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You’ve heard the story so many times, you already know what the bereaved parents or aunts or neighbors are going to say. You don’t, you can’t, know the horror and dread that’s ahead for the loved ones after a child dies from an accidental gunshot.

A brother, a playmate, someone innocent, pulled the trigger. He didn’t know the gun was loaded. The police said it was a tragic accident.

Some will call for gun control, for mandatory locks, for better parental control, for more educational programs.

None of those will happen or work. Here’s the thing we need to say to every child and to each other so often, so forcefully, so dramatically, that no one doubts: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNLOADED GUN.

Many parents let their children play with toy guns. It’s as American as Texas Rangers and desperados. As common as a game of cops and robbers.

Children aren’t always able to separate fact from play and parents who allow their children to point toy guns at any living thing take all the risks of a real bullet in a playmate’s head.

Or the terrible case of a policeman investigating a report of prowlers. He rounds the corner and sees a gun pointed at him. The policeman fires. A young teenager playing with a toy gun is dead. The orange tip which had identified the gun as a toy is missing.

An orange tip somehow made it safe. Candy cigarettes had orange tips, too, so they’d look like real fire. Candy cigarettes we ban. Toy guns we keep. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNLOADED GUN.

I grew up around guns. My oldest brother once blasted a hole in my grandfather’s hall floor with a 12-gauge shotgun while I stood beside him and then watched my mother tremble, ripped between anger at her father and relief that none of her children were dead. Another grandma had three pictures strategically placed on the living room wall to cover the shot blasts in the paneling from the time granddad’s shotgun when off as he prepared to clean it.

The father of one of my best childhood friends always had a .44 pistol on the kitchen counter. We knew it was loaded. We never touched it.

A high school friend had the coolest – and most illegal — sawed off shotgun. Great fun to shoot. We knew it was loaded.

I’m not telling you it’s good or bad, right or wrong. I am telling you, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNLOADED GUN.

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4 Responses to “There is no such thing as an unloaded gun”

1. Mike Pattillo says:

   June 17, 2009 at 7:30 am

   Cars are more dangerous than guns. Cars that are out of gas can still roll down a hill and kill a child. But cars in the hands of careful drivers do more good than harm. But even the best drivers make mistakes and cause harm or death. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SAFE DRIVER.
   Prescription Medicine is more dangerous than guns. People ,including kids are killed everday by prescription medicine. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SAFE PRESCRIPTION.
   you could just go on and on ……………..

   Reply
2. Lindy Lou says:

   June 17, 2009 at 9:22 am

   In answer to Mike Patillo’s analogy, both cars and prescription medicine are governed and controlled with much more stringent laws. For example, kids today must take driver’s ed courses and register first for a year before he can receive a license to drive (after passing a written test and a test drive with an instructor). Prescriptions are provided by physicians and can’t be gotten (unless illegally) by just anyone. However, any kook can walk in a WalMart and have a gun in his hand the same day. The NRA control over our politicians is insane. Why are they against having the same rules and guidelines we have for an automobile? Why not have “gun users” ed and a period of waiting before receiving a loaded weapon? It would not stop the sad circumstances described in this article, but it might hinder some of the Columbine-like scenarios that are so prevelant today.

   Reply
3. Alice Murray says:

   June 17, 2009 at 1:43 pm

   Always, ALWAYS, treat guns as if they are loaded. That’s the first rule. The second rule is if you are going to have guns, keep ammo locked up separately from the weapon. My mother’s older brother was killed in a hunting accident when she was 8 and he was 13, and the memory has haunted our family for generations. Keeping guns out of the hands of children is vital, but don’t think you can keep kids from playing as if they had guns. I never wanted my son (now 25) to play with toy guns, and I didn’t allow real guns anywhere near him, but he made toy guns himself out of sticks. Pow, pow, shoot-’em-up games seems to be in many kids’ DNA. Teach them early to be very careful, even if no one in your family has ever owned a gun.

   Reply
4. Fru Fru Jenkins says:

   June 19, 2009 at 12:11 pm

   It’s another example of people being poor assessors of risk, in my opinion. Statistically automobiles, prescription drugs, household cleaners, and swimming pools are all much more dangerous to our children. But they don’t make terrifying BANG noises and splatter blood everywhere, so they’re not seen as such.
   There IS a such thing as an unloaded gun, and in such a state it is nothing more than an inert hunk of metal and plastic.

   Reply

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