Murder is a charge that means it’s an intentional killing, manslaughter is an accidental killing.
Because you didn’t attempt to murder someone.
Intent.
You purchased the stuff to cook meth, not to blow something up.
More importantly, you’d have to convince a jury that the intent was there.
I think OPs post could bridge most of the gap… Lol.
What is this breaking bad? Stuff doesn’t blow up when you make drugs unless something went very, very wrong and then you lose all your investment.
I think that is a play on that concept of “felony murder” from that episode from Last Week Tonight.
The dangers associated with Meth production have been exaggerated by ignorant media and lying cops.
A person with a serious meth addiction is dangerous and likely to cause accidental harm even if they aren’t playing around with volatile chemicals. But these chemicals all have legitimate uses and are safe to use by sober adults. Stuff like Coleman fuel, ether, and acetone. You can create runaway exothermic reactions while venting flammable gas with some weaponized incompetence, but it’s still a “low” explosive, with small amounts of chemicals, and unlikely to harm anyone not in the same room, much less the neighbor.
90% of meth lab “explosions” are small events that only harm people in the immediate vicinity and most of the structural damage will come from the resulting fire. Compare that to a simple natural gas leak that can turn a 3 story McMansion into confetti in under a second.
Would you be nervous if your neighbor installed a gas fireplace?
Would you be nervous if your neighbor installed a gas fireplace?
Well now I would be…
This is a reason I never understood modern homes in the US being built with natural gas furnaces and appliances. My house had a gas furnace even though most other homes around have electric. You have a flammable gas under pressure going through miles of pipe to get to each home. A leak anywhere could be really dangerous along those many miles. Yet, exceedingly rare to see fires from this (maybe I’m wrong in that I just don’t hear of many). Meanwhile, electric appliances use the electricity that has to come into a house anyways.
Seems like you answered your own question.
We had a week long power outage after a winter ice storm a few years ago and would have been screwed without our gas water heater and fireplace, so I’m a big fan of having both gas and electric.
Electricity arcing over something flammable can also cause a fire that burns down your house and kills you.
It isn’t just your imagination. Houses burning down / exploding really is a rare occurance. This is not by accident. There are layers of dumbass-proofing in every part of the system, from the way wire and pipe are manufactured, to the availability of easy-to-use tools and materials that make doing the job the right way also the easy way, to detection systems like fire alarms, to building codes that set standards for how things should be constructed.
I think my curiosity is more around the “why” of the gas lines. I put in another comment above but it’s a good amount of effort to run and maintain these lines when we already have and need electric. We’re adding an additional source of risk to these environments for what additional benefit? I’m not talking trash about gas I’m just wondering what the selling point is. Like I said, I have a gas furnace and it’s fine…no complaints. Is it much more efficient than electric? Hotter? There has to be some compelling reason to put in the effort.
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Gas is much, much cheaper. Like, insanely cheaper. Many homes were built long before it was normal to have 200 amp service.
It’s only in relatively recent years where heat pumps are becoming more common. And resistive heat uses a lot of electricity.
Gas has had decades and decades to be made safe. We have odorants so people can smell it, meters and sensors to monitor for abnormal usage and leaks, and it needs to be contained to cause an explosion.
Leaks outside suck, but aren’t really that dangerous because they can dissipate and be blown away by wind.
Yet, exceedingly rare to see fires from this
You just answered your own question. The techniques for running gas lines into houses and hooking them up to furnaces are very refined at this point, it can be done safely.
I guess my question was more about the “why” for gas lines. I mean it’s a lot of extra effort to put them in place and maintain them when we already have electric coming into the houses.
Oh, probably because it’s cheaper and more efficient.
If you wanted to use the gas in a gas power plant to produce electricity to run an electric heater, there’s a bunch of steps where energy gets lost. The turbine and generator isn’t 100% efficient and the transformers and transmission wires lose energy along the way to your house. Whereas burning something directly for heat is nearly 100% efficient, the only waste is whatever heat gets carried away by the exhaust. Which isn’t much with a modern high-efficiency furnace. I’ve got one of those and every once in a while I knock icicles off of the exhaust vent outside when I pass it. They use countercurrent exchange to keep all the heat inside the house.
This is no longer correct. We have heat pumps that can be more than 100% efficient, even air-sourced heat pumps in -30° weather. There are still many places where this will still be more expensive than a gas furnace.
I don’t know how you’re measuring efficiency, but a heat pump with greater than 100% efficiency lets you build a perpetual motion machine. That’s not possible.
Ahhhh. That makes sense. I guess I had always assumed that it would be more efficient to have one centralized “burning of the gas” event to create and distribute electricity than numerous individual burning events to create heat but it makes sense that due to the efficiency of just converting gas to heat directly it would be more efficient.
There are some cities that do things a third way; they have a centralized facility that burns the gas (or other fuels) to generate electricity, and then also pipe the heat out to the city in the form of heated water or steam running through insulated underground pipes. Buildings tap into those pipes and run it through radiators. That has the potential to be even more efficient because you’re using what would otherwise be “waste” heat, but it depends on a relatively compact city to avoid losing too much heat while sending it through the pipes. I understand this is not uncommon in Eastern European and Russian cities. I’m not familiar with the details, though, so if you want to know more about this I’d recommend Googling around a bit.
Murder requires intent. Manslaughter is when you kill someone by accident.
so, unless you were cooking meth with the intent of killing your neighbors with an exploding house, it’s manslaughter ( or attempted manslaughter) instead of (attempted) murder.
If someone were killed, you could be charged with murder because you’re taking actions that could reasonably result in death.
IANAL
Edit: Here are some real-world examples.
Meth manufacturing explosion leads to murder charges
Temple City man charged with murder in explosions that killed 5 at illegal cannabis labs
I think it depends on the jurisdiction, in your first example, Gary Nawrocki pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. In the second I couldn’t find a record of conviction, and in the third Zarins plead guilty to homicide by negligent handling of dangerous weapon/explosive and maintain drug trafficking place.
Generally you need intent for it to be murder, but some jurisdictions have degrees of murder with less stringent legal requirements, It comes down to whether it would be considered acting with an extreme, reckless disregard for human life.
that usually only happens in extreme cases when there is an expectation of “reasonable foreknowledge” that what the person was doing would result in the possible deaths of others. for example: in some states, if you drive drunk and kill someone (or more) in a collision, you can be charged with murder rather than vehicular manslaughter. this usually only occurs if the crime was especially egregious, like if a drunk driver runs over a group of children.
What constitutes a murder vs manslaughter charge varies quite a bit by state, as do sentencing guidelines.
There are all sorts of additional charges that might be piled on, like reckless endangerment or child endangerment if there are any children in the immediate vicinity.
I thought it was more noxious fumes from meth production that were the main hazard, rather than explosivity.
