Should parents be charged when a child uses their gun?

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[Dylan]

[Darkhorse]

[dontworrybehappy]

I grew up shooting guns. My dad had, and still has, a guncase full of guns. Everything from a venerable Marlin 22 to the 30-30 cannon. I shot everything in the safe as a child except the 30-30. After shooting my 20 gauge as a 13yo boy and my dad saying "the recoil of that 'little gun' is nothing compared to the 30-30", I had no desire to go near that cowboy rifle. As a 13yo, I thought the 20 gauge had a good bit of pop. I remember as a 6yo boy walking in the woods squirrel hunting with my dad, he had his 12 gauge and I had a BB gun. By the time I was 9 he let me carry a 410 that had one shell in it that I was too scared to shoot because I was little as a child and that gun put me on my butt the first time I shot it. By the time I was 13-14 I had my 20 gauge and we were hunting squirrel, rabbit and turkey. On the side, we also hunted beaver and nutria. I've killed far more beaver than any other animal. Nutria would be 2nd, and I've shot one squirrel in my life. We always went in the woods to ride the 4-wheelers, we didn't care if or when we ever killed anything. And if we did shoot something, we'd just give the game away to the first hunter we ran into back at the station.

There was no question that I was not allowed to go near the guncase without an adult present, nor did I want to. But we didn't treat guns as evil things, just treat them with respect and use common sense when handling them and everything should be hunky dory.

And amazingly, nobody got shot in my house.

[exploited]

[eynon81]

[dontworrybehappy]

Oh dude, a buddy of mine who owns large caliber military grade weapons like the FN FAL, etc shot my dads 30-30 2 times and he got up from the shooting bench, handed me the gun, and said you can have this damn thing. My dads has recoil that is unmatched. I had my eye too close to the scope one time and it about cracked open my skull.

[exploited]

[eynon81]