Your recent editorial about a 4-year-old boy showing up at a day care in Hallowell with a gun (“Our View: Armed 4-year-old shows guns are too easy to get,” May 11) totally misplaced the blame on the gun instead of the real culprit. I am not surprised because the point of your editorial, as always, is for stricter gun control instead of fixing the real cause of the problem.

What you left out of the column for some reason or another is something far more important the gun control. It is something I had as a kid: parental control.

I slept in a bed with an open gun cabinet at the end of the bed that contained several rifles, with the ammunition for all in an unlocked drawer.

I know very well what would have happened if I touched any of those items. Luckily, my father and older brothers taught me the safe use of those firearms.

Any excuse from the parents or guardians of children involved in similar instances does not sway the blame away from those adults.

I know they will say they work too many hours, are only a single parent and probably worse, some will claim they never knew the gun was in the house.

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Unfortunately, humans no longer follow Darwin’s theory on the survival of the fittest, and some blame that on bicycle helmets.

Someone once stated, “Stupidity is like a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit.”

Real gun control will happen only after someone finally fixes stupidity.

Lane Hiltunen is a resident of Windham.

 


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