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Get over yourselves and show at least a modicum of civility and logic here. Otherwise, you're showing your extreme lack of compassion.
I'm friends with many gun owners on Facebook, and they're all constantly posting pictures of giving their kids guns or talking about "teach someone to use a gun", etc. So it's not just "the Democrat Party" that's fueling it.
And I do feel compassion for the child, but not the parent that was stupid enough to inadvertently kill her.
I wasn't much older than that when I got my first gun. It stayed in my parents room. I learned about gun safety and how to shoot.
It's sad that some people are irresponsible parents but that's just the way the world is.
I am pro gun ownership, but definitely don't see the sense in letting little children have guns, especially with some of the parents out there today.
little children do not have logical thought processes and they do not understand consequences of behavior. I feel sorry for that child who will, no doubt, feel very guilty when he grows up for what happened-even though it was the fault of the parent/parents.
for the record, it just isn't about guns, my grandfather, as a child, accidentally blinded his brother in one eye when he threw a fork at him and had guilt for his entire life.
on a side note, how is it that little children always seem to be killing their siblings with one fired shot, and that some of our trained professionals can shoot up cars, buildings, and boats and can't seem to hit their "targets"?
on a side note, how is it that little children always seem to be killing their siblings with one fired shot, and that some of our trained professionals can shoot up cars, buildings, and boats and can't seem to hit their "targets"?
not all, of course.
It takes less to kill a 2 year old girl than an adult armed psycho full of adrenaline and maybe other drugs?
You've gotta do it to understand, but high stress life-or-death situations rob you of your fine motor skills and decision making abilities. It's just nature... when "fight or flight" takes over the brain isn't rationalizing anymore, it's acting...and the actions taken are normally dictated by training.
...And cops are trained to shoot until the threat is neutralized. Real life isn't Hollywood...there is no shooting them in the knee-caps or shooting the gun out the bad guys hands or even single head-shots with pistols at 100 yards. People don't necessarily roll over and die when they are hit either.
It's the same in the military. Many, MANY rounds are expended in a firefight but few actually take out an enemy for the same reasons.
A Welocme to Reality Public Service announcement From Chango
On the politics forum, I tried to get the conservatives defending guns in the hands of little kids to specify an age at which handling a gun is inappropriate and too risky for a small kid. They couldn't give me anything. So we can conclude that conservatives today have no limit on how young a child should be before they are given a lethal weapon. So long as an adult is there, hand that gun to that 16 month-old and show him or her how to squeeze one off! You can't start early enough. If they could get these little creatures firing away before they came out of the womb, they'd do that, too, all in the name of their ego and their deranged politics.
Such is the state of conservatives in America. They are so far gone that they can't even agree that a small kid who hasn't even gone to school yet should not be shooting a gun. And if you point out how insane this obviously is, they twist it into a straw man accusation of wanting to take all guns away from everyone.
Oh, you BEAST! Trying to deny toddlers their 2nd Amendment rights! How COULD you?
One has to say that there’s no rational thought of anything good coming from this type of gift to this age. The last time I was in a ToysRus store, everything there was marked “age appropriate” 3-5years, 5-8years, 8-12years of age, however {{{THOSE}}} items were “TOYS”. Maybe the NRA will figure this out one day?
Five year olds simply don't understand what "death" is, nor do they know much about safety.
I remember hearing the government having manufactures pull toys off the shelves in stores because they were unsafe.
Gun safety and toy safety appears to be on two different levels!
Most five year olds I've met have been able to comprehend: "Never do this." or "Always do that." If they can understand that they can be taught gun safety. If they can grok the concept of "If I do ___ I'll get in big trouble." then they're old enough to be taught gun safety.
Quote:
Originally Posted by floridasandy
I am pro gun ownership, but definitely don't see the sense in letting little children have guns, especially with some of the parents out there today.
little children do not have logical thought processes and they do not understand consequences of behavior. I feel sorry for that child who will, no doubt, feel very guilty when he grows up for what happened-even though it was the fault of the parent/parents.
for the record, it just isn't about guns, my grandfather, as a child, accidentally blinded his brother in one eye when he threw a fork at him and had guilt for his entire life.
There's nothing wrong with letting kids that age shoot guns so long as it's in a supervised and controlled environment. I wouldn't let a five year old keep a gun in his room. I would let him shoot one at a range though to teach him about gun safety. Then once we got back home "his" gun would go back into the gun safe. That's all I was saying.
The problem is discerning who is irresponsible before tragedies like this occur.
And to whom do we assign that task of discrimination? And what do we do about those whom we judge to be irresponsible? Do we give everybody a True-False test, and if they score over 70%, they're allowed to give guns to their kids? Of if they score under 70% we put their kids in foster homes until they undergo training courses and bring up their score? Is this test in English only?
By the way, the gun was a .22. And if you wanted to kill a human being with a .22, you'd have to be extremely lucky, as well as knowledgeable about where to place your shot to score a fatal hit on a vital organ. If you sent 100 kids to third grade today with .22 rifles and told them to shoot somebody, it is unlikely that there would be a single death.
Needless to day, the news story we have is a classic example of American journalism raising more questions than it answers, and leaving everyone completely in the dark about everything that could possibly have any relevance to intelligent discussion. The function of the American news media is to reinforce our predisposition to ignorance.
No, sorry - there is no reason to give a 5-year-old a gun or teach them how to handle it. I grew up in a house full of guns and what I knew was that if I encountered one I was not to touch it at any cost. I followed this religiously after having seen my father shoot pests - I was just old enough to understand that they were very very dangerous. My father grew up during the Depression and WW2 - he wasn't handling guns at the age of 5, even though he spent much of his youth hunting, trapping and fishing to help support his family. A 5-year-old is just not mature enough to handle a weapon - most of them can't even get dressed on their own or make themselves a meal! When you give your kindergarten-aged child a gun, it is more about your ego and urge to indoctrinate them in your way of life than it is about their welfare.
And why on earth would you burden a small child with the responsibility that comes with operating a deadly weapon, knowing that one simple mistake on their part could scar them for life and/or cause serious harm to other human beings? That's just depraved to take that kind of risk with your child when that risk is COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.
Shooting is fun and builds character and teaches responsibility and promotes parent-child bonding? So what? So are thousands of other activities you can participate in with your child. My redneck dad took me hiking, canoeing, running dogs, on trips to the library, etc. There was no need to bring ****ing firearms into our time together when I was just a little kid. And despite him being a narcissist, our outings together were not all about him and trying to make me into his mini-me. When I was old enough and expressed an informed interest, he took me out to the back acres and taught me to shoot.
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