Kids + guns = tragedy

By April Coffman, On-line Forty-Niner

May 6,1998

 

We all know that today's society is an increasingly violent one, but what is deemingly the least-likely sector to become violent is doing just that. Young children are a new menace to everyone.

 

Gun-toting seventh-graders are becoming the norm on junior high school campuses. And this isn't in South Central Los Angeles or the Bronx.

 

It is in the heartland of America where youths are blowing away their classmates with semi-automatic rifles.

 

Now many of us are asking the question: should children be taught how to use guns? The grandfather of a boy who allegedly opened fire on the students of his junior high school in Jonesboro, Ark., told reporters his grandson learned how to shoot at a very young age.

 

Hunting was an important part of the family's life and children learned at a young age how to handle a rifle.

 

Many families teach children how to properly handle a gun; many times for sport, and often times for safety.

 

Guns sometimes are a little less frightening when you understand how to take one apart, or how to use them.

 

This may be the logic for many parents. Some parents have the idea that they learned how to handle guns at a young age themselves, and intend to teach their children the same way.

 

But there is still debate. Many people feel that guns are something that shouldn't be in the hands of children.

 

No parent teaches his or her children about guns in hopes of him or her one day killing a teacher at the school dance. Because a child knows how to use a gun hardly means he would open fire on classmates.

 

It is a much deeper problem rooted inside of the child that causes him or her to detach from reality and finally snap. It isn't the fact that the child knew how to use a gun.

 

Many children are killed each year by loaded handguns found in their own homes.

 

Children should be educated about guns if they are kept in the home.

 

Now parents may be the ones who serve the time. After a four-year-old boy accidentally shot his playmate, it was his grandmother who was sent to jail.

 

Parents should be responsible for their children and even for their children's actions, when they can be prevented.

 

Whether it is more education or stiffer penalties, one thing is for certain, something must be done.

 

Too many children are dying at the hands of other children. It is time to look closer, not at children who know how to use guns, but at why they are using them to kill.

 

April Coffman is a public relations major.