Author Topic: Of kids and guns  (Read 4275 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline White Israelite

  • Ultimate JTFer
  • *******
  • Posts: 4535
Of kids and guns
« on: January 03, 2008, 06:11:05 PM »
Of kids and guns
By Massad Ayoob      Massad Ayoob


In the almost two years since the Columbine tragedy, American police have coined the term “active shooter.” It means, in essence, a crazed gunman who is at the scene now, murdering people or trying to. As a cop for 27 years by the time you will read this, I find that terminology poignantly sad. For most of my life, “active shooter” meant a decent person who actively pursued a certain healthy hobby.

Like many of you reading this, I grew up with guns. Also like many of you, I had kids and guns in the same house when it was my turn to be the parent. This is true of almost every cop I ever worked with. The officer who leaves his only gun, the issued service weapon, at his locker when he leaves work and doesn’t have a firearm at home is a rara avis indeed, and probably a young and unseasoned one, or one who has spent his career safely behind a desk. The cops in the street learn quickly the reality of violence, and after they’ve seen enough victims they say to themselves, “Not me and not mine.”

This is also why most cops leave a gun at home for their significant other when they are at work. They know best of all that police work is necessarily reactive rather than proactive. Anyone who says “the police will protect you” hasn’t been a cop. Those of us who have been, know that we can only respond to calls for our service. This means, basically, that you have to survive long enough to call us, and then you have to wait for us to get there.

There is now great emphasis on passing legislation that will criminalize parents who make loaded guns accessible to their children. Hey, send me up. One day, off duty with my kid in a jurisdiction other than my own, we passed a cop who was struggling on the ground with a violent suspect at the side of the road. As I pulled over, I handed my loaded 2” .38 Special backup gun to my 11 year old daughter before I got out of the car and ran back to assist the officer. All ended well, with no bloodshed. I would do it again tomorrow. The kid was already trained to an adult standard. It was an emergency. In what the law calls “the balance of competing harms,” it was simply the right thing to do. If that suspect had overpowered and killed the officer and then killed me, he wasn’t going to leave my kid alive as a witness. She stayed locked in the car, her finger clear of the trigger of the loaded gun, similar to one with which she had recently qualified to a police standard. She did the right thing, too.

Each family has to make their own decision, and it has to be made specifically for each child, with a ruthlessly honest appraisal of the child’s emotional stability, maturity, and ability. My father, and his father before him, were gunfight survivors before I was born. I grew up with firearms. By the age of nine, I had a .22 rifle, a shotgun, and a Winchester 94 deer rifle hanging on a rack in my bedroom. At the age of 12, I had a loaded Colt .45 automatic in the desk drawer in that same bedroom.

My own children are now 16, and almost 24. Both learned guns early, helping me clean them at age 5 and shooting at age 6. The elder has been licensed to carry loaded and concealed since age 18, and it has already saved her in one incident, with no shots fired. Her attackers fled when they saw her S&W 9mm.

Elder Brat chose not to have a loaded gun in her own room until she was 18. She has had one there ever since, except when she was living on a “gun-free” university campus. Younger Brat at 16 also prefers not to keep a loaded weapon of her own in her room, but if home alone, knows where the immediately accessible loaded defense guns are.

I respect their choices. These young women often entertained their female friends in their rooms, and didn’t want loaded guns accessible to the untrained. When I was a teenage boy, if my buddies came over we stayed in the living room or the yard, and if the guys wanted to see my guns, we had my dad clear it with their dad and all could go to an appropriate range together. My daughters did the same: many of their friends found guns fascinating, and Dad always cleared it with the parents before the trip to the gun club. It all worked out.

Access to loaded weapons requires training, skill, and already-demonstrated adult levels of responsibility. My kids fit the latter. What struck me most was that each of them became the ones their peers came to for advice when they were in trouble. Skills? My first-born, Cat, won her first pistol match against adult men at age 11, and at 19 earned High Woman honors at the National Tactical Invitational. My second daughter, Justine, was 13 when she won the National Junior Handgun Championship Parent/Child Team with only a little help from her dad.

Kids and defense guns? In 2000, a maniac with a pitchfork broke into a home occupied by a bunch of kids guarded by a young teenage girl. She tried to reach her parents’ gun for defense, but it was locked and inaccessible. She jumped out a window and ran to a neighbor’s house, telling him what happened and begging him for a gun. Aghast, he kept her there as he called the police. When the cops came—and finally killed the homicidal maniac—it was too late to save the little ones.

I remember the little boy who killed the man who otherwise would have beaten his mother to death, using the mom’s little pistol that he snatched from her desk drawer. I remember the youth who used a .22 rifle to kill the pit bull that was trying to bite his little sister to death. And I remember the 12-year-old whose father trusted him to have his own .22 revolver in his bedroom. It saved the boy’s life when the estranged lover of the father’s new girlfriend broke into the house and killed the older son and the girlfriend and shot the father and left him for dead. When the mass murderer came to the 12-year-old’s room, the boy’s gunfire killed the murderous home invader, saving the kid’s life.

We who own firearms have to live up to the responsibility of keeping them out of the hands of the irresponsible. That is patently obvious … but, once it is said, there are times when responsible young people will face life-threatening crisis and have to act like adults to save innocent lives. That can only happen if the child who has lived up to adult standards of responsibility and prudence has access to an adult level of power to stop the harm.

It is not an easy question, and it never will be. I will never suggest that all children have access to deadly weapons. That would be madness. But, once they had been specifically trained in the responsibility attendant to them—not just gun safety per se, but the ability to make what cops call “the deadly force decision”—I did entrust my own responsible children with that power.

And those responsible children never gave me cause to regret it. Fate, however, gave me reason to be glad I had done so.

I will stand by the decision I made ... as you will have to stand by yours.

kellymaureen

  • Guest
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2008, 06:15:59 PM »
I grew up with guns in the house, and my son has been shooting since he was 7.  If you have a gun in the house and have kids they need to be taught that its not a toy and also taught to use it.  My dad had guns, loaded,  we all knew how to use them and we knew that we were NOT to touch unless he was there or our lives were in danger, not one of us thought of playing around or letting our friends play with them.

Offline White Israelite

  • Ultimate JTFer
  • *******
  • Posts: 4535
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2008, 06:33:56 PM »
Yes, my dad taught me to shoot a gun when I was 9 and that they were not toys, I grew up respecting them.

Offline KansasJew

  • Senior JTFer
  • ****
  • Posts: 470
  • JTF Logo I made
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2008, 06:41:40 PM »
When I was a Deputy Sheriff. I kept a loaded 357 in the house out on the counter even with the kids at home. The Difference was education and training. I had the kids play with a empty weapon, touch, feel, smell.

I also had them hold the bullets and then took a bullet and pushed real hard against each of their chest and told them does it hurt? They said yes. I then took them to the gun range and showed them what happens to human targets.

They never touched the gun. I also took my son on how to clear cars and rooms and defensive shooting. He is now a Police Cadet.
Remember there has to be strong silent men on the walls at night to protect the people. Be Strong but not aggressive. Be Peaceful but not weak. Defend the Jewish People at all cost.

Kiwi

  • Guest
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2008, 09:07:54 AM »
I am a little different I will not have a gun in the house with children.

No matter what.

Offline KansasJew

  • Senior JTFer
  • ****
  • Posts: 470
  • JTF Logo I made
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #5 on: January 04, 2008, 10:01:11 AM »
I have seen an interesting trend. Majority of Ladies are very anti-gun. No matter where they hail from around the world. There are exceptions these are the ladies that grew up hunting and fishing and grew up in rural areas mostly or had a parent that was very active in shooting.

Honestly that is why many of those that are against guns use women a lot in the campaigns.
Remember there has to be strong silent men on the walls at night to protect the people. Be Strong but not aggressive. Be Peaceful but not weak. Defend the Jewish People at all cost.

kellymaureen

  • Guest
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #6 on: January 04, 2008, 01:58:41 PM »
I grew up in the suburbs and never hunted, though my gradfather did, my dad was in the military and collected guns, same as my brother now.  I think that having guns in the house, being taught about them and to use them at a young age made them less facinating for us, it was just a part of life that we gave little thought to.  Some of my brothers friends were just just facinated by a gun when they were teenagers, they had never seen one other than on TV and certainly never held one or used one...those seem to be the kids more likely to play around and have an accident.
My brother is teaching my son to shoot, he started when he was 9 and loves it.

Offline White Israelite

  • Ultimate JTFer
  • *******
  • Posts: 4535
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2008, 03:40:41 PM »
There are always exceptions like Kip Kinkel but the majority of kids like you mentioned who are raised around guns are taught to respect them and end up being responsible/respectful around firearms.

My first exposure to firearms was when I lived in Chicago. The D.A.R.E. police officers in our school always taught us that guns were dangerous and not to touch them, but the problem was they kept kid ignorant about firearms. They just told them not to touch them and affiliated guns with gangs.

My father on the other hand was a large collector of these so called "assault rifles" and "handguns" and was very responsible around them. Like mentioned, we had set up the basement partially for shooting. I was taken to the shooting ranges and learned gun safety, my mother didn't like it though and was heavily against it. Even had my dad return a ruger .22 rifle that he had bought me for my 10th birthday.

After my father passed away, I tried to get involved in guns again when we moved, and by my 21st birthday, I bought my first handgun. I'm 22 today and I continue to buy firearms as a collector, a hobbyist, a supporter of the 2nd amendment, a survivalist, and a individual who is concerned about history repeating it's self.

When I have a family, I will teach my kids to use guns at an early age and responsibly. I grew up with toy guns, I grew up with violent games and movies, but at the same time I was mature enough to know the difference with a firearm and a toy, reality and fantasy.

Kiwi

  • Guest
Re: Of kids and guns
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2008, 06:16:30 PM »
I have seen an interesting trend. Majority of Ladies are very anti-gun. No matter where they hail from around the world. There are exceptions these are the ladies that grew up hunting and fishing and grew up in rural areas mostly or had a parent that was very active in shooting.

Honestly that is why many of those that are against guns use women a lot in the campaigns.

I agree the tend is there, but many I think its not so anti gun more of protecting their children.