Two Times-Pic stories, two child victims, no gun locks.

3-year-old boy finds gun, dies after accidentally shooting himself

15 year old fires gun, sister suffers minor injury

The parent in the first story should have known better than to hide a gun under a bed in the same trailer with a toddler. Horrific to imagine. The father is not charged.

In the second story, which is quite a nice bit of prose from Paul Rioux of the Times-Pic's St. Tammany Bureau, I have mixed emotions, but there seems like enough blame to go around in this family. It looks like the older brother probably should have told the kid to put it back instead of trying to act like an expert in stupidity. It could be that the kid was being careful; he didn't shoot the girl in the face, but its incredibly stupid to go "stuntin around" with a real firearm, even if you think its unloaded. When you really learn to use guns, you learn that you always treat them like they're loaded. I wish I had my Boy Scout Handbook handy, seems like that was one of the first rules you memorized for the Riflery Badge.

Kids, don't play with guns. They're expensive. And they can kill, disfigure, maim and braindamage you.

I learned to shoot at an early age, and pretty much aced my Riflery Badge. I went squirrel hunting every Fall from as soon as I could walk, first with a plastic pump-action, then a bb-gun, a .22, of which my DaD has several, there's a real joy to the trigger-jerk of a semi-automatic emptying a 50 round drum clip into a scattering of tin cans spread across the bend of a gully... then finally my choice squirrel, and later duck hunting armament, a 20 gauge, pump-action Browning, given to me by my Gampaw, who also took me on that first weekend squirrel hunt. I respected them all. I never touched a firearm without an adult around.

But I also have to ask,

Dad, do you really need to keep one in the chamber of that hand cannon under the seat of the minivan?

My position has always been that if you make the decision to keep guns, teach your children to use and respect them. As far as society-wide gun ownership goes, I'm not so sure. I bet we'd probably find ways to get the same damn evil job done without them.