Another Story About Kids Playing with Guns Resulting in Injury:

And I'm Confused Over Where the Rant Should Be Focused

BIRMINGHAM-You’d think that everyone knows by now that kids should not have access to guns without parental supervision. Well, I suppose that’s the old voice of a southern heritage coming out in me when I say that. Though a female, I was taught during childhood to respect a gun, how to use a gun properly, and how to hunt and kill animals for food, if ever the time came in which the knowledge would benefit me or my family.

Nowadays, it’s sort of a taboo to show a kid how to properly use, care for, and respect a gun, isn't it? Opinions range all over the subject as to who is right, who is wrong, and who is in danger of being shot. It seems many of us want to level the playing field by eradicating the option of having a gun at all. Taking the gun out of the equation altogether may better protect Junior. That remains to be seen.

And with all the bloody, gory, grand-theft-auto, shoot-an-elderly-pedestrian, class-A-felon-gun-toter games that Nintendo and Playstation keep lining the gaming racks with for young minds to absorb, who is to say, really, what side of the issue will win the debate - if there is still a debate, anyhow?

Perhaps the parents wanting to eradicate the possibility of toting a gun at all do have a point. Perhaps the generation that the recently injured eleven year old in Birmingham belongs to should not be allowed anywhere near any sort of loaded weapon, outside of a spit-ball straw.

It’s too late for that determination, now, however. It seems this past week that paramedics were called to a home in Birmingham where an eleven year-old boy had a gun shot wound to the neck. He was rushed to Children’s Hospital and the family said he was in stable condition upon arrival. His injury was not life threatening.

But the thing is this – an old debate will now be springing up in group settings across Alabama. Should we just do away with the possibility that Junior may one day hold a rifle and aim at a bottle, or worse, at his sister?

Further, with all the constitutionally protected artistic expression on the stereo, Junior is repeatedly told he should not only kill East Siders or West Siders, or whatever Sider he particularly hates, but that he should also kill Feds who try to charge him with drug offenses (FBI, Dayton Family, 1996), and maybe even leave them dead in his closet.

I won’t even begin to rant about the movies that uplift violence in this nation.

So, my question is this, America: can both worlds exist without the death tolls rising? What I mean by that is, can America have the same appetite for watching Billy Bad-Ass play Die-Hard on the Eminem Show and still expect Junior (or, at least in many Alabama cases, Junior’s Sister) to respect the purpose and power of a deadly weapon – without the curiosity we allow to be embedded in them to play a neighborhood round of Duck-Duck-Goose with a Tech-9?

You’d think, though, we would still learn by now, as parents, that young kids cannot be left alone with a gun in the house. Even without media influences, I remember the curiosity and the cold steel – how powerful and cool it felt in my hand, though I should have not been holding it because Mama or Daddy was not aware. I just wonder if the generation of youngsters today have an even stronger curiosity due to all the violence and gangster-hero mentality that I never saw as a child.

To the eleven year-old who is said to be recovering fine from his injury of this past week's shooting, I am sure many people have told you that your injury could have been a lot worse, even deadly.

But I’m sure you felt the sharp, fast fear of this very realization at that split-second of discharge. I truly hope you soon understand why citizens of this country chose to have the right to own a gun or not – and when one day choosing for yourself, safely and respectfully remember the greater right of all Americans: the right to live.

Get well, soon, young man!

More from this author:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/30820/jeanne_sparkscarreker.html

http://h2oforthegaslit.pnn.com/2344-the-front-page

Image courtesy of WBRC-TV at MyFoxAL.com