Reminder

Since I'm still recovering from the cold I picked up over the weekend (is this my reward for cleaning up my father-in-law's garage?!?!?), I've been on the couch this morning trying to motivate my self to study for my state Nurse Aide Certification exam on Friday. Actually, getting up to shower would be a good start...

Anyhoo, I made the mistake of stopping my medicated-channel-flipping on CNN's "American Morning" -- just in time to see the screaming headline, "Harvard Gun Study".

You may not believe this, but my first thought was, "OK, it's Soledad O'Brien - you know this story is just gonna make you mad. You're sick. You need a shower, and you need to study. Turn the channel. Do it now."

Since I usually try to ignore the voices in my head, I didn't listen.

Dang.

I couldn't find the article on CNN.com. I tried to find the study on-line, but I could only come up with an archived article about it from the Boston Herald. Here's all I could get without paying for the full article:

Harvard: Kids know about guns; [All Editions]
JESSICA FARGEN.
Boston Herald. Boston, Mass.: May 7, 2006. pg. 013
Section:
NEWS
ISSN/ISBN:
07385854
Text Word Count
298
Document URL:

Abstract (Document Summary)
"(Gun) tragedies occur every two to three days among our nation's children and they are preventable," said Matthew Miller, health policy professor and associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. "Our study suggests parents should take every effort
and never assume counseling children about gun safety is the only precaution to keep them safe."

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/bostonherald/1033189181.html?did=1033189181&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&date=May+7%2C+2006&author=JESSICA+FARGEN&pub=Boston+Herald&desc=Harvard%3A+Kids+know+about+guns

I'm not sure if it was Mr. Miller that Soledad was all enamored with, but naturally she cooed and fawned over this revelation about how we could keep our children safe. Like so many Harvard-white-tower-dwelling-Communists, the guy said something to the effect of getting rid of guns in the home was the best way to prevent a gun accident involving your kids (duh) -- otherwise, the guns should stay locked in a safe.

Besides, it's your government, police and elected officials who will protect you, right? (Ray Nagin, call your office...)

Well, let me back up. In essence, the report said that something like 75% of kids knew were the guns were kept in their homes, and somewhere around 35% had handled the guns before, though kids tend to lie about it when asked. It claimed that merely talking to or educating your kids about gun safety didn't sway the kids from handling the guns behind the parents' backs.

They could have just burned Edddie Eagle in effigy, and their point would have been made much more cheaply.

Frankly, though, I'll grant 'em that one. If you keep unsecured guns in your home, the kids will mess with them. How do I know?

Because my dad kept unsecured (and loaded!!!) guns in our house. And I messed with 'em.

Now, I don't know if that counts in the context of the study, because when it came to things that could get me killed (like guns or sex or our Corvette), my parents seemed to think that the best policy was to act like those things didn't exist, and God willing I'd survive to adulthood.

See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil -- and there will be no evil, right?

Surprise! Cancer can't even kill me -- much less sex, guns and fast cars. I guess I'm too surly to die -- Darwin be damned.

But I digress.

One thing the interviewee said was something to the effect that the study showed that many parents keep guns in the home under the premise of protecting their kids, but that the guns are actually a bigger risk to the kids' safety. He suggested that "education" could not mitigate that risk.

I wonder if they've done a similar study on AIDS and sex "education" ....

My question is: How can they make that assertion, since there's hardly any way to measure the degree to which a gun keeps kids safe? Do statistics even exist on crimes prevented by a gun-weilding homeowner? What about crimes that never happended because the perp knew the homeowner had a gun? God knows the MSM never reports those non-events. Since it doesn't bleed, it doesn't lead...

Look, I know I've made this point before, and I also know society as a whole isn't listening. Guns are dangerous. So are cars. And climbing trees. And swimming in the ocean. And mountaineering. LIBERTY IS NOT SAFE. But so what? We should just lock ourselves in closets so we can stay safe and die from boredom? To what degree are we willing to castrate ourselves in the interest of public-safety-activists-on-crack?

Tam makes a similar point today about how kids are safe from blowing off their hands, now that they can't play with chemistry sets anymore: http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/2006/05/politics-safely-stupid.html

I doubt our Founding Fathers spent much time wringing their hands about their kids playing with their guns. But that's probably because their 12-year-olds were out with the guns hunting rabbits for dinner.

Guns have been around for hundreds of years -- and I dare say that the idea of having a gun safe in the home is a more recent idea. Could it be that maybe - just maybe - kids no longer have a good grasp on exactly what a gun does? If kids spent more time having their shoulders beaten to hamburger by a Remington 870 while shooting skeet with Mom or having their little wrists sprained by shooting Dad's XD-40 while plinking at paper targets (instead of getting their ideas about guns from the lastest Tarantino flick) would we be having this problem?

News flash: Taking a kid shooting has a tendency to diminish curiosity which could lead to messing with the gun. Don't just tell the kid about it. Take 'em shooting. Wanna make sure they get it? Tape your own picture to a watermelon and make the kid blast it. (Hey, the kid may end up in therapy, but you'll get the message across ... and therapy's in vogue nowadays, anyway...)

Folks, we don't have a gun problem. We have much, much deeper problems with our society and how we've come to live our lives.

Yeah, the guns are dangerous. So grow a spine. As Americans, we're willing to run quite a bit of risk in order to enjoy our liberties. Take a kid shooting, and you may very well diminish the risk of the kid messing with the gun behind your back. But you'll never eliminate that risk. Tragedies happen. Let's not surrender our guns, butcher knives, sharp sticks and chemistry sets for the illusion of a safer society.

Anyway -- I guess I shouldn't have watched that steaming pile-of-excrement-excuse-for-reporting. Until this morning, I hadn't watched "American Morning" in a long, long time. Now I remember why.