> At 13:33 09-03-01 -0800, Joshua wrote:
> >"John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >>I'm watching _Primetime_ on ABC right now. They conducted an experiment
> >>by placing hidden cameras and disabled handguns in a room where teenagers
> >>will discover them. The reaction of the kids is appallling.
> >
> >Dateline (?) did the same thing last year with 5-year-olds. Same results.
> >Whether or not the kids had been shown an NRA gun safety video just
> >minutes before, the kids would almost invariably pick up the guns and play
> >Cops&Robbers.
I have to admit I'm absolutely baffled by the surprise people are showing
over these experiments. If you stuck kids (particularly boys) in a room
with swords, they'd start play swordfighting until somebody got hurt. If
you warn them, "Guns are dangerous!" they'll reply, "Du-uhh! That's the
point. Besides you wouldn't have left them lying around if they were
loaded, right? And what's the difference between playing with a toy gun
and an unloaded real one (aside from the weight)?" In a flash they will
have all this reasoned out and decide it's ok to go ahead and play with
the gun. Showing them an NRA safety video first will only convince them
how cool guns really are and whet their appetites.
That's what weapons are for, after all. Swords are for swordfighting, and
guns are for pointing at and killing people. The "weaponness" of a gun
makes it inherently fascinating, especially for boys and young men; they
represent a right of passage into manhood. Moreover they are adult and
forbidden, like porn and cigarettes, and so even more alluring. I wonder,
if we were to repeat the experiment with a deer rifle, would kids point
the rifle at one another (lacking other targets) or would they play like
they were hunting, knowing that that is what one does with a deer rifle?
My father had guns and taught me at a fairly young age how to handle them
safely, how to shoot, how to reload ammo, and so on. He took me to
shooting ranges and gun shows, and I loved it. I always handled guns
properly in his presence and took great pride in the confidence that he
showed me.
I was still a kid, though, and on several occasions when nobody was home I
would have a friend over and we would pull down the guns from the closet.
We didn't play cops and robbers, but we unwrapped them and admired the
silky blued or bright steel and inhaled the oil scent. I always made a
show (to show how mature and "authorized" I was) to use proper gun
safety--assume the gun's loaded, always point away from anybody, check the
magazine/cylinder/chamber, keep the safety on, etc. I do remember,
though, that once one of my friends pointed a .357 at me and playfully
pulled the trigger. We knew it wasn't loaded--we had checked--but it
would have given my parents a heart attack to see it. At the time I was
peeved; not because I felt myself in danger but because my friend had
broken "the rules"--never mind the fact that we were both breaking them by
playing with the gun in the first place.
The truth is, no matter how much my father told me or how much practice I
had, I didn't practice gun safety when I did because of the gun. I
practiced it because of my father, to please him. As long as he didn't
see me bend the rules, and as long as I didn't cause an accident, I
figured that was all right. Within the context of
the situation, I handled the gun properly, as I had been instructed, but I
had overlooked the fact that I shouldn't handle the gun at all. Why?
Because I needed to score "cool" points with my friend.
No video, no amount of parental lecturing, will prevent this sort of thing
from happening. I'd be very surprised if the scene didn't repeat
itself in America on a daily basis. And all it takes is one careless
parent putting a gun away still loaded, or one slightly careless kid
to get on the national news. Because of course I never really knew when I
reached up on the top shelf of the closet that the gun wasn't loaded (even
though at the same time, in a formal sense, I was "assuming" the gun was
loaded); I just assumed my dad followed the same rules he taught me. Not
all fathers do this. I'm lucky that my own dad did. (However, he did
keep in the .357's case a speed-loader with six bullets ready to load; I
think that somewhere in the back of his mind he was thinking "home
defense" even if the gun wasn't really accessible enough for the purpose.)
Part of the problem is that good gun safety requires a certain gut-level
fear of the weapon, a fear that children in general just aren't likely to
have unless they've been traumatized in some way. I didn't have that fear
myself until a couple of years ago. My dad had bought a Russian-made
semiautomatic at a gun show--I think it was a Makarov--and he wanted to go
try it out. Now, it so happened that in the previous year my grandmother
had died, the first time a loved one of mine had passed away. Also, the
Makarov is about as ugly and unromantic--unlike a Smith & Wesson or Colt
or Thompson, the sort of guns my dad had previously owned--as a pistol can
get.
So I got up and fired off a couple of clips at the range's man-silhouette
targets and was surprised at how easy it all was. I had been a much
smaller and younger person the last time I had gone shooting, and tended
to be overwhelmed by the noise and recoil. But this time it was a piece
of cake--even my aim was good. Anyway, whatever combination of
circumstances were involved, for the first time I felt in my gut, "Oh my,
I'm holding an instrument of death." Not, "Guns are dangerous but OK for
target practice," but, "Dear me, I could turn around and kill somebody,
and so could anybody else on the range." For the first time I had a
moment with a gun that was unmediated by romanticism or myth.
Mind you, the target shooting was still fun, but I had been sobered in a
way that all my father's lectures to me as a kid had failed to do.
We want kids to be sober like that regarding the subject of firearms. I
would argue that, with perhaps the rare exception, they really can't be
that way. As a rule kids (American kids anyway) aren't that sober about
anything, so why should we expect them to have such a cautious attitude
about guns? We want kids to have a respectul fear of guns--the kind of
respectful fear that characterizes a parent who doesn't want to lose his
or her child. But adults aquire that fear and respect in a large part by
being adults and by seing life from the adult perspective.
So here's my grand flame-bait statement: to assume that firearm safety
education is sufficient protection for children is to abdicate one's adult
responsibility and to foist it off upon one's child who cannot really
understand it. Guns should be locked up. Ammo should be locked up
separately. The minimum safety standards for gun ownership should
preclude using a gun for home defense. Gun owners should be licensed and
sworn to uphold minimum safety standards, and they should be willing to
have their safety measures inspected periodically to enforce compliance.
More bluntly, if owning a gun is a civic right, then being safe with guns
is a civic responsibility and should be embraced as such, including
measures to uphold civic accountability.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
Don't be frightened. Adrenaline will just make your blood taste funny.
