Monday, April 18, 2005

Guns don't kill people, children kill people

You're no doubt familiar with the NRA bumper sticker: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

While true enough, this leaves out an important point: people kill people, guns just make it easier.

A case in point from today's sad news of a 10 year old boy who shot his mother before killing himself with the "family gun":

The relatives found the mother shot in the back of the head and her son lying on the floor with a gunshot wound to his chin, Warren County Sheriff Johnny Williams said.
Nowhere is the tragedy of American gun-love clearer than in the cases of killer-children. It's a simple matter of physics. If a child is strong enough to lift a firearm (handguns are especially useful for this, though Tyler Jones used a shotgun) and squeeze his index finger around a trigger, then he too can become a killer.

It's just that easy.

And that's the problem.

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