Using A Tragedy To Push the Gun Control Agenda

Last Monday, August 25, 2014, a nine year old girl was at a gun range near Las Vegas being taught to shoot a Uzi gun by an instructor. She lost control of the gun and the instructor was shot in the head, killing him.

This tragedy was immediately grabbed by the gun control fanatics and all kinds of claims were made. The girl’s parents took her to the range as a present, and the instructor had been trained in teaching firearms use. I am sure the girl is traumatized and all involved would do anything to have kept it from happening.

Many have blamed the girl’s family, claiming they should never have allowed her to shoot, and the gun range for allowing young shooters to fire guns. Demands range from banning guns to not allowing kids to shoot guns to closing gun ranges.

Regardless of what you think about families making decisions for their children, and what you thing about guns, tragedies happen. Not just with guns, but with everything in life. There is no way to stop them but gun tragedies are treated differently by those that hate guns.
In 2011, the last year I could find information, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports 677 people killed on bicycles in the US, and about 65 of them were 14 years old or younger. That is more than one child killed each week. Yet there are no calls for banning bicycles, not allowing kids to ride them or closing bicycle shops.

Some claim guns are not needed by anyone in the US. Neither are bicycles. Some claim guns are only made for killing people. Go to the Griffin Gun Club during one of our many shoots and you will see hundreds of folks using guns, and none of them are using them to kill people.

This is the first time something like this tragedy has ever happened. Many claim thousands of children are killed each year by guns, In 2010 1544 “children” eighteen years old or younger were killed by guns. No report on how many 17 and18 year old gang banners were in that number. And no mention of the number of kids killed by drive by shootings where bullets are fired at houses by gang members with illegal guns.

Life is dangerous. There is no way to remove all dangers. But don’t single out guns just because you fear or don’t like them.