Roger Ebert laments the freedom we give children due to our own paranoia...We live in a reign of terror. Outside the home, molesters and drug pushers lurk. Children drown, are hit by cars, shot, electrocuted, bullied, burned, stabbed, attacked by pit bulls, or kidnapped and end up with their photos on milk cartons. When they play, they make "play dates." They can ride their bikes outside--but don't leave the block. They can shoot baskets, but in the driveway, or at a supervised playground. If some kid tells you to go f*** yourself and you whoop him, you'll be seeing his parents in court. If he comes over to play and falls down your basement stairs, you'll get sued for the house.
The whole piece is here.
Many parents keep firearms in the house for protection, even though most shootings in the house are tragic accidents. Now I learn of a church whose pastor has asked his congregation to bring their guns to church, in support of the cause of Visible Firearms. That pastor is getting mixed messages from above. My friend McHugh was sitting in O'Rourke's one night when a guy flashed a gun stuck in his belt. "What are you carrying that for?" he asked the guy. "I live in a dangerous neighborhood," the guy said. McHugh told him, "It would be a lot safer if you moved."
We believe that all undesirable things can be eliminated by legislation. In England this has gotten so far out of hand that that a 10-year-old boy is forbidden to cross a parking lot, and girls can't skip rope on public property. In America, have you seen grade school football players recently? They wear more armor than Robocop. It's safer for them to sit on the sofa and blow people up in video games.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Raising Free-Range Kids
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More shootings in the home are, indeed, due to accidents rather than improving the gene pool by snuffing intruders, but that says more about the competence of parents than anything else.
If one is so abysmally stupid as to not be able to figure out how to keep children from firearms, one shouldn't breed in the first place.
And why does this safety issue not come up with equally deadly and far more dangerous household items? far more children die from household drownings in buckets & bathtubs, yet there is no hue and cry raised about idiotic parents that can't secure their power tools, drywall buckets, or bathtubs ....
Personally, I'd like to see firearms in every home with children. From a purely Darwinian standpoint, it would probably raise our average IG scores noticeably in a couple of generations, since the children of stupid, incompetent parents would have less likelihood of reaching adulthood.
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