Once upon a time (or when I was child), my father allowed me to hold a .22 rifle in my hands and shoot at tin cans on a canal bank. That was some 35 or more years ago so I expect that things have changed. It was also a very "controlled situation".
Parents today have more responsibilities (401k’s, child seats, Internet firewalls and Net Nanny’s) to attend to. Children certainly have more distractions (Nintendo’s, Home PC’s and IPods) too. We also use more crutches or excuses for not being accountable for our actions than there are letters in the alphabet (i.e., ADD, ADDHD, BMP, OCD etc).
Somewhere during these years that passed, the distinction between “gun” and “toy” was lost for a lot of us. Computers have turned fantasies into very realistic games and ordinary tools have become weapons of choice. We use cars run down enemies in these games (Grand Theft Auto?) now, we do more than just race around in virtual worlds. When things go wrong or not exactly as planned, we just hit a few keys and the entire world is “reset”. You start again at the beginning or at some predetermined starting point, so that you might improve the experience. No apologies are required; after all, it isn’t real, it's just a game. Right?
Walking into a public place (malls, theatres, and convenience stores) today involves some exposure to video arcades that provide customers (children and so-called adults) with games that reduce firearms (and automobiles) to “toys”. Is this progress, a meaningful expression or venting of emotions or is it just another way to stoke our society’s problems? It's not like there are any real adults to provide the players of these games with any constructive context to what is being played (or to keep the obviously too young to understand away).
I was introduced to firearms in a completely different context. Guns were never used on anything you didn’t want to eat or use as a target. Guns were most certainly not toys. I never had a plastic or toy gun. My brother and I were issued our first shotguns when we were 12 years old. Our natural curiousities for firearms was satisfied at an early age. It was understood that we didn’t have to be careless but once and we’d lose our hunting licenses for life. If we shot it, we had to eat it (warts and all). Life and the rules of it were simple. One should be held accountable for their actions. We understood that we would be held responsible for whatever happened downrange of our targets too.
We were brought up in an environment (a home) where guns were not things to be played with. Guns were used for hunting or for self protection. Cars were something that got you from point “a” to point “b”, (some were just faster than others) and if you were lucky they were pretty enough to get you some extra attention. The results of improper handling of firearms (or the cars) were more “real” then, not to mention permanent and painful. Death was not something that was dismissed or "made right" with an apology. We fully expected to get a bill (and to pay) for every mistake we made. If we erred it was on the side of caution. “I’m sorry” just didn’t “cut it”.
Today we have generations of individuals who’ve never owned a real gun that associate firearms with toys. They don’t eat (or are forced to) what they shoot at either. Persons who have no understanding of firearms are allowed drive cars and kill persons just as dead as if they’d been shot too. The excuses are all pretty much the same and just as lame when a fatality occurs. “Sorry”, “didn’t mean it”, “it was his fault too”, “I was drunk” or “he wasn't raised to know any better” when it comes to explaining away the actions of the perpetrators. They come up all too often. Meanwhile prison populations grow… and motive seems fueled by equal parts opportunity and ability to avoid capture/accountability.
I understand that life is not always fair, and that not all of us born into wealth, endowed with a sense of situational awareness, normal depth perception or the kind of character that demands that we do what is right as opposed to avoid wrong. We can’t blame the demise of our society on the tools we use (or misuse). Our misdeeds are not the fault of the guns, the cars, the computers or the video games that we keep or play with. These "things" are only tools. The problems of our society are not the prisons, our parents or the judicial system. The values we encourage in our populace or in ourselves are what dictate where we end up in the “food chain” (manager/legislator, worker/constituent, retiree/consultant, or prisoner/ward). When persons rely on lame excuses and whining to explain their actions and avoid personal accountability should we allow them to propagate or rule?
