Last night I read one of the most disturbing pieces of news I've seen in a very long time. An 8 year old boy, attending a Massachusetts gun exhibition promoted as family entertainment with his dad and brother, was given a loaded Uzi to shoot at a pumpkin. While his father was reaching for a camera, the recoil caused the boy to lose control of the gun and shoot himself, dead.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Because, in compliance with Massachusetts law, a certified gun instructor was present, there seemed, from the brief newspaper story, to be no thought on the part of authorities that anyone had behaved criminally in this situation. To me it seems that every adult involved was somehow culpable for this boy's death.
As disturbing to me as this story is the fact that I've neither seen nor heard one word about it today -- not on CNN, not on this blog (though I gather now that I missed some earlier posts) or any of the blogs I read, nada. Surely others are as saddened and disturbed as I am by the kind of craziness that would put a loaded Uzi in the hands of an 8 year old, or anywhere in the vicinity of a room full of children.
Have we given up on besting the NRA? Are we now in a place where anything goes where guns are concerned. How far gone is this country, really?