Parents who buy their children guns at all need to all be evaluated. There is seriously something wrong with giving children something whos intended purpose is delivering lethal force.
I don’t find it weird for hunting, but giving a child unrestricted access to firearms is insane to me given children are not able to assess risk the same way adults do.
Oh, I don’t mean temporary custody under controlled and hopefully educated circumstances, but those who hand it over completely. A kid simply does not need that power nor have the responsibility for full time custody.
Hell, the government wants people 18+ before they’ll hand someone a gun and let them go die for something…
Smoking and drinking age is 21. Maybe gun ownership age should be bumped up too.
Hell, the government wants people 18+
No, I’m pretty sure that was some ancient Christian pro-lifers who came up with that rule. Government would take people younger if they could.
Before he passed away, my kids’ grandfather bought all his grandkids their first 22 rifle. Some of the cousins were still infants but he wanted to buy them something. He was a prolific hunter and marksman. My kids guns all lived in the safe until they were old enough to shoot them, and now they live in the safe when not in use. You can give guns to kids all day long, that’s not the problem and the gun is not the problem.
You can give guns to kids all day long, that’s not the problem and the gun is not the problem.
The problem is not appropriately assessing whether the child in question she be allowed the gun. Are they responsible, are they going to use it for valid purposes. This holds true for, well, everyone always. A lack of reasonable regulation is the actual problem. I am glad you have responsibly managed the distribution and use of firearms for your children. We should do that for everyone.
If this heartwarming story of responsible gun ownership is actually true, Mr/Ms Anonymous Voice On The Internet — y’know, because I believe every anecdote I read on social media — you are probably one of <1000 people in 336,000,099 (the 2024 population of the United States).
“A lot of “adults” don’t seem to assess the risks either.”
Your frontal lobe on average fully develops at 25 and for some when they’re older.
That is when your brain stops really growing and developing, it’s not some threshold of social or intellectual maturity.
If anything, people become less adaptable, less open-minded, and less cooperative after that. It’s not something we get to lord over young people, it’s a mark against us olds for being less capable of growth.
I find it weird they don’t just lend a gun to their child for hunting. Why give them their own personal gun? What’s the point?
Hunting is a cultural thing for many, and you often start with a smaller caliber while you’re young and learning. I guess I would compare it to a parent buying their kid their first baseball/softball glove. Parents often pass down a love for sport, most just don’t involve killing stuff.
“Hey son, here’s a firearm, let’s go kill something, systematically eviscerate and skin it, and then consume its flesh while taking joy and pride in each step of the process. Oh, don’t ever do this to humans or dogs.” I dunno, seems pretty weird to me.
You’re loosely describing most of human history.
“Let’s take these plant babies and grind them into a pulp, drown it, let it be eaten by a bunch of tiny monsters until they fart enough gas, and then burn it” also sounds kinda weird. Welcome to the universe; shit’s a little whack.
What? How is that weirded than “let’s go to mcyd’s and get you some nuggets”
For me hunting is about connecting with the people who lived on the land for millenia before I came along.
Oh boy, wait until you hear about this type of animal called omnivores. They can survive off vegtable but they still hunt and eat meat because obviously they’re evil strange and un-natural.
I know you’re not referring to hunting rifles, but it is very common to give those as gifts to teenagers when they are old enough to get a hunting license. In some places that’s 12 years old.
My parents also made me take a course on gun safety tho…
And they wouldn’t let me use it unless it was with them…
So this lady definitely still deserves her sentence. Also, no kid needs and AR or a pistol.
Some of that stuff you mentioned needs to be mandatory IMO. I’m talking about gun safety lessons for all firearm owners.
It’s the pro-gun community that insists they shouldn’t be. They’ll literally send you death threats for trying.
Gun safety should be a mandatory class in education. Probably a multi-stage class starting with an age appropriate class in Elementary school, a more advanced class in Middle school to demystify and take some of the taboo cool factor out, and again in High school. Range time should be incorporated in High school, and maybe Middle school. We all know abstinence only education doesn’t work.
My dad is a gun collector, so I was around them my entire life, but gun safety was also part of my entire life. We understood what they were and what they could do. So if my friends ever said “can we see your dad’s guns?” It was always “no.”
That’s good, and I can relate to your experience growing up respecting firearms, but children should simply not be trusted to have access.
There have been many experiments in which children find a weapon and the parents who claimed their children knew better were horrified to see them handle the staged weapon.
Children simply don’t have the logical portion of the brain developed. Even in teenagers, their amygdala (emotionality, anger, fear response) is nearly fully developed, yet their prefrontal cortext (executive control, rational thinking, emotional regulation, thinking of future consequences) is still severely underdeveloped. [1]
In fact, the prefrontal cortext isn’t fully developed until our mid 20s, and possibly a few years longer for those of us with ADHD. [2] This is why teenagers display heightened risk-taking, are bad at controlling their emotions, restraining themselves, and thinking about the consequences of their actions.
Under supervision is one thing, but unsupervised access to a firearm is a patently bad idea. With that said, I did have access to a firearm (.22) and I acted responsibly as a minor (only used it for target practice). But I absolutely should not have had access to it.
In some places that’s 12 years old.
Whyyy? Hunting is a dangerous sport that is 100% not required that utilizes lethal weaponry. If a parent wants to take their kids hunting, they should be 100% responsible for them including having the license and owning the firearms. 16 seems like the bare minimum to allow children to engage with weaponry, but probably older to own.
There’s a huge difference between giving a child unrestricted access to a firearm, and taking them sport shooting in a controlled environment. I’ve helped with beginner shooting courses for kids in scouts. There is an adult with each kid, one round loaded at a time, etc. You can similarly control the environment hunting by using blinds, etc, where you oversee the use of the firearm, loading of round etc.
I’m not big into shooting, but from a safety perspective there are ways to hunt and sport shoot with kids in a very controlled way.
For families who participate in hunting and shooting sports, I can see giving the child their own gun, make it their responsibility to clean and maintain it, choose what optics or other accessories they put on it, etc.
I don’t support letting them have unrestricted access to it as a minor though. It should be locked up whenever it’s not in use under adult supervision.
I have a casual interest in guns, don’t currently own any but may someday when my budget allows (it’s pretty low on my priority list.) I do have a lot of friends who own guns though, many of them have had their “own” gun since childhood. All of their parents though were very strict about gun safety, none of them had free access to any guns or ammo until they were adults, and sometimes not even really until they moved out and took their guns with them because even as adults living at home with their parents some of them didn’t have the key/combo to the gun safe, so in a sense they still kind of had to ask for their parents’ permission if they wanted to take their guns out to go hunting or shooting into their 20s.
