Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!think!husc6!panda!genrad!decvax!decwrl!sun!falk From: falk@sun.UUCP Newsgroups: soc.singles Subject: Re: Keepin' a weapon around... Message-ID: <7754@sun.uucp> Date: Tue, 30-Sep-86 04:21:31 EDT Article-I.D.: sun.7754 Posted: Tue Sep 30 04:21:31 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 02:42:45 EDT References: <802@cuuxb.UUCP> <508@randvax.UUCP> <3020e2e0.46@apollo.uucp> <206@inuxa.UUCP> <586@zeus.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Lines: 42 > >Of course if you do have kids (married or single) then a > >lot more serious consideration must be given on where to keep a gun or > >if a gun should even be kept. > > Then there's the situation where the guy across the street > from me gave his wife a gun to protect herself (he works > nights). She kept it under her pillow in case of an intruder. > Her daughter forgot to say "Mommy" when she entered the room > having to go to the bathroom - she almost got blown away. > > One vote for NO loaded guns in the house with kids. I've just started reading Chuck Yeager's autobiograpy. In it, he mentions that when he was six, he and his older brother found a shotgun and shells in the house. They wound up killing their baby sister. What struck me as really weird was that after the funeral, instead of getting rid of all the guns in the house, their father simply took them aside and showed them how to use them properly. I remember a few years back, there was a newspaper article about a couple of 10 or 12 year-old kids who were tromping through the woods with shotguns. They went over a fence, and one of the guns had a hair-trigger and went off and shot the kid's friend. The kid responsible was so filled with remorse that he used the other barrel on himself and killed himself. It later turned out that the kid who was accidently shot survived. What really seemed strange was that the father of the kid who killed himself had himself been killed a month before. He was trying to show a teenage neighbor how safe guns were: he held a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger over and over again saying "would I do this if it was loaded?". Well it *was* loaded and he blew his brains out right in front of her. What struck home was that this kid would go out into the woods to play with a shotgun just a month after his father had been killed playing with a gun. Talk about evolution in action! That was one family that was totally incapable of learning from its mistakes. -- -ed falk, sun microsystems falk@sun.com sun!falk