Posted on 08/04/2006 8:10:39 AM PDT by 2banana
John Grogan | Time to unload on gun stupidity
By John Grogan
Inquirer Columnist
The funeral, all these years later, sticks with me.
There had been an accident involving two boys and a loaded handgun, and I had arrived early for the service. Outside, the undertaker paced, waiting for the family to arrive, and a priest smoked a cigarette, ready to pray. Inside, I stood alone beside a small casket holding an 8-year-old boy, shot through the forehead by his best friend.
The details of the death should have been shocking, but they were numbingly familiar: yet another gun brought into a home for protection, only to be found by curious children.
The boy's name was Ronnie Diaz, and I stood over his simple pine box, thinking it was a school day and he should be in class, learning about rain forests and fractions.
The boy's teachers should have been in school, too, believing in the future. But here they were, arriving red-eyed to say goodbye.
That funeral was in Florida in 1996, but I have been thinking about it a lot these past couple of weeks as history repeated itself yet again, this time 30 miles east of Pittsburgh at the home of a popular state legislator.
Sen. Bob Regola (R., Westmoreland) was in Harrisburg with his family July 21 receiving the Legislator of the Year Award from the Pennsylvania Sheriff's Association.
A boy and a gun
He had left a key to the house with a 14-year-old neighbor boy who was pet-sitting. According to police, the boy found Regola's unsecured 9mm pistol. The boy's body was found the next morning in a woods behind the house, a single gunshot wound to the head, the gun beside him.
Investigators still have not determined whether the death was an accident, suicide or homicide, a state police spokesman said yesterday. District Attorney John Peck has said Regola will not likely face criminal charges.
This much is certain: Another child found another gun. And the drumbeat of senseless loss goes on, resonating across the American landscape.
Regola, a member of the National Rifle Association, surely is asking himself painful questions in the aftermath of the death. What if he had kept the gun in a locked case? What if he had secured it with a trigger lock? What if he had removed it from the house for the weekend, knowing an unsupervised teenager would be there?
What if the father of three simply had decided a home with children is no place for lethal weapons?
Perhaps Louis A.J. Farrell would be alive today instead of a statistic.
Is the right to bear arms really worth this price? The price of our children's blood? Blood on the streets of North Philadelphia? Blood in the woods behind the home of a respected member of the legislature?
Someone tell me, please, what right are we protecting? The right to bear unbearable grief? What freedom? The freedom to place ourselves and our loved ones in needless peril?
A national embarrassment
When it comes to controlling guns, Pennsylvania is a national embarrassment. Our legislature proudly refuses to place even the most superficial of restraints on gun buyers and owners.
After a suicidal man bought a shotgun at a Horsham Wal-Mart in 2003 and shot up his former workplace before killing himself, I tried an experiment. I walked into a Bucks County Wal-Mart and tried to buy a shotgun. By answering a few rudimentary questions and submitting to an instant background check, I had my gun - or would have had I agreed to pay. The entire process had taken 27 minutes.
No required safety courses, no cooling-off periods. No trigger locks. Not even a limit on how many guns one person can buy in a month. Insanity.
I know I will hear from the gun nuts and firepower freaks, and they will scream the same old bellicose rant. I'm tired of hearing it.
I'm tired of standing over coffins. Of seeing schoolchildren caught in the crossfire and little boys killing playmates. Of teenage pet-sitters found with bullet holes in their heads.
This state has a problem its political leaders are happy to ignore. Now, that problem has come home to roost, right at the doorstep of a gun-supporting lawmaker. How many more wake-up calls will it take?
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Post a question or comment for John Grogan at http://go.philly.com/askgrogan. Or by e-mail: jgrogan@phillynews.com.
Since one child under 10 drowns annually for every 11,000 pools and one child under 10 each year is killed by a gun for every 1 million guns, according to research outlined in the book "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side to Everything," by Steven D. Levitt - swimming pools are 100 times more dangerous than guns.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/related/79388.php
And according to the National Safety Council, in 1995 there were about 30 fatal gun deaths of kids aged 0 to 4 and fewer than 40 of kids aged 5 to 9.
Any parent knows that a single child's death is unspeakably tragic. Yet the number of toddlers who die from gun accidents is smaller than the number who die from drowning in buckets. And it's much lower than the 500 who die in swimming pools.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/06-01-99a.html
I will be waiting for your editorial on how we should next ban swimming pools. How they should all be filled in or torn down. Is having swimming pools in this country really worth all these deaths to these kids? Someone please tell me, why are protecting fun summer days? Is there a right to unbearable grief? What freedom? The freedom to splash around and play “Marco Polo” and put our loved ones in needed peril?
And why have guns? Well, conveniently ignoring the Right to Bear Arms is enshrined in the US Constitution – you know, the same document protects has the Freedom of the Press, guns do save lives and prevent crime every day. According to data collected by the anti-gun National Alliance Against Violence, handguns are used about 645,000 times a year for protection against crime. Separate polling, by researcher Gary Mauser, finds that guns of all types are used about 691,000 times annually for protection.
http://home.speedsoft.com/theashes/koppel.html
And I have never seen a pool stop a mugging or a rapist.
Best Regards,
2banana
Freedom of the Press is a relic of a era long ago...let's ditch it. - sarc
did you post this question to him via
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/john_grogan/qa_forum.html ?
id love to see:
a. if he'd actually post this question on his web page
b. how he'd answer it
I would say that the exact opposite is true. It's one of the few states in the country that ISN'T a national embarrassment.
I guess that will be the last book of his I'll buy. (Marley and Me)
"This much is certain: Another child found another gun. "
Yeah becasue some idiot left a loaded gun where an unsupervisd juvenile could get it.
And by the way, as you point out, kids die everyday from auto accidents, pool drownings, drug overdoses, diseases, etc.
Its sad, but its a part of life.
Liberals want the government to guarentee that everybody who wakes up in the morning will be alive to fall asleep that night. Even God can't do that.
Yet to achieve the unachievable they are willing to attack every right and freedom that we formerly enjoyed in a once free society.
And if that right is closely associated with traditional America - the America of a past when criminals were eliminated with ropes and bullets instead of supported by tax dollars and protected by attorneys, when attacks on American citizens by criminals and foreign hostiles were met with lead and steel, when men acted and thought like men instead of through their "feminine selves", that right is all the more targeted by morons like this individual.
Among other things, your right to publish drivel like this.
The safest place for a loaded handgun is in a holster, on its owner's hip. Too bad so many places forbid this life-saving measure, forcing people to leave them at home where they could get stolen, or worse, found by a child with tragic consequences.
It's probably Gary Kleck you're thinking of, not Gary Mauser. Are you getting him confused with Tom Mauser, the rabidly anti-gun father of a slain Columbine kid?
What. A. Mindless. Moron. This is what happens when schools don't teach people how to think, only to "feel," and when all of society seems to be geared toward feminizing boys and men.
I'm tired of standing over coffins. Of seeing schoolchildren caught in the crossfire and little boys killing playmates. Of teenage pet-sitters found with bullet holes in their heads.
Grogan, do you ever go to the funerals of people killed in ordinary muggings, or in home invasions, or do you reserve your funeral time only for the sensational cases, the ones that allow you to emote and to condemn those who have decided to take responsibility for themselves and their families? Do you ever even consider the fact that the possession and use of firearms for self-defense has, and will continue to, save far more lives than are lost through accidents (which, BTW, have declined quite a lot over the decades)? I know the answers, but the questions need to be asked.
Hey, Grogan, you want my guns? Come and get 'em...YOU, YOURSELF, not some guy that you've hired to do your dirty work on my tax dollars.
Gee, I wonder if this gentleman has ever bought a car. I don't recall ever having a background check or receiving any special training.....and yet thousands of children are killed every year by cars.
Gee, I wonder if this gentleman has ever bought a car. I don't recall ever having a background check or receiving any special training.....and yet thousands of children are killed every year by cars.
Obviously your right to be a naive bleeding heart.
Well then, JG, maybe you shouldn't be dancing on them so much.
What a dumb bastard.
I will be waiting for your editorial on how we should next ban swimming pools. How they should all be filled in or torn down. Is having swimming pools in this country really worth all these deaths to these kids? Someone please tell me, why are protecting fun summer days? Is there a right to unbearable grief? What freedom? The freedom to splash around and play “Marco Polo” and put our loved ones in needed peril?
Indeed. How many parents walk in to the local pool store every summer and buy a pool? By answering a few rudimentary questions and submitting to an instant credit check (or submitting a credit card) they have their pool. No required water safety courses. Are the owners of these pools certified in CPR? And how many actually lock up their pool to keep not only their own children safe, but those in the neighborhood as well?
Spot on post, 2banana.
Funny, that's how I feel about gun phobics wetting their pants over firearms
And more schools need to teach the NRA's Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program.
Bang
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