Gun Safety Still the Target : Too Much Harm From Weapons in Hands of Children

It has come to a point where having an education disrupted may be the lesser of two evils. Some students at a junior high school in Fullerton were expelled recently after they were caught with a gun belonging to one of their fathers. An alternative scenario might have been someone getting shot, which too frequently is the case when children get their hands on guns owned by family members.

Last fall, a 12-year-old boy was charged with fatally shooting a girl his age at the Orange Mall, and his father later told a judge that he was to blame and was the one who should have been incarcerated. A 15-year-old Anaheim boy has just been sentenced to at least nine years in the custody of juvenile authorities in connection with charges that he walked into his drama class, shot a boy in the face and held other students hostage for 30 minutes. The weapon belonged to his parents.

Florida decided last year that it had seen enough of such slaughter, and in a special session passed legislation holding responsible those persons who leave firearms where youngsters can get to them. But addressing the problem after somebody already has been shot seems like a back-door solution.

The California Legislature was on a better course last year when it passed legislation requiring trigger locks, only to have it vetoed by the governor. This year Assemblyman Rusty Areias, (D-Los Banos), has a bill in conference committee that would require the completion of a basic firearms safety course before anyone could buy a handgun. That’s a more activist approach to educating gun owners than legislation proposed by Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) that would put firearms safety brochures in the hands of gun purchasers but provide no real assurance that they would be read.

Almost any legislation designed to keep guns out of childrens’ hands is going to have loopholes. In fact, California already has on the books child- endangerment statutes that could be applied. But with the increasing reports of such shootings, it’s important to begin addressing the problem.