A Pink Gun Killed Him

A child picked up a pink gun, thought it was a toy, too cute to be dangerous, and is now dead, killed by that innocent appearing firearm.  I have previously posted my feelings about pink guns.  My quibble was not that they looked too cute, but rather that it was entirely inappropriate, even gruesome, for a breast cancer foundation, which is dedicated to saving the lives of women who have breast cancer, to have its name associated with a gun.  It seemed to me that they were entirely off message with that association.  Owning a gun puts you at roughly a 10 fold increase for dying of gun violence.  Those statistics cross all socio-economic classes.  They do not just apply to people living in poverty, of people who are involved in the drug trade.  They apply to all of us—some are more likely to die by accident, some by suicide, and some by murder, but the risk that you put yourself under is the same, no matter what color your skin is, where you live,  or how much money you have.  So why would an organization dedicated to saving lives encourage the purchase of an item that would increase their chance of being killed?  Don’t wait for the cancer to kill you, buy a gun now!  You control your fate!  Only it turns out that you do not.

Now we have another dead child in the news.  What is the bigger tragedy?  That Tmorej Smith, a South Carolina 3 year old boy, was shot accidentally with a pink gun that he and his sister are presumed to have thought was a toy, or that if it wasn’t for the mass shooting of school children in Connecticut in December we wouldn’t even hear this story.  The truth is that this happens all the time.  The tragedy is that it ceased to be news, and that it took someone killing a classroom full of children for our country to even pay attention to it.

This death was entirely preventable.  It highlights the folly of dolling up weapons that kill people—it is a highly lethal weapon and it should look like one.  If you feel it is a given that you will own a gun, then at the very least we should require gun owners to pass safety testing, and to maintain their weapons in a safe manner.  They infringe on the rights of others with irresponsible gun safety practices.  Gun locks and keeping weapons unloaded and out of the hands of non-gun owners is a must.  Gun owners should be qualified and tested on a regular basis, just like drivers are.  They should be required to control their weapons and keep them out of the hands of non-licensed folks.  Why is that even up for debate?