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Strollerderby
A recent article suggests that as many as 2 million American homes with kids contain unlocked, loaded guns.
I was floored when I read this. I have six kids who have gone on countless playdates over the years. I never once even thought to ask the parents if they kept a firearm in their house. Parents make sure to tell caregivers about their children’s allergies. We make sure a parent or responsible teenager will be there to watch the kids at all times. We worry if there’s a trampoline or pool at the house and we ascertain that someone will be monitoring the kids while they’re jumping or swimming. But how many of us think to ask, “Thanks for having my daughter over to play, Mary. Oh, by the way, you don’t have a gun in your house do you? I just want to make sure my child isn’t accidentally shot”? Not only have I never asked this question, but no parent has ever asked me this question when I’ve watched their children either. I guess it’s just not something you think about.
I read an essay in Salon this week by a mother who says that before she lets her 11 year old son play at another kid’s house for the first time, she asks whether the family keeps guns in the house. So far, she hasn’t had to decide what to do if the answer were to be yes because quite remarkably (to me, anyway), no parent has ever answered her question affirmatively.
Obviously, accidental shootings by children – ‘tween and adolescent boys being the most curious about guns – are a real concern. We should not minimize or trivialize the safety issues raised when guns are not properly secured and supervised in a house with kids. However, as a parent who has lost a child to a common household danger – overdose of prescription drugs – I find myself wondering where asking questions about risk in other families’ homes should stop. Continue reading »
Police in Wilson County, Tennessee say 3-year-old Cheyenne Alexis McKeehan learned to play shooting games on the family’s Wii game console using a controller that is designed to look like a real gun.
This familiarity with fake guns, they say, led the little girl to picked up a loaded .380 caliber pistol her stepfather had left on the living room table. Continue reading »
Guns have no place in schools. I think that most of us can agree on that. Whether carried by staff or students, the likelihood of a tragic outcome is, I believe, fairly high. Even if the weapon is never fired, its presence alone is enough alter the atmosphere and have a negative impact on the ability of students to learn. And so we have zero-tolerance policies in place at schools across the country. But how “zero” should they be?
A group of kids playing in a San Francisco playground discovered a loaded gun – cocked and with a round in the chamber — in the sandbox.
I hate to say it, but this is about par for the course for San Francisco. Continue reading »
There are idiots and then there’s this guy! An upstate New York man who brought a loaded weapon into a school building, prompting a lockdown, says he never even thought about it.
Really? You didn’t think a gun on school premises was sort of a bad idea? Scratch that, reverse it. Continue reading »
It’s about time we checked back in with www.WhytheF***doyouhaveakid.com, because as long as their are still people having kids there will be people who should not be having kids.
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