Nick’s ‘Kids and Guns’ Takes Look at the Nation’s Future

Linda Ellerbee, whose “Nick News Special Edition” series on Nickelodeon has provided young viewers with serious discussions about such issues as terrorism, kidnapping and AIDS, thoughtfully tackles another heavy subject tonight in “Kids and Guns.”

“What you think will one day shape our laws and what you do will one day shape our nation,” Ellerbee tells viewers, as the in-studio conversation with several kids, most of whom live in homes with guns, segues into conversations with families affected for good or ill by gunfire and into comments from Handgun Control Inc. and National Rifle Assn. spokesmen.

One boy accidentally shot his brother with a neighbor’s gun; another probably saved the lives of his family by grabbing his parents’ gun and driving off a thief who had already shot the boy’s mother and father, seriously wounding them.

A young girl, part of Silent March Against Gun Violence, an organization that delivers the shoes of loved ones killed by guns to Capitol Hill each September, remembers two of her young friends who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when gang members started shooting.

Ellerbee points out the 2nd Amendment controversy and the overwhelming number of guns in this country, noting that California has “18 times more gun dealers than MacDonald’s,” and acknowledges that there are no easy answers.

Her in-studio guests wrestle with the same arguments as their elders. Where do they agree? That gun owners must store and handle guns responsibly and know right from wrong.

* “Nick News Special Edition: Kids and Guns” airs at 8 tonight on Nickelodeon.