No train No arm

[Chicahiro Ishida]

A 6 years old boy shoot and killed a classmate girl I read.
I felt a principle NO TRAIN NO ARM is needed.It is not only gun ploblem,but also knives as can be used for weapon, too.
"No train no Arm "is symple plinciple.To have or carry gun and knife need some license after course...In the past,the course was done well by family,especially father.But now,American cannnot expect family such a great duty.
In the course, student should learn how to and safety manners of gun and knife. And finaly, after test, students take an oath to use them right and for only justice not for crime,to get license.The course shall be before or after 10 years old,in primaly education program.
If not license,he or she must not touch gun and knife,pearents must tell it him or her.
For adult people,test and oach is enough if he or she was well trained by family or served in military.
After having license, if would like to carry concealed,one need to take more program as now some states do.

>All,if you are a menber of the NRA,please tell this idea!

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Chic Stone

 

[Gollnick]

The NRA already offers such a program. For no cost to your school district, they'll send a professional educator (whom they pay) to teach childred about basic firearm safety. For the younger children, this teacher will come in costume as "Eddie Eagle". It is really a good program.

The Sherwood, Oregon schools accepted this offer several years ago after two children found a loaded pistol in a field near their house (I'm not sure if they authorities ever did figure out who it belonged to or how it came to be in that field). The children played with the gun for several hours and finally showed their mother what they'd found. Fortunately, neither child had managed either deliberately or by accident to release the safety.

Bringing the NRA's Eddie Eagle program into the schools was highly controversial. We have since had two incidents in which children have avoided what could have turned into gun accidents. When asked why they did what they did in those situations, both children have replied, "Because that's what Eddie Eagle told me to do."

Nobody knows for sure how many guns there are in America. I've heard estimates like 15 million. If you live in America, there is a good chance that at some point in your life you are going to come into contact with a gun. If not properly handled, guns can be dangerous. So, it makes sense to teach people the basics of safe gun handling.

The other day, I heard a radio commercial, a public service spot, from our local electric utility cautioning against touching or approaching downed electrical wires. Overhead electrical wires are part of our lives. There are millions of miles of them in America. Most of the time, they're perfectly safe and we don't even thing about them. But, sometimes, they fall down. When that happens, they can be dangerous. We teach our children not to touch downed electrical wires. We even run radio spots to remind adults of these dangers.

Why not teach children about the dangers of guns? Why not run radio spots reminding adults of those dangers too?



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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.4cs.net/~gollnick

 

[JW]

Respectively, I have a problem with this way of thinking.
The responsibility of raising a child with healthy morals, values, and respect for life, falls on the family. NOT another government agency.
I don't know details, but I'm willing to bet that these elements are missing from this child's (the shooter's) home. This is a parental and societal problem. Not a problem to be solved by the government.
The government is not able to legislate solutions to problems such as this. (Posession of the weapon was clearly a violation of many laws already.)
And, we did not become a great nation by letting government agencies solve our problems. I agree, events such as this are a serious problem. But giving up our freedoms and responsibility to the United States or any other government, is unacceptable to me. BTW, I am a life member of the NRA and I frequently let them and my elected officials know how I feel.

 

[Gwinnydapooh]

Mr. Ishida--

That sounds all well and good. As noted above, the NRA is perfectly willing to run such safety programs and they've documented good effects where they do. The problem with the idea is that many of our leaders and many of our school personnel think that training kids in how to use a gun safely encourages them to use a gun unsafely. Don't try to understand it because it won't make sense no matter what you do--but that's how they feel, and they judge most things on feelings. I'm going to be a school teacher next year and I'm going to push for safety training every chance I get but I'm not optimistic. I will be a one-man minority in most places.

Besides, all the talk of more rules won't cut it. The gun was a stolen one that was left loaded and unattended in the so-called "flophouse" where the boy lived. Obviously his parents didn't give a damn who got hurt or killed. They broke a couple of laws to do this, so I don't see what more laws will do. The boy stole the gun from the flophouse and brought it onto school property, then brandished it, then shot someone. So he broke four laws; two weapon offenses, theft, and murder. He's only 6 years old and can't tell what he's done; he only knows, according to one person who talked to him, that it was "naughty." Responsibility rests solely with the parents. All in all, there are six violations of law in the paragraph above, three of them felonies. We've got all the laws we can use on this subject and they aren't fixing the problem.

I understand, Mr. Ishida, that you live in Japan. As such, maybe you see the laws in your country and low rate of murder and infer a causal connection. There isn't one. Think about your culture, not just your laws. Think about how Japanese society would deal with the parents of this boy, and then watch what happens to them here. That's the real difference.

 

[hso]

Ishada-san,

I respectfullely propose that regardless of whether such a system you describe had been in existance and was available for this child to have participated in, the parents have failed to properly and responsibly teach the boy the value of human life and to respect the power of weapons. These parents are at least as guilty for the death of the little girl as their son is. Such people would have neglected to teach their child responsible behavior regardless of any voluntary or mandatory programs.

Domo arigato,

Mike Crenshaw

 

[TANGUS]

The real problem IMO is society of the past 40 years. Parents have delegated the responsibility for raising their children (including instilling values and morales)to someone else. i.e., the government through welfare, in-laws, divorce courts and anyone else that would take over for them. It is not summation, IT IS FACT, that it takes a great deal of time and effort to raise children. Some people just flat do not wish to give up that time. (hence the rise of employment of nanny's, in-home housekeepers, and private boarding schools). Then there are those that can't afford the above, so they just let their kid run loose!

It's not an issue of more laws are needed, simply enforce the laws that are currently on the books and make people (parents and children) responsible for their actions. Some one or generation has to turn this around, but it'll take another generation to do it!

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Lead,follow, or get the hell out of the way!

 

[Matt Shade]

I agreee that guns aren't the problem lack of knowledge is the problem. If everyone knew gun safety there wouldn't be so many accidents involving guns. Cars can kill just as easily, thats why you have to go through drivers ed and pass a test.Almost everyone knows how to operate a car to some degree, so they aren't afraid of them and don't blame accidents on the cars. not very many people really know everything involved with owning and using guns. So they don't understand that accidents with them don't happen very often when they are used correctly. Its when they are used incorrectly that accidents happen.Or they are used by someone who wants to kill somebody, in that case they could do it with something else, they just chose the gun.
There is an unfortunate side to this story beyond the girl being killed. The boy who did the shooting's parents were not exactly on the right side of the law themselves. More than 30 stolen guns were confiscated from the house after the police did some investigating. The gun the boy used was not a legally bought and licensed handgun that his father owned, it was another stolen gun hidden in the house. Given the fact that so many guns were in the house, and the parents obviously did not have safe views on guns as they were stealing them and probably selling them to criminals to be used in crime. It was almost inevitable that the boy was going to do something like that.Who knows, his parents may have even talked about getting revenge or how cool it was to scare somebody with their gun. Supposedly the girl who was killed had gotten into some kind of fight or argument with the shooter the day before, so this seems to have a been a premeditated shooting.

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Fix it right the first time, use Baling Wire !

[This message has been edited by Matt Shade (edited 03-01-2000).]

 

[bladeguy21]

Hi all, Im new to this forum, but I would like to offer my $.02 worth.

There has been a real degredation of moral values among America's children. It would seem, at least to me, as a young adult... that the cause of such tragic violence is simply caused by the neglect of parents... either in watching their children, or in the installation of core moral values and principles, especially in relation to the use and abuse of dangerous devices, whether they be weapons, or those many dangerous household items and appliances. I was taught from an early age to respect things that can cause harm to me, and to others, and to learn how to handle such things properly. I tend to wonder whether its simply that some parents are not teaching this to their children, or whether they dont know that they need to. I was also instilled with the core moral principles that tell me that it is WRONG to kill somebody simply because you are angry at them. I guess it comes down to the fact that I do not blame the young child that committed the horrible atrocity of killing another, I blame those that failed to instill those values and principles that could have prevented the tragedy, and those that made a deadly weapon available to such a young child.

Andrew

 

[James Mattis]

Concerning guns, I would agree that it is terribly reasonable for the government to require the armed public to learn and follow rules on the safe and lawful handling of a standard soldier's individual weapon and other equivalent weapons such as "sporting guns." What government should not attempt is the general disarmament of the public, such as was done by the Tokugawa shoguns of Japan, to cement their power. That way lies tyranny.

It is good that honest citizens who have arms should be well trained in their use. Habitual criminals, of course, will not pay a lot of attention laws, and raising a small child in a den of thieves will have unpredictable results - bad or worse.

Licensing knives would be quite impossible. Every kitchen has knives in it, which are quite adequate for terminating a relationship that has gone sour, as well as for cutting up meat, fish, and vegetables.

Japan has a strict sword control law, which predated and was a precedent for Japan's gun control laws, and which mainly concerns traditional Japanese blades. Among other distinctions between swords and knives, a "sword" has a peg in the handle to retain the blade in the handle with a hard swing, while a traditional Japanese kitchen knife has a narrow tang that is held in the handle only by friction. A well-made "western" style chef's knife has no such disability.

Flophouses full of disreputable persons may actually have less cutlery around than a "normal" household.

And, since this is a highly political thread, we have a "politics" forum for it.


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001