Child with a Gun

[Bullgrit]

I had a shocking experience yesterday that I thought I'd share with you here.

From my blog:


We dined at a pizza buffet yesterday for lunch. Just a usual Sunday noon, but the restaurant wasn't very busy. We're sitting there eating our pizza and salads, and I happen to see a family come in the front door and walk up to the register. The family is a father, mother, probably 10 year old son, and a maybe 4 or 5 year old son.

The younger boy is carrying a gun. A full-size, black, 9mm Beretta pistol. The first thought to come to mind was, "Holy crap!" As one part of my brain was planning how to get the family out of the restaurant, another part noticed how the kid was carrying the gun. He was waving it in one hand, absent mindedly, just toying with it as a young child tends to do. There is no way a 4 or 5 year old child could wave a real pistol around like that---a real gun is much too heavy for that.

When I first noticed it, the child was about 15 feet away. I was packed into my seat between family members, and my 6 year old was between me and the pistol-packing child. Within a couple seconds, the child came to about 10 feet away, and I saw the muzzle of the gun had no bore (hole down the barrel).

It definitely wasn't real, but it looked real. Very real. I've handled, carried, and fired real guns before, and it fooled me. Had an adult been carrying that thing, I would have acted to get my family out of the restaurant as quickly as possible. If the child had come closer than 10 feet, I would have snatched the gun out of his hand.

As it was, we watched the child wander around the restaurant for several seconds until his parents finished at the register and went to a table at the back. He was twirling and flipping the pistol the whole time.

His parents: what absolute morons. What the hell were they thinking? Letting a 4 year old walk in a restaurant with a real-looking pistol?

We left within a couple minutes of that family entering. I kind of wish I had done or said something; but what could I really do or say? Besides, I had my family with me and needed to get my kids out. And what if the kid was playing with a toy pistol because his father had a real one? Too many weird variables to contemplate in that situation.

I'm not a anti-gun guy. I love guns. I love to hold guns, I love to shoot guns, I own a couple guns (currently stored safely in the attic). But I say you never let a 4-5 year old play with a toy gun. A kid needs to learn the basics of civilized behavior before you give them a toy to simulate hard-core violence. (A 4-5 year old may not have learned to not hit, kick, or bite, yet.) And even when a child is old enough to understand the difference between a toy and the real thing, between play and real life and death, you don't ever give a child a toy gun that looks real. That kind of thing can get the child killed.

And if you for some reason do give a child a real looking gun, don't let them take it into a public setting. I just cannot express how terribly stupid those parents were. That was irresponsible to their child and to everyone in that restaurant.

Bullgrit
Total Bullgrit

 

[jaerdaph]

Oh my God. As a parent, all I can think is WTF!?! And if an armed cop had to make that decision - real or fake... Sweet Jesus.

I can only imagine what you went through. I am glad that you and your family are okay.

Those parents are anything but.

 

[Sigdel]

I don't have kids so the whole instinct of "Why the hell do they think its clever to give a 5 year old a gun" just is not there, but thats not my point. My point is that they made it a law for all fake firearms to have those lovely orange tips at the end of a barrel of fake guns for a reason. So crap like this don't happen. This is just plain irresponsible.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I remember the "good ol' days" when I was a kid and there was a company that sold some incredibly real looking cap guns. They were lighter than real guns, but had similar balance. They had a red plug in the barrel, which I would promptly drill out because I didn't want it to spoil the look. I used to leave it under the front seat of my car. I pulled it out twice against unknowing people, once to intimidate in a situation going bad, once in jest. Both times I got away with it doing what I was hoping it would. Looking back I realize just how damn stupid that was, and if I did that today, the odds are decent some real gunfire would have erupted, especially in the area I grew up in.

As for kids, my son is almost 5. He loves guns and swords like many boys his age. Right now the closest thing he has to a gun is a Buzz Lightyear bubble blaster. There is no way I would let him have anything looking even close to realistic.

 

[DarkKestral]

Oh my God. As a parent, all I can think is WTF!?! And if an armed cop had to make that decision - real or fake... Sweet Jesus.

I can only imagine what you went through. I am glad that you and your family are okay.

Those parents are anything but.

I've almost SEEN that decision being made, albeit with a slightly older kid. I've known a friend who had to point watch cops descend en masse onto a kid the friend pointed out to the cops, because the kid in question had a training fake and was brandishing it around. This was in middle school so it would have been a similar case, in some ways, had he not cooperated. Plus, it would attach a stigma of 'school shooting' and 'police brutality' to an already bad situation.

Would be a REALLY twisted 5 o' clock news story, and I'd be sympathetic with the cops who had to make the choice between shooting to kill, possibly killing an innocent kid or not shooting and possibly letting multiple other kids die. No one should be forced to make that choice. Worst of all, after having made that decision, the officers on scene would get crucified by the media once the reports come out, so if the confrontation went pear-shaped, they'd be stuck in a Catch-22, and unable to extricate themselves. Their careers would be essentially over, in all likelihood, not because they did anything counter to their training, illegal or immoral, but because they had to choose what they felt to be the lesser of two evils.

EDIT: Training fakes (which have similar balance and weight to their real counterparts) are given to police officers and military members as part of training and exercises so they won't have to worry about a real gun going off and injuring another, because they have no mechanisms, but they still have what appears to be a real gun's barrel. They also have no obvious markings denoting their fake status, unlike the average consumer fakes. The training fake in my story was one of the type used by the police and military. (No, the parents didn't let him play with it. He took it without their knowledge. You can assume what happened from there.)

 

[Harmon]

I thought there was a law about fakes and needing to be colored (bright pink, orange, etc) so that cops would not make that perception mistake and draw down on the little kid. :\

I am a bit of a nut for firearms, but with the way things are today I think those parents are asking for a Gibbs slap to the back of the head.

 

[trancejeremy]

It's not hard to take the orange part off the toy gun with a hacksaw, even if you are 4-5. I wouldn't be surprised if that is what happened, most kids think it's stupid. I know I did as a kid, doing the same thing, even though in restrospect it was really stupid taking it off. Dumb of the parents though.

There was a famous episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents where a little kid trades with toy revolver with a real revolver (with one bullet) and most of the episode revolves around his parents trying to frantically chase him down, and him wandering around the neighborhood, playing with it.

 

[bento]

There was a famous episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents where a little kid trades with toy revolver with a real revolver (with one bullet) and most of the episode revolves around his parents trying to frantically chase him down, and him wandering around the neighborhood, playing with it.

A very young Ron Howard (Opie) as I recall.

Some adults get the concept while others are oblivious. For our family we have one Star Wars blaster, one pirate gun, one bright orange 9MM, and an assortment of clear plastic water guns. One big rule is they don't go in the car, and if they do, they get confiscated by mom or dad.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

You should have called the police. Teach those (@#)! parents a lesson.

 

[Harmon]

You should have called the police. Teach those (@#)! parents a lesson.

Ya, the police would have gotten a kick out of that. Come in looking to investigate the "kid with a gun," report and find some 4 year old with a Beretta, or worse yet Dad gets around to taking the gun away and slips it into his waist band. That would have taught them a lesson.