@YARNLADY: I have absolutely no words good enough for how much I disagree with you on every single point.
Passive aggressively letting your spouse influence your child to choose between which parent is cooler? Give them better presents? Encourage secretive behavior? What the hell? Letting the behavior slide is as bad as agreeing to it.
Guns are not that dangerous? Regardless of how often gun injuries happen with children – any number is unacceptable. If you remove the tool, you significantly lower the chance of those incidences occurring.
If someone put a gun in your hands at five years old, I’m shocked – unloaded or whatever. I can understand informational classes only, and awareness. But even hands on training at a young age is fucking retarded. Brains are undeveloped, exposure creates a false sense of comfort around them and the fact that young children and teenagers are handling guns with underdeveloped motor skills is shocking to me.
Young people are stupid, by nature they dismiss consequences even when they are informed of dangers, why in God’s name would anyone give them a toy based off a deadly weapon?
I know a lot of gun advocates will disagree with me, but based on the children I knew as a child I would never in a million fucking years let any child I have near a BB gun or a real one. I’d go ballistic.
I was shot at on purpose with a BB gun when I was nine by a kid in my neighborhood who took safety classes. He later hunted my dog on multiple occasions. Shooting her three times. He and his friends routinely ‘hunted’ squirrels, rabbits, pets and kids. And they weren’t the only group. I knew a few of these groups of kids over the years in different towns and states. Some had taken classes, some had not.
People don’t know what their kids get into when they’re not looking, no matter how much you trust your kid – it’s idiotic.
@SuperMouse: Nip that shit in the bud. Call the father, if he won’t listen – call your lawyer.