To The NRA: When A Child Uses A Gun It Is Your Fault

Law enforcement agents say they believe a six-year-old child accidentally shot and killed himself over the weekend. According to the County Sheriff, the boy went inside his home, found the gun in the bedroom, and started playing with it when it fired, striking him in the head.

As a parent, I dread the thought of my sons finding a gun at a friend’s house. Suddenly the cowboy romanticism of protecting a family becomes tragic. No one ever means for death to occur. But macho fetishes present guns as our salvation. So we arm ourselves against the evils of the cul de sac without realizing that we are the greatest danger to our children. It is our fascination with guns transforms a deadly object into something cool.

Featured Image via Pixabay. available under Free Public Domain
Featured Image via Pixabay. available under Free Public Domain

So what do we expect when a child finds his parents idolized object? Another child’s eulogy is written because we have a fateful romantic delusion about protecting our family with a gun. So hearts are broken and words become dry in our mouths as we try to offer our condolences. Sadly our homilies fail to capture the loss of a child as each word seems to revolve around prematurity. While we struggle to write our eulogies, death lurks about, mocking our inability to find the words to describe the life of a child. So great anguish is articulated in rehashed anecdotes of how:

“He was a good little boy.”

“She was always loving.”

In tragedy, liability must be attributed. Naturally we blame the parents because it’s easy to pass judgment on their negligence. We blast them for not practicing proper gun safety while ignoring the absurd perception of safe firearms.

But I don’t want to blame the parents for neglect. Blaming the parents only diverts attention from the real perpetrators who use fear to sell instruments of death. Because while we are looking for the right words or criticizing the grieving, members of Congress, Fox News, and the NRA remain silent in a heartless apparition of feigning respect. When we do attach blame to the NRA we are told that our grief is misplaced. The grief of losing a child should not infringe on a basic American Right. So we listen to a homily of lies from NRA puppets like Wayne Lapierre.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

In the hands of a good person, a gun can only be a protector of the innocent. Except if those hands belong to a child. Suddenly a curious child leaves this world so a select few can make a profit.

It hurts to read about the premature death of a child because he found a gun. It’s painful listening to people who don’t care boldly offer condolences while the rest of us try search for the right words to say. It’s unnatural. We aren’t supposed to find the words to express our sentiment after the loss of a child. Our words inevitably fall flat because we don’t stand collectively and proclaim, “Never again!”

It is time to focus on the protagonists of fear and blame the NRA and certain members of Congress for valuing guns over children. Nothing is more evil brushing over the life of a child so a select few can make a profit. Our rage cannot be distributed in all different directions. We need to focus and point to the NRA, Congress, and Fox News and say if a child is killed by a gun then it is your fault.

Featured Image Via WideOpenSpaces

I am a regular guy from Florida who thought he was following his French wife on a one year trip to Paris so that she could finish her Master's Degree. Seven years and a child later, I am still there. I share unique experiences and observations of being an American Dad in Paris on my blog, American Dad in Paris. You can also catch me on Facebook