A Rochester, Minnesota man fired a shotgun while drunk, with loaded shells scattered across his porch and a loaded weapon sitting one bedroom away from two sleeping children — and the system gave him probation and a to-do list. Meanwhile in Detroit, an 8-year-old found an unsecured gun and shot his 11-year-old brother in the face. That father is finally facing felony charges. Two states, two failures, one theme: the justice system doesn't get serious until blood is on the floor.

The Minnesota case is the sharper indictment. Forty-one-year-old Shawn Owen Dieser was sentenced Monday to two years of probation and 50 hours of community work service after pleading guilty to intentionally discharging a firearm in a manner that endangered safety, according to KROC-AM. The gross misdemeanor charge for negligent storage of firearms — the charge that actually named the danger to those children — was dismissed as part of the plea deal.

Read that again. The charge that directly addressed the kids sleeping across the hall from a loaded shotgun was the one prosecutors threw away.

According to the criminal complaint, Olmsted County deputies found Dieser asleep on his couch after he'd been firing rounds on the night of August 22. A woman at the home told deputies Dieser was highly intoxicated and had asked for a shotgun earlier that evening. Two adolescent children were inside. The loaded shotgun was in a bedroom across the hall from where the kids slept. Spent shells littered the porch. A witness in a neighboring home told deputies he watched Dieser try to cycle and fire the shotgun 10 to 15 more times after initial shots — the weapon just didn't discharge. Dieser claimed he fired one warning shot because a neighbor threatened to kill him.

So: drunk adult, loaded weapon, children in the home, multiple rounds fired, repeated attempts to fire more. And the consequence is probation.

Now look at Detroit. Muammar Markus Wallace, 38, was arraigned October 10 on felony charges of violating Michigan's Safe Storage Law and felony firearms after his 8-year-old son found an unsecured gun and shot his 11-year-old brother in the mouth, M Live reported. The 11-year-old survived with non-life-threatening injuries. Wallace had left three children — ages 4, 8, and 11 — unattended with an unsecured firearm present. He faces up to 10 years if convicted.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy made the expected pitch: "Please, please, please safely store your weapons at all times. No exceptions!" She's been "beating this drum for well over 10 years," she said. Fine. But the drum only seems to get loud after a child pulls the trigger.

The real scandal isn't just one lenient judge or one aggressive prosecutor. It's a system that dismisses the charge protecting children before the worst happens — and then acts shocked when the worst happens. Dieser's negligent storage charge was the one count that named the risk to those kids. Prosecutors cut it loose to secure a plea. No shots hit a child, so the system treated it like a noise complaint with paperwork.

The founders built a republic on the premise that government exists to secure rights — life, liberty, property. A drunk cycling a shotgun outside a child's bedroom is a threat to all three. Plea-dealing away the charge that named that threat isn't mercy. It's institutional indifference dressed up as efficiency.

How many probation sentences does it take before a loaded gun finds a child awake instead of asleep?