Children and Guns: The Fear and the Reality

Should you ask your neighbors if they own a gun before your child plays at their house? And what do you do if they say yes?

After the tragic accidental death this month of a two-year-old Kentucky girl who had been shot by her five-year-old brother, the answer may seem obvious: Do not let your child play at a gun owner’s home, at least if you are not sure he is locking up his guns.

This shooting came just a couple of days after a prominent opinion piece in the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, in which a parent, Lisa Maxbauer, worried about her six-year-old’s visiting homes of gun owners. Another recent article at CNN, by Judith Palfrey, warned readers: “Never keep a loaded gun in the house or the car,” and “guns and ammunition should be locked away safely in separate locations in the house.”

The CDC reports that for 2010 (the latest year available), one single six-year old died from a gunshot. For all children younger than 10, there were 36 accidental gun deaths, and that is out of 41 million children. Perhaps most important, about two-thirds of these accidental gun deaths involving young children are not shots fired by other little kids but rather by adult males with criminal backgrounds. In other words, unless you send your child to play at a criminal’s home, she is exceedingly unlikely to get shot.

Indeed, if you are going to worry about your child’s safety you should check into other, perhaps less obvious dangers lurking in the playmate’s house: swimming pools, bathtubs, water buckets, bicycles, and chemicals and medications that can cause fatal poisoning. Drownings alone claimed 609 deaths; fires, 262 lives; poisonings, 54 lives.

I read the entire article and didn’t come away with the same impression you did. He cited other articles that primarily based their argument on CDC ‘studies’, and then proceeded to argue the counterpoint to their articles.

Reading it carefully, the real busybody here is the CDC. They have no effing business in funding studies for anything not related to a biological disease, period.

Their inept functionaries who are probably lackluster ‘disease specialists’ are looking for a way to impart their own ideological bent under the guise of science when nothing could be further from the truth.

Again, CDC has no business studying guns, domestic violence, car crashes, texting nor anything not connected with biological science. Liberals all.

I think smart parents might very likely ask reasonable questions about the status of guns, swimming pools, poison, sharp objects, etc., in someones house, especially people who don't have children (people forget that little kids are curious monkeys). But the underlying issue is a matter of trust in the people themselves.

Guns are a normal part of life (or should be) and shouldn't be a taboo subject. I think if we all talked about firearms more often and more casually, it would serve to deaden the hypersensitivity of our liberal family and acquaintances.

If we are asked by a liberal neighbor if we have guns in our home (concerning children coming over), I think the proper response is, "Of course, I have lot's of dangerouse things in my home. There won't be any dangerous laying about, but do your children have a behavioral issue with going through other peoples private things, because my house isn't set up for that." If they state that their children can't play at your house "because you have guns" then you state that your children won't be playing at their house, "because they are incapable of protecting them". Then go right out and buy the funnest toys you can imagine for your kids to use in your front yard in full view of the neighbor children, also invite every other kid in a 10 block radius to join in the fun.

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