By Josh Sugarmann
Executive Director, Violence Policy Center(Huffing Paint) – With depressing regularity, it keeps happening. A child, sometimes as young as a toddler, gets hold of a firearm (usually owned by a parent or other family member) and unintentionally pulls the trigger with horrific results.
What does the anecdotal story have to do with young people embracing gun ownership? Oh, that’s right: Fear and emotions is all the gun control cultists have in their arsenal. Logic, reason and science are absent from their arguments.
For some gun owners, there is almost a race to the bottom to see how young a child can be to handle, and eventually possess, a gun. In the comments section of an online article from the NRA’s American Hunter magazine titled “Choosing Your Child’s First Gun,” readers detailed the ages at which they felt their own sons and daughters were ready for their first gun: five, six, seven, and older.
Dear Josh: Why do you write this fecal matter? Oh, that’s right. You’re gasping for the oxygen of publicity.
This is concentrated ignorance.
Perhaps we should invite Mr. Sugarmann to attend a GSLDT class or an NRA youth camp to see what we are really all about.
“Why Does the Gun Lobby Encourage Small Children to Handle Guns?”
So they will know how, and not hurt themselves or others.
(Joshie is kinda…slow, ain’t he?)
A little story about education:
At the tender age of 3, my Granddaughter asked to hold one of my firearms. Before she held it I told her that the only time she could see or touch a gun is with an adult. On her 4th Birthday, she opened a brand new Pink Daisy Red Ryder of her very own. Again, I explained it was only to be touched with an adult. She went and changed her dress to match her new BB gun, complete with heels. We did some target practice in the back yard.
A few months later her Father, 30 years old, asked her if we wanted to go outside with her BB gun with him. She looked at him and stated,” No, we have to wait for an adult”.
If you instill the proper education, raise the child with respect and responsibility, they will understand the rules.
EVERY sport, hobby, game and pastime has some form of youth activity that brings kids into the venue, golf, fishing, baseball, every one of them. Kids love to do and experience what the big people do. Sugarman is somehow surprised that the shooting sports would have one as well. These are the same people who promote the “kids will do it anyway, we might as well let them drink/have sex/smoke dope safely” Do they think that firearms and the shooting sports should be hidden behind some 21 and over curtain of some sort? Satisfying kids natural curiosity and sharing a valid, legitimate pastime is absolutely appropriate. I taught my kids how to deal with firearms at an early age, and when a bit older, when they were hungry to handle them, took them shooting and afterward, to clean them. Have a 9 yr old boy clean a gun and you have satisfied a good deal of the tactile curiosity they had a day earlier… and they learn that its not like the movies.