Stunning. The Halloween night shooting of Kristen Burnette means that for the third time in less than two years, a 13-year-old Columbia County girl has been shot to death by a Columbia County boy. In each case, no adults were in the home at the time, and the boy was using a weapon taken from an absent adult.
In all three cases, families and friends on both sides have been devastated, and the broader community is stunned. Whatever can be done to prevent such tragedy clearly isn’t happening.
One thing that should be done: Introduce gun safety to children.
This isn’t about teaching kids how to point and shoot a gun. It’s already abundantly clear that firing a weapon is entirely too easy. What’s badly needed is something like the National Rifle Association’s Eddie Eagle gun safety program, which teaches kids such basic information as to assume every gun is loaded - and to leave them alone if not under adult supervision.
Obviously, these cases demonstrate that teens shouldn’t be left in a home unsupervised, that inquisitive kids shouldn’t poke around in other people’s belongings, and that no one should point a gun at someone unless they intend to shoot them.
But they also demonstrate just how fragile and fleeting life can be. This must not happen again – and it’s up to adults to see that it doesn’t.
Respect for human life and supervision
The experts now tell us that the adolescent brain is not developed until 25. That their frontal lube does not properly understand long term consequences. Tell this to Uncle Sam and the DMV. Adolescents cannot be held to the responsibility level of an adult. Sadly 25 does not insure adult behavior.
Respect for human life that comes for respect for the creator of life is sadly missing. The reprogramming of the minds of children by mass media to constant violence has a part. Then is just a matter of the instrument of death. Curiosity about death. What happens when a real person is shot or stabbed?
Do we care enough to "train our children up in the way they should go"? Or do concede their upbringing and moral training to the TV or the federal government. Allowing the adults to continue to be children.