A Gun to Protect Our Family
I have often openly wondered why we allow people to have guns. In the hands of some people, they are a tool and a source of protection. Or a source of sport and entertainment. Or the object of hobbyists who collect them. Or, as has been widely reported, a way to eliminate random family members.
I have come pretty clost to suggesting that we should just ban guns in the general population. But I do understand that it might not be possible, depending upon how you interpret the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. A gun has legitimate uses in hunting and sport shooting. Some people even believe that it has uses in personal defense. I have just come to think, however, that we need to weigh the few times that a gun is actually useful for self-defense vs the number of times that the innocent are accidentally killed.
In this case, a father “accidentally” shot and killed his 6-year-old daughter. Dad said that he had his daughter bring the gun to him, and that he accidentally shot her. Mom says that she brought the gun into the room, and that the daughter wandered into the room unexpectedly while the gun was getting cleaned. Whatever the story, I place the full blame on the father for killing his daughter. For everytime I have heard a gun-rights sympathizer say that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” I’m ready to declare in this case that a person did kill another person.
Yup, I’m being pretty crass about it. This man felt the need to keep guns in a place where they were near children. Whether the child actually brought it to him, or his wife did, the child should not have been present while a dangerous operation like cleaning the gun was taking place. Second, the gun was left out unlocked, and it was left loaded. This, in itself, is negligent enough to be a criminal activity. Third, it was necessary to clean the gun while he had been drinking heavily. Of all the times to be doing this, why do it when we are drunk? Was there not something else he could have been doing? Could he have found a safer place to perform this task? The questions can go on and on.
There is no reason that a gun being taken from storage to be “cleaned” would have been loaded. I have to believe that there is a distinct possibility that this guy was looking to threaten or actually shoot someone who was present. Whether that was someone else who was present his wife, with whom he was possibly arguing with if he was drunk, it was likely not his daughter. But she is the one who paid the price for his having a gun there that day.
When the rural areas of Cascadia were settled in the late-1800′s, the need for a firearm was obvious. Law enforcement was non-existent, we hunted for our meat, and it was a necessary tool of the time. In a limited way, it still has a security use today. But this guy had an accident with his firearm only two weeks before, and that was while he was fooling around shooting at pumpkins. Help is usually near when we need it. And meat is readily available at the grocery store. Even if this guy has a legitimate use for a firearm, he clearly is not responsible enough to be using it. (And for every person who says “you wouldn’t ban cars just because they kill people”, well, we do take drivers licenses away from people who can’t use them responsibly. No reason guns can’t be the same way.)
Guns are legal, but the right to carry them comes with some pretty heavy responsibilities. This man did not meet those responsibilities, and for that he must be punished. This incident was no accident. We should not treat it like one.
We likely cannot ban firearms. We need to take them out of the hands of irresponsible people. All of them. We need to develop a way to do this. We need to do it before they “accidentally” kill someone else’s daughter.
We license people to drive. We license people to go fishing. We license people to show us that they are competent accountants and electricians and surgeons. There is no reason why we shouldn’t license people to show their competence in keeping and shooting firearms. If we did, perhaps the lives of one girl, and her mother, and her siblings, and all the children at her elementary school, would not have to be changed.
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