When kids with Guns save lives.[farm equipment]

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Kids and Guns by Robert A. Waters - Web Published: 12.27.00 http://www.sierratimes.com/archive/waters/edrw122700.htm

Give a kid a gun and he suddenly becomes a monster, shooting up schools and blowing away anyone whom he perceives has wronged him. Right?

That's what the mainstream media would have you think. While such incidences do occur on rare occasions, many other times kids use guns to save lives. But these stories don't fit the media stereotype and therefore get no national exposure.

On Sunday afternoon, March 19, 1985, Jacqueline Roland, a mother of two, heard a noise outside her home near Bethel, Oklahoma. As she went to investigate, she told her six-year-old son Jimmy to get the family gun. In addition to Jimmy, four other children were in the home at the time.

As Mrs. Roland stepped outside, a masked man grabbed her and placed a knife to her throat. Jimmy Roland, following his mother's instructions, walked outside with a .22-caliber rifle. Seeing the masked man holding his mother, the youngster aimed the gun at the assailant's head and cried, "Turn my mommy loose!"

"Put the gun down!" the masked man snapped.

Instead, Jimmy Roland cocked it.

According to Pottawotomie County Sheriff Paul Abel, "the man apparently thought the boy was going to shoot him. He loosened his grip on Mrs. Roland and she broke away." The assailant fled but was soon captured, along with two accomplices. All were lifelong criminals and predators.

Sheriff Abel had nothing but praise for six-year-old Jimmy Roland. "In all likelihood," the sheriff said, "he saved every one of those people's lives...They're just average people who taught their child safety with guns from the time they were real little, because there are guns in that house as there are in most of the houses around here."

In a barrio near Compton, California, eighteen miles south of Los Angeles, Hispanics have to fight every day just to survive. According to an Associated Press article, on March 30, 1999, at around noon, two robbers entered the 99 Cents Plus Mini Market. The sixty-two-year-old owner, a grandmother whose name was not released, was working the counter along with a teenage employee. Her twelve-year-old grandson was also in the store.

One of the robbers pointed a "machine pistol" at the owner and demanded money from the cash drawer. The teenage employee knocked the gun away, and began struggling with the robber.

As they were fighting, Dennis Smith, the second robber, began beating the owner. He knocked the grandmother to the floor and continued to punch her while she was down.

Her twelve-year-old grandson grabbed a handgun and fired several shots, hitting Smith four times. He died a few hours later. The other robber escaped.

The twelve-year-old was not charged.

Juan Zamora, who owns a shop next door, summed up the desperation of those trying to earn an honest living in the barrio. "Always they have troubles because everybody try to steal," he said. "The police come very late. They come after one hour, after three hours, after four hours. Everybody is still afraid. Nobody protects us."

Adam Cummins, 38, of Wichita, Kansas, was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He could function normally at times, then he would snap and become violent. Because of his mental illness, Kathryn Adams, his mother, had raised Cummins' fifteen-year-old daughter.

On May 17, 2000, at 10:00 p.m., a visibly agitated Cummins appeared at Adams' home. Having first-hand knowledge of his violent tendencies, she locked the front door and refused to let him inside. Undeterred, he kicked in the door.

As the crazed man launched a vicious assault on the terrified woman, Adams yelled for her grand-daughter to "get the gun." In the meantime, Cummins hit Adams several times with a claw hammer, fracturing her skull.

As the assault continued, the fifteen-year-old ran to a nightstand in her grandmothers' upstairs bedroom and pulled out a handgun. By this time, Cummins had bludgeoned his mother into unconsciousness.

Then he started up the stairs.

His daughter met him at the top of the stairs. She fired one shot, striking Cummins in the abdomen, ending the assault. He died a few minutes later. According to a story in the Wichita Eagle, Kathryn Adams remained in critical condition with a fractured skull.

Jim McNiece, principal of Northeast Magnet High School, where the girl attended, stated that the school had provided counseling for the traumatized teen. "She has a lot of support from family and friends at school," he said. "She's a nice kid, and is worried about her grandmother. That's where all the attention of the family is focused."

Police said that over a long period, Cummins had had many dealings with law enforcement officials and mental health agencies. He had threatened police officers, mental health workers, and his ex-wife (the mother of the fifteen-year-old). For years he had fought with his wife and mother for custody of the girl. The family had tried numerous times to have him institutionalized. On the day he died, he'd called his ex-wife and threatened to kill her.

Police credited the fifteen-year-old girl with using appropriate force to stop a vicious assault.

Kids and guns.

Did anyone see these cases on the national news shows?

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" Posterity-you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. " John Quincy Adams

I am also trying to get hold of another recent article where a child lost their life because of a trigger lock.

-- Little bit Farm (littlebit@calinet.com), January 03, 2001

Answers

Is the story you are looking for the one where the teenaged girl couldn't get the trigger lock off of the gun and the guy killed two or three of her siblings in California? I can try to find that one tonight. An absolutely heart wrenching horror.

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@excite.com), January 04, 2001.

If you spend time with your children and teach them well you will wind up with children mentioned above .I can only hope I do such a good job .What a sad world we live in that these children had to use there knowledge of handguns.

-- Patty (fodfarms@hotmail.com), January 04, 2001.

I have noticed one thing that seems to be quite common among kids that commit violent crimes with gun. That is, invariably, the kid was not given the gun and taught how to use it, rather, they stole it from their parents or a relative or whatever. The danger in children having guns is not with the ones that are taught properly how to use them, but rather with those that have access to them without being raised on how to use them properly. That is a big difference. Even though we don't own any guns, I strongly support our right to own them and hope that responsible gun-owning parents will continue to teach their children about guns. It may save us all in the long run. Thanks Little Bit for the interesting thread.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), January 04, 2001.

This is the first I have heard of any of these cases. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

I remember being raised around guns. It wasn't a big deal. Papa had a gun cabinet and usually carried a 30-30 in the farm truck for varmint control. Most of the boys that I went to school with drove trucks and usually they had gun racks in the back window. These were parked in the school lot and nobody said anything. There was nothing to say since none of them would have considered shooting someone. I carried a pocket knife to school (along with about half the other kids) because I had chores after school and needed something to cut haystrings with or Granny put an apple in my lunch I needed to peel. It was no big deal because if you got in a fight you used your fists...wouldn't have occured to us to pull a knife on the other kid. If a kid was caught using or playing with a knife or a gun in a dangerous or inappropriate fashion he got his bottom throughly tanned. Now ya'll may think I grew up 40-50 years ago...gotta be thinking boy she sure is old. Nope...I'm 29. Parental and individual responsibility and plain common sense is what made the difference. I own guns and I have kids. I'm raising them the way I was raised.

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), January 04, 2001.


Someone commented that the children who shoot other children almost invariably have stolen the gun from someone, and I think that is true. My brothers and sisters and I, and all the other children we knew, were taught from a very young age how to use guns appropriately -- my mother wouldn't let us point even a toy gun at another person, on pain of a paddling, but she was a good shot and a good hunter herself. All of us still use firearms on occasion for hunting and predator control, and none of us have ever shot or threatened another person with a firearm or any other weapon. Of course, it helps that our parents were all stable people to start with. But we had free access to guns as we were growing up (with permission) and our own firearms from as early as we wanted them and were deemed able to handle them responsibly. We were fortunate in growing up in an area where human predators were virtually unheard of, so the idea of using guns on a human being (other than playing war or cowboys and indians) never occurred to us (no TV to watch helped with that, of course!). Well, I'm rambling. But the point is, I think people ought to be required to own and learn how to use firearms, and to teach their children the same. And to shut off the TV and video games, and spend some time with their children doing more productive things, like chores, and family crafts and games.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), January 04, 2001.


After reading the above responses, I just wanted to let them know how much I appreciate their views. Growing up in Connecticut during the 60's and 70's many of my peers hunted and fished with their parents. Firearms were in many households, and although I was the loser in many schoolyard altercations the thought of bringing a firearm to school never occured. The displine in our homes did not allow our own actions to become that out of control. Firearms have been in households for hundreds of years and within the past five years kids are doing these things? What has changed? Government intrusion into discipline at home is what. Sorry folks, but I firmly believe that any large organization has an innate inability to micromanage. I don't know how children were saved from the recent laws regarding child abuse, but I feel there are many more that are out of control from them. Reading the Federalist and the Antifederalist papers that were arguements for our Constitution, even the most ardent federalists were minimalistic in their visions of a federal government. While watching CNN just yesterday a democratic "blue dog" said " the more power you give the federal government, the more rights you give away". I think it's time that we let Washington know that we are able and willing to solve our own problems the way our forefathers had intended.

-- Bob (caseyr@99main.com), January 05, 2001.

Good posts! Just two cents regarding kids and guns and how much the political climate has changed.I went a "rural" high school in Pa.,but one with a large student population.Many kids would get a little dove hunting in on the way to school or check trap lines.The student handbook stated in regards to guns in school "that they be unloaded before entering the building and immediately placed in your locker" That was it.No big deal.I graduated in 1984.Today at the same school a student can and will be expelled as well as turned over to the police for having violated the "weapon's policy" for having nail clippers!The area hasn't changed that much.Nor has the demographic of the students attending.All that has changed is the political hysteria.The socialists are winning. Greg

-- Greg (gsmith@tricountyi.net), January 15, 2001.

The media talk about "ready availabiliity of fireames" being the cause of the teen violence. Growing up in the 40-50's we always had several rifles, pistols and shotguns in our homes. Almost anyone could go to the local hardware store and buy a firearm without any hassle. We didn't have school shootings. A friend even brought his 22 to school and carried it on the bus because he was spending the weekend with me and we were going to hunt rabbits.

Firearms have never been so restricted as they have since the 1968 gun law that started it all and firearm violence has escalated since then.

-- Ralph Joiner (thejoiners@peoplepc.com), March 25, 2002.


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