[quote=“superking”]In the early 80’s catapults for kids were pretty big in the UK. They were glorified and they were aimed at us and they could kill. My parents only realised the deadly forced after I had been left alone and shot a bunch of stones up in the air and smashed a greenhouse of some dude down the road. Dennis the Menace had a catapult. And a gun. The catapult came with foam balls, but stones were readily available.
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when you say catapults, this is what comes in mind:
as for slingshots, I don’t think the kind that targets kids could kill. It can certainly blind a kid. If some company markets slingshots powerful enough to kill to children, then that company is also insane.
also, why buy a slingshot… just get some rubber bands and some twigs.
furthermore, that drawing looks nothing like Dennis the Menace… When I was a kid, I also aspired to be Dennis the Menace…
Household cleaner, rat poison, gasoline, a cattle prod, a pointy thing, an open flame, fireworks, butcher knives, medicine that looks like cherry candy.[/quote]
Ok. I still don’t think any of them are as potentially lethal as a gun (with the possible exception of rat poison in the hands of small children). Or fireworks, but they are tightly controlled, aren’t they?
Anyway, I’m not anti-gun but it’s hard to look at senseless deaths like this and not reflect on American gun culture more generally. The fact is that, as a simple rule, more guns equals more gun deaths, whether they be murders, accidents or suicides.
Given technology today, there is no need for an actual working gun that shoots bullets even for target practice. If you support the right to shoot at ranges, then have the ranges own, be responsible for, and insure their guns.
The only way to stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun!!!
I wonder what kind of stupid cliche (to a complicated problem) the NRA will come up with this time.
FBi stats in 2011:
In the US, there were 114,235,996 households.
There were 1,630,064 burglaries to residences (general category of unauthorized entry to a home)
This does not distinguish cases where residents were home, nor even more to the point cases in which there was contact between resident(s) and perpetrator.
Odds of your home being entered by someone, most likely when you are not there anyway: 1 in 116.
However the parents had 100% control over whether to bring this item into their home or not. There was no element of deception involved, and the gun did exactly what it was supposed to do. They therefore have 100% responsibility.
Should gun manufacturers make guns targeting the child market? I don’t see why, as a matter of fact the idea that such an object might possibly exist had never even as much as brushed the edges of my imagination until I heard about this incident, but why do they?
I think the culture exists on its own. No one is manufacturing it. It will be interesting to see how the company making these products reacts or is impacted by these events. I really doubt that they will be in the markets where they sell them. An interesting article on that here:
Gun ownership is a way of life in large parts of America. You can buy one of these in Walmart! I’ve never even touched a gun, but I don’t have a problem with responsible gun ownership in areas where people want it. Given that guns bought in one part of the country can easily be transported and misused in other parts, I think some form of national gun control legislation would be reasonable. But political realities in the US mean it is extremely unlikely to happen. The government can’t even get token restrictions on assault weapons enacted after a horrible incident like the one in Connecticut recently.
[quote=“antarcticbeech”]
Ok. I still don’t think any of them are as potentially lethal as a gun (with the possible exception of rat poison in the hands of small children).[/quote]
Perhaps, but my point is that the parental responsibility is still the same.
Like many things in the US that depends on state and local laws.
I don’t blame you for reflecting on it, and I agree it was senseless.
[quote=“superking”][quote=“Impaler”]
That works wonderfully when some psycho kicks your door in at 3am so he can rape you and your husband to death.[/quote]
Can men get raped to death?[/quote]
yes, if they are raped by reavers…
firefly references aside, yes, people get raped to death, see recent gang rapes in India.
The text below is excerpted from The Fathers, a 1938 novel by Allen Tate. It’s set in Virginia in, I think, 1861. It’s fiction of course, but it’s a carefully written work by a very bright, knowlegeable man, and I think it reflects the customs and values of that time and place.
The narrator is in his early-to-mid teens, and has fired a gun in the woods. His father has heard the shot, and rides towards the sound.
[quote]I had to face the music. I scrambled to my feet, rubbing a sore collar-bone; picked up the gun and leaned it against a fence rail; and put my elbows on the top rail, trying to look unconcerned.
The rider [the narrator’s father, a veteran of the Mexican War] had slowed down.
I began to feel uncomfortable. I said nothing, but looked solemn.
“Where is your artillery, general?” he said. I moved my head vaguely towards the gun which I knew he could barely see behind the rails of the fence. He changed his tone. “Now, son, did your brother [who is a grown man] tell you you might use his gun?”[/quote]
Values change over time, sometimes for the worse. I don’t know what to do about it.
But then again, in Old Yeller, Travis could shoot a lot of things, though Travis is at least 14.
Besides, just because people could do things back in the days don’t mean they should do it today. Otherwise what’s with the legal drinking, driving, smoking age?
But then again, in Old Yeller, Travis could shoot a lot of things, though Travis is at least 14.[/quote]
Yes, Travis’s father was away, so Travis’s permissive mother allowed him to be the family breadwinner and protector. But get this, people could be even more permissive than that in the old days. For example, sometimes, if a coal miner became disabled from breathing coal dust, two of his boys might be allowed to go down in the mines and play all day. Folks were very permissive toward children back then.
My point was that people back then generally took firearms very seriously. Are you saying that that doesn’t mean that they should do so today?
I have no problem with that, but I have limited faith in governments getting things right in that regard. For example, eighteen-year-olds were once considered mature enough to be forced to die in a war, but were not considered mature enough to vote about it. Talk about taxation without representation!
Accidents happen and people do stupid things, of course.
The problem with guns is that they are more lethal than knives and arrows and effective over a longer range, which is why they were invented of course.
So it is more stupid to let kids have them. It is only gun nuts who are so bought into gun culture that they can be blind to the obvious.
[quote]According to the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the 13-year-old boy shot his 6-year-old sister inside their residence in the 5900 block of Northeast Second Terrace just before 7 p.m.
“The siblings had been home alone when the teen found the handgun,” Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Dani Moschella said in a news release.
The girl was taken to Broward Health Medical Center, where she was listed Saturday in critical but stable condition. Moschella said the shooting appeared to be accidental and remained under investigation.
Latourrette, a heavy equipment operator, said he watched as paramedics carried the girl out of the house.“Her shirt was bloody, and you could see through a piece of gauze that she had a hole in her chest above the heart,” said Latourrette, who has two young daughters. “Her eyes were wide open in a blank stare, like she was in shock. I’ll never forget that look.”
According to the Children’s Defense Fund, one-third of all households with children younger than 18 have a gun, and more than 40 percent of gun-owning households with children store their guns unlocked.[/quote]
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What does Dennis look like if he doesn’t look like that then? 
