“Around 7:30 p.m. on Wedmesday, officers responded to Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch where a girl was being treated for an injury to her hand,” sfgate.com reports. “The teen told officers she had found the revolver in a school bathroom then placed it in her backpack, where she kept it all day. The report did not provide the name of the school. When she returned home, “she was going to show the firearm to her grandmother and accidently shot herself in the hand.” Yes, well, it’s kinda hard to take this story at face value. First off, Antioch, California has some serious gang issues. Gangs often get girls to hold guns for them. The younger the better, legally speaking. Second, the mangled miss “found” a gun in a school bathroom? Third, she was “going” to show grandma the gun? And fourth . . .
Officers recovered the gun from the her home and booked her at a junevile hall. The girl already had an arrest record as well as a pending juvenile case.
So there you go. Still there is a lesson to be learned here . . .
GUN SAFETY. You know: all guns are always loaded, never point a gun at something you’re not willing to destroy (a.k.a., always keep a gun pointed in a safe direction), keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. And know your target as well as what’s beyond it. Even if the young, now-permanently disabled and disfigured teen was doing gang bidness, someone should have told her how to safely handle a firearm.
All parents should teach their children basic gun safety. It takes ten minutes – and constant, but easy reinforcement. To not provide basic firearms education to your children is deeply irresponsible, given the prevalence of firearms in American society. In fact, given that prevalence, you could say that all Americans are now gun owners, in some sense of the word.
OK, it’s a stretch, designed to justify my decision to award the girl’s ‘rents TTAG’s IGOTD hardware. But I stand by my assertion that all parents should “own” the gun safety issue for their children. That said, what are the odds that a 13-year-old girl with a rap sheet in Antioch California has two parents raising her? There’s your trouble, too.