Doc, It Hurts When I Do This…
August 8th, 2007 by Syd
It’s a sadly familiar story. Three teens are playing with a gun they found at the home of a relative. A 13-year-old puts the .45 caliber pistol to his head and pulls the trigger. He dies. Complete story here.
Mindful of the risk that I may sound uncaring or callous in my comments, there are a few thoughts about this tragedy that need to be spoken. So, apologies if I sound harsh, but here goes.
By the time I was 13, I had learned a number of things. I knew the difference between a real gun and a toy. I had learned what real guns do. I had learned not to point them at things I didn’t intend to shoot. I had learned that if I discovered someone else’s gun, to leave it the hell alone. I had also learned to shoot and hunt, and had bagged a fair quantity of game – I had seen what real guns do and how to handle them. More importantly, I had learned from my parents and life experience that my actions had consequences. If I did something really stupid, there was a price to be paid. I had learned that if I didn’t want to spend my life suffering the consequences of ill-advised behavior, that I should avoid doing stupid things like pointing a gun at my head and pulling the trigger.
Were this an isolated instance, it would be a tragic, albeit preventable, anomaly, but it isn’t. I see this same heartbreaking drama replayed over and over again. The shooter is usually a male adolescent who is old enough to know better. The responses to the tragedy by the media and the grieving family also hit recurring themes. While it is an unpleasant business, most of these recurring themes demand to be rationally challenged.
Police say the shooting appeared to be accidental.”
The local news media and the family consistently refer to this incident as an “accident.” This designation may serve the needs of gun control groups and activist reporters, but it is wrong. An accident is something that happens unintentionally. There is such a thing as an “accidental shooting,” but this is not one. An example of an accidental shooting would be when someone attempts to holster a handgun and gets their finger into the trigger guard as they push the gun into the holster. This pushes the finger into the trigger and the gun goes off. This is an accident; there was no intention to pull the trigger. In the self-inflicted shooting of the 13-year-old, there was a decision to point the gun at his own head and pull the trigger. This cannot be called an “accident.” At some level, this young man chose to do something that he had to know was a very dangerous act.
[the victim] was visiting his cousin at his great-uncle’s home on Spring Street where he found a loaded .45 caliper [sic] semi automatic and as he held the weapon with his cousin and a neighbor youngster nearby, it went off, shooting him in the head and killing him.” (TV news report)
Yes, they do that when you pull the trigger. This is why reasonable people should know that to point one at your own head is a very bad idea. Guns do not just “go off.” There may be a tiny percentage of guns that are damaged and could go off by themselves, but the vast majority only “go off” when the trigger is pulled on a loaded weapon. The subtle implication here is that somehow the gun has volition and “went off” of its own free will. This use of language serves to demonize the firearm, remove responsibility from the shooter, and transfer moral responsibility to an inanimate object. It is absurd when subjected to rational analysis, but this is one of the ways that elements of the news media work against gun rights.
Grieving mother decries teen’s access to gun” (newspaper headline)
Blame the gun. That is so much easier than blaming the responsible party, the victim. The gun did not point itself at his head or pull its own trigger. Had the victim been a 4-year-old, then we could legitimately point to irresponsibility on the part of the adult who allowed the child to find the gun, but a 13-year-old cannot be excused in this way. Loaded guns should not be left unattended in areas where children and adolescents play unsupervised, but it is inevitable that it will happen sometime somewhere. Children need to be taught survival skills and good decision-making. The grieving mother of the victim announced that she was exploring the idea of forming a “Mothers Against Guns” group. How about forming a “Mothers Against Bad Decision-Making” group or a “Mothers in Favor of Good Survival Skills” group?
I grew up around guns, and I hate them,” [the victim’s mother] said. “If you have guns, put them under lock and key, because I don’t want this to happen to your child, your neighbor’s child or a relative.”
Personally, I never wanted the safety of my children to depend on mechanical gadgets or the unknown responsibility of third parties, so I taught them how to act in their own best interests. I taught them to think and to defend themselves. I taught them how to drive, shoot and cook. I taught them to take responsibility for their own lives. I haven’t been sorry. The result was two young men who I like and trust.
I feel sorry for the family and friends of this young man. I can’t imagine the pain that his mother is feeling. I have sympathy for her and can even forgive her thrashing about with the blame for this incident. Yet, if we are to have any hope of solving this kind of problem, we have to find solutions that address the real causes of the problem, because those solutions are the only ones that have any chance of working. Chasing paper tigers won’t make our children safer.
Guns, loaded or otherwise, should not be left where neighborhood children can access them, and the owner of the gun in this incident must bear some responsibility for the event. Safe gun handling benefits us all in many ways. Yet, guns will not go away no matter how many gun control laws are passed. The failure of British gun control legislation bears this out. Children must be taught survival skills, responsible behavior and safe practices with firearms. Gun lock laws are ineffective except after the fact because they are unenforceable until a tragedy has already happened. The only solution that really works is good training for your children.
One has to wonder if the children of gun “haters” die from “accidental” firearm discharges at a higher rate than those of gun “lovers”. If you live near the railroad tracks you teach your kid about trains, same as people teach their children to swim when living near a pool, lake or ocean. If you live in parts of Florida you teach your kids about alligators. People in the northern climes learn from very young about frostbite and overexposure to the cold same as those near the desert learn about the opposite extremes.
Considering we have 200-300 million firearms spread out through 40-60% of the residences of this country, why on earth can’t we teach ALL of our kids about safe gun handling and the after effect of a projectile leaving a barrel? We teach them about sex and tolerance of other cultures, how to read, write and do math (questionably) and a whole lot of other very useful information like history, civics and sociology. All well and good, but if you make a mistake with any of that stuff it isn’t very likely you will die from it.
How about “Guns are Not Toys” for our elementary schools and “Safe Gun Handling 101″ through “Advanced Marksmanship 420″ for high school. Sounds like a no-brainer to me!
JH wrote:
One has to wonder if the children of gun “haters” die from “accidental” firearm discharges at a higher rate than those of gun “lovers”. If you live near the railroad tracks you teach your kid about trains, same as people teach their children to swim when living near a pool, lake or ocean. If you live in parts of Florida you teach your kids about alligators. People in the northern climes learn from very young about frostbite and overexposure to the cold same as those near the desert learn about the opposite extremes.
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Excellent point.
Although much progress has been made in defense and support of RKBA in the last 25 years or so, much work still needs to be done.
Currently, it seems to be possible to separate American society into three groups when it comes to society’s opinions about the proper role of guns in American daily life:
#1: the trained, law-abiding folks who are informed about the proper role of guns in civic and personal life
#2: the fearful, untrained, law-abiding folks who are uninformed about the proper role of guns in civic and personal life
#3: the reckless, lawbreaking folks who are uninformed about the proper role of guns in civic and personal life and who do not (and may NEVER) care about the “proper” role of guns in civic and personal life
In other words, we are still facing the same root problems we were facing in the early 1960s with regard to public opinion about firearms.
How so?
Because we still have group #3.
We need to reduce its size through education–and if that does not work through education–and if that does not work–through incarceration–and if that does not work–through lawful, state-administered execution.
The vast majority of illegal and unsafe gun usages that result in crime and/or injury/death happen in the context of a certain segment of society: those who have opted to live in and embrace a “subculture” (ghetto, barrio) whose openly avowed rejection of the customs and beliefs of the main culture cause problems.
In such places, there are usually two types of gun handlers: 1) those who hate, fear, and are ignorant of guns, their proper use and handling, and their value as tools of lawful self-defense and 2) those who unlawfully and unsafely obtain and use guns–and irrationally fear them based on no or little experience with them.
So there is a deep split in these “minority” communities which must somehow be bridged.
Why?
Because gunhating, demagogic, political manipulators will forever use the “moral high ground” to claim that they speak for the meek when asking that guns be banned and/or draconianly regulated. They claim to speak for the poor, the meek, the nonviolent, and then they try to legislate away the rights of the responsible and informed lawful owners/user of firearms.
We need to somehow convince and inform Group #2–the law-abiding members of the “ghettos” and “barrios”–of the truth about firearms. We need to do that by teaching them some Civics lessons about the role of firearms intended for us by our Founding Fathers. We also need to do that going into the “ghettos” and “barrios,” reaching out to the fearful, law-abiding, gun hating folks, and training them about firearms safety and usage.
We need to reduce the size of group #3.
And we need to convert the Group #2s to Group #1s.
Aim Small
Personally, I think much of the interest in weapons comes from TV, movies, etc. In my case, Roy Rogers, Hop-along, etc. Throw in an upbringing devoid of any experience with weapons, or worse, growing up in home with ‘anti-gun’ parents being taught that guns are evil, bad things, the result is sometimes a kid with a over fascination for them. What I like to call the ‘forbidden fruit syndrome’. My father had a WWII 45 that I was ‘forbidden’ to touch. When I was about 8, maybe, and I came across it tucked away somewhere. There I was, pointing it at the TV, the guy across the street mowing the grass, the dog, etc., making “ka-pow, ka-pow”, noises as I pretended I was shooting everything in sight. Fortunately, it wasn’t loaded (or otherwise couldn’t fire), and even more fortunately, there I was when my dad and an uncle walked in the house. Before my dad could start to beat me, my uncle said “just take him out, let him fire it.” What followed were several lessons in gun safety, some target shooting and graphic, first hand examples on what a bullet will do. Afterwards, I had a completely different perspective and understanding. Guns were not toys, much like power tools. I think I even lost interest in toy guns after some exposure to a real one.
JH brought up a point I’d often wondered about. What’s the ratio of firearm ‘accidents’ between those (especially kids) with knowledge, familiarity, and some training as opposed to those with no experience with them whatsoever. One can only imagine.
It all starts with education. I fired my first M1911 at around 7 years of age, .22 well before that. I have been shooting with my grandson since he was 5, he is 11 now and knows the safety rules (and follows them) better than I do (hate to admit that.) SO TEACH ‘EM YOUNG!