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(CNN) -- A 9-year-old Arcola, North Carolina, boy shot and killed his mother before taking his own life, according to the Warren County Sheriff's Department.
Tyler Jones apparently killed his mother, 38-year-old Glenda Pulley, shortly after midnight Saturday morning, the department said. He left a suicide note in which he apologized for her death.
Authorities have not been able to determine a motive.
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I know that people who support private ownership and housing of guns would say that this was likely a case where the people who owned the gun did not take proper care of it -- left it out, or stored in an accessible place, or with an accessible key, or in a less than totally secure location. Therefore, it was their fault that the gun could be misused, and they paid the price of that failure.
They would likely also say that while they were sorry that this had happened, it does nothing to persuade them that tighter control of guns is warranted, because they feel that the right of self determination, as manifested by gun ownership, overrides the right of a person to sleep through the night.
And, of course, they would mention the Second Amendment, in terms that suggested it was clearly a black and white endorsement of gun ownership by the masses. They might nod approvingly toward Tom DeLay's recent comment at the NRA convention regarding the usefulness of having armed friends.
They are sometimes the same people who say that the best defense against a hostile armed person is the unsuspected presence of another armed person.
Amazingly, the members of this alien race have the same DNA that I do.
4 comments:
It is a great tragedy....people have died, one a child. And you try to make a political statement out of it.
Clearly the only use of a gun is for killing. Every policy, regulation, law, and consideration has to start from that premise. This might seem self evident, but although many more people die from car "accidents", the primary use of a car is not to kill people. Make the cars safer, fewer people will die. Make the guns safer, no change. Remove the guns....there may be a change. Educate the people...there may be a change.
I was a range safety officer for many years, and have the love of the smell of gunpowder out of my system. They are tools to me....like a computer or a table saw. Canada enacted a Federal law that stated that all guns, registered or otherwise, must be in a gun safe when un-attended. Accidental discharge incidents now are almost all confined to Police....
But I am not getting complacent or holier than thou! Canada could become as violent as anywhere in the world over night with the right stimulus.
My personal take on this...there is almost no difference between Canada and any state in the United States, in any meaningful way. However,here there is no "culture of fear" in Canada. I believe that this "culture of fear" created mostly by your media and special interest groups like police organizations results in a "culture of violence". Fear of the terrorist got your President elected....again! Fear of the immigrant is shutting down your borders to trade. Fear of criminals causes people to pay for huge police forces which drain your tax base. Police organizations have a vested interest in making sure they are useful...so they lobby for funds and release statistics on crime on a daily basis.
The nation of North Korea is heavily armed due to this self same culture of fear.
That there is a reasonable basis for that fear is irrelevent...fact is, it is there, and people won't give up their guns as long as they are afraid. If they won't give up their guns, then you better make sure they know how to use them and know how to store them.
The only way Australia got rid of all their guns was to provide safety for their citizens. That means enough money has to go to the police forces to accomplish that task. Same with Britain....
Nah, gun control by itself won't work. What you need to do is control your media. Fewer stories about car chases and break ins, more stories about puppies and breakthroughs in medicine. How do you do that? Simple....letters to the editor...cancel subscriptions to lurid papers, buy papers who report good news....simple stuff really. It'll take awhile. But you gotta repair the foundation....
I wonder if blogs might be the beginning of this process....
Political statement? I suppose so. Would it be better to ignore it? Or only to talk about it to people I physically meet?
I spent a little time once talking to a woman who was an advocate of guns, and I learned from that series of conversations that people who like guns tend to be people who believe in self-reliance, that quintessential American virtue. They do not like the idea of relying on others to protect them, but would rather keep that ability firmly in hand. I understand that -- I just don't agree with it. She did say that I appeared not to be the normal gun-grabber that she associated with my kind of views, so I suppose there was some two-way communication going on there.
You're right about the media. They don't start it, though. They take whats popular, or what could be popular, and shine a spotlight on it. I doubt they could glorify what isn't already liked, at some level.
I am not ashamed of my country, but I am ashamed of our attitude toward personal weaponry. I hope we grow out of it.
One of the crazies.....
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north367.html
Well, he certainly does seem to have some pretty fierce views.
Genocide doesn't happen if people have guns? Perhaps. It seems to make sense. You defend against the threats you find believable. If you think genocide is likely, or even simply plausible, you take steps against it.
I think that's the view of some people who are not just gun fans, but gun nuts. But even they don't scare me -- much.
What scares me is the certifiable crazy who's taken advantage of gun law leniency to accumulate an arsenal, and today's the day he's decided to use it.
What scares me is the kid who can get his hands on an uncontrolled gun, and todays the day he's taking it to school to slaughter his classmates and teachers.
Show me how to keep that from happening -- to keep the gun away from the crazy, from the homicidal kid. I suspect that the NRA would say the first is a community health problem, and the second, an individual gun owner's problem, and neither are the government's problem.
I disagree.
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