Now that Charlton Heston is dead, can we talk about gun control?

Last week in the Cleveland Plain Dealer,there was another story about a child who was accidentally shot and killed from a found gun in the hands of a curious kid. Sorry NRA, but kids don’t kill kids, guns kill kids. I just do not see any validity to arguments made by the National Rifle Association when it comes to hand guns. You might expect that kind of reaction from me because I am one of those liberal, suburban moms who shops at Whole Foods and approves of same sex couples adopting international children. However, if you look closer, you will see that I don’t fit the anti-gun mold. In fact, I am not anti-gun, I am anti-hand gun. I don’t know whether or not that makes my argurement more valid in your estimation, but I’m going to presume it does for the sake of this post.

I was born in a small town in Pennsylvania where it seems that everyone hunts. Even I have “bagged a critter”. (That poor raccoon!) Where I am from, school is cancelled on the first day of deer season, and pictures appear on the front page of the local paper the next day of 12-year-olds holding the antlers and their first kill. In the house where I was raised, my family proudly displayed an 8-point buck’s head on the living room wall. We named him Lance. Even today, when I go home to visit my parents, it is not a rare occurrence that I go with my dad to shoot cans or targets with a hunting rifle. Guns are everywhere in Northwest Pennsylvania, and yet I don’t think we have ever had an instance of a death of a child because another child found a hunting rifle and accidentally shot his friend. That is not to say there haven’t been hunting accidents or deaths caused by shotguns, but when we are talking about kids finding hunting rifles that end up to be the death of themselves or a friend, it simply doesn’t happen. 

There are two reasons that this is true. The first is that small children cannot manipulate a hunting rifle or a shotgun. The guns are large, heavy, difficult to load, and children do not have the physical strength required to cock the rifle to ready it for firing. The other reason is that hunting rifles are made for hunters to hunt. Hunters respect guns in an entirely different way than the average “gotta get a gun to protect myself” kind of person. Hunting rifles are not concealed weapons. In fact, most are probably prominently displayed (unloaded) in some sort of gun cabinet or over a mantle. Children who grow up seeing these guns every day have a better understanding of their function and appropriate use. They learn at an early age that gun equals death, because they have probably eaten whatever it is that those guns have killed. Handguns by contrast, are designed to kill people. That’s right, they are people killers. If you have a hand gun to protect yourself, you are saying, “I intend to shoot a person with this gun if he messes with me, or my stuff. ” Isn’t there something wrong with that? I think so.

Now, I am sure there are extremely responsible hand-gun owners out there. I do not just assume that everyone who owns a hand gun, leaves it unlocked within arms reach of a crib. But guess what, NRA: There are idiots that do, and those idiots are the ones responsible for the thousands of kids who accidentally shot and killed themselves or their friends. We have to protect kids from those who are IRRESPONSIBLE. The fact is that there are stupid, careless people who leave a loaded gun in an unlocked drawer in their home and assume that by telling a five year old to stay out of theirr room, that the child will obey. 

So NRA, I’ll make a deal with you, if you can prove to me that every person who owns a legal or illegal handgun is a totally responsible owner who leaves it unloaded in a lock box with the safety on in a hard to reach place and that they also have bullets in a separate secured location, I will say, yes hand-guns are super! Oh, you can’t promise what idiots will or will not do?  Then what gives you the right to speak for them or their poor children?

 

To see Charlton Heston’s gun collection, click HERE!