Too many families in America, sadly.
Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I also question the parents lack of intervention if they really thought the chat bot was an issue
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 weeks ago
I posted this article earlier with this exact we context.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
The lawsuit smacks of misplaced family grief and regret.