More Thoughts on "Gun Stupidity"

I've been thinking more, about the newspaper column discussed at length here...

I don't know what's worse, the fact that the kid died, the fact that his parents (or whoever his guardians were) most likely didn't teach him any kind of respect for guns and the power contained in them, or the fact that some big-city candy-assed newspaper columnist is using this tragedy as a platform on which to push yet more restrictions on the freedoms of Americans, with enough straw men to fill every barn across the fruited plain a hundred times. This kid's death could have been prevented, but not by taking my guns away, or anyone else's, for that matter. They still don't know whether the kid died by his own hand or by someone else's, as far as I know, but if indeed it was an accident, as it sometimes is, then this kid's blood is on the hands of whoever raised him, as they obviously didn't teach him about guns, or about it being wrong to go digging through other people's drawers. As cold and callous as that might sound, I remember when I was 14. I minded my own business because I was always afraid of being discovered, legitimate fear or not, because I knew what would happen if my meddling was revealed -- I'd have gotten my tail end beat. And I was not too much of a gunnie back then, but I'd handled them before and certainly had respect for what they could do, enough that even if I saw one, I wouldn't touch it unless a trusted adult was around. I hate that the kid died, I really do...but I hate it more that guns and gun ownership have gotten such a social stigma in some places in this country that kids aren't even taught about them by their parents, let alone the schools. It's not the fault of the Founding Fathers, the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, the Gun Owners of America, (or, for that matter, the gun owners of America) or any other pro-gun people or organizations that this kid is dead. It's the fault of groups like The Organizations Formerly Known as Handgun Control (yes, Sarah and Jim Brady, my finger's pointin' at YOU!) and The National Coalition to Ban Handguns (hi, Michael Beard and Casey Anderson!) and the Violence Policy Center (take a bow, Josh Sugarmann and Tom Diaz!), and people like John Grogan who only look at the bad things that are done with guns and do their level best to minimize the good and nurture that aforementioned social stigma, no matter how many lies, distortions, manipulations of the facts, and intellectually and logically bankrupt emotion-driven arguments they have to use to do it. Damn them. Damn them all.