On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
> My main point, though, is that if you have kids then even the most
> careful instruction in firearm safety isn't really sufficient to
> protect them from themselves with respect to your guns, because kids
> are still kids. I admit that I'm basing this insight on personal
> history and not objective research, but I'm willing to guarantee that
> if you have a kid, and if you have a gun, and if that gun is
> accessible to that kid, then that kid will play with that gun multiple
> times over the years when you aren't looking (if the kid's a boy,
> anyway...girls might be different).
My experience was growing up in a household where not even toy guns were
tolerated (probably a little easier to try to enforce with girls) and my
friend Tricia gave me her second-best toy gun (the kind you loaded the
paper rolls of gunpowder bits into and made a lot of noise with), and I
successfully hid that puppy from my mother for a couple of years, anyway.
(Of course, the only way I could blast the gunpowder at home without her
knowing was the method of slamming a rock into the paper while the paper
was on another rock or a piece of concrete, and she really didn't approve
of *that*, either. And I don't know how much she knew about the fireworks
my sister smuggled back from a trip to a friend in a state where fireworks
were legal; I ended up burning up a lot of those with my father one July 4
when the owner was out and I couldn't get a ride to see *real* fireworks.
I think it was the smell as much as anything else that I liked about
the whole thing.)
I don't know if I'd have actually played with a real gun, had one been in
the house, but I probably would have snuck it out to look at it, at any
rate. (And in private -- less chance of getting busted if you don't have
an accomplice. I didn't have anything to prove to anyone by showing off a
gun.)
Julia
