TanDL
Here are a few studies that show that a majority of kids cannot resist guns and there are others out there via Google. I’m sure there are some kids who can resist as in the case of CM, but they are more anomalies.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132159&page=1
Hardy MS, Armstrong FD, Martin BL, Strawn KN. A firearm safety program for children: they just can’t say no. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 1996; 17 :216 –221
Connor SM and Wesolowski KL. “They’re too smart for that”: predicting what children would do in the presence of guns. (Electronic article.) Pediatrics 2000; 111 :e109-e114
Jackman GA, Farah MM, Kellerman AL, Simon HK. Seeing is believing: what do boys do when they find a real gun? Pediatrics 2001; 107 :1247 –1250
Hardy MS. Teaching firearm safety to children: failure of a program. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2002; 23 :71 –76
http://www.montclair.edu/Detectives/curriculum/docs/5.4art.doc
There WILL be a percentage of adults who don’t store weapons responsibily and there WILL be a large percentage of children in homes with guns that will figure out how to get to those guns. This much we know to be true! So how do we preserve our freedoms and cut down on gun death and injury by and of kids?
Maybe by taking lessons from other activities we limit to adults… alcohol, driving, etc., and the laws around how we do that. Of course we won’t be able to stop it all. But maybe, just maybe we can start diminishing the numbers that shock us each year and maybe we can keep a few more guns out the hands of the mentally ill… and maybe, just maybe, we can begin to turn the tide on this problem. We have to start somewhere. I would like to very much to remove the image in my head of 6 year old little kids being gunned down in their classrooms at school.