The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That’s like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.
Rev. Jerry Falwell
[I don’t have to point out the parallel to those that don’t want children taught gun safety–do I?–Joe]
Rev. Jerry is talking about teenagers. You’re talking about kids. Two different things, Joe. The only gun safety for kids is keeping them away from guns. You guys are fooling yourselves if you think that simplistic NRA Eddie Eagle nonsense can overcome the natural curiosity and inquisitiveness of children. Teenagers, who are the subject of Falwell’s comment about condoms, may be a different story. I could see gun safety benefiting them, especially if there are guns in the home.
What a bizarre analogy. If you want to compare to giving an overeater a cookbook, you’d have to, say, talk about giving teens a copy of The Joy of Unprotected Sex with Multiple Partners. Giving teens contraceptives is more analogous to giving an overeater some tofu.
And incidentally, I’m skeptical of Eddie the Eagle, too. Not because children have a magical megnetic attraction to guns that guarantees tragedy if parents don’t banish firearms from their homes, but because really teaching kids takes time and consistency that a single class can’t give. If decreasing the rate of accidental child gun deaths is the goal, we’d need to focus on increasing kids’ healthy exposure to guns in general, as well as generally trusting kids more. Treat guns like glamorous movie props that don’t exist in real life, and treat kids like adorable idiots who can’t be expected to exercise judgment, and you’re asking for trouble.
That said, accidental child gun deaths are already a vanishingly small problem. Fixating too much on it is like flipping out over the lack of seatbelts on school busses: just exactly how few accidental deaths do you expect to achieve in a population of 62 million children?
“The only gun safety for kids is keeping them away from guns.”
Bullshit.
I grew up with guns around, never messed with them. A lot of my friends and most of my cousins grew up with firearms available, none of them had accidents. It’s just a matter of raising kids properly. If you can’t raise a kid to not play with guns, you’re probably not qualified to raise him to do anything else right, either.
Well, mikeb you were throwing a hissyfit about all the kids we mentioned before doing IDPA on saysuncle, with you going OOHHH NO THEY can’t tell the difference.
So how would you feel if it was kids practicing with bows and arrows and crossbows?
Unless these same kids somehow die from a gun accident or go on a shooting rampage, your point is absolutely moot.
Let’s all bring up the past so you CANNOT try and backtrack on us.
http://www.saysuncle.com/2009/08/15/worlds-youngest-practical-shooter/#comments
I don’t get the analogy, either. The direct comparison here would be between contraceptives and gun locks. I don’t think handing them out is a replacement for sex education or firearms safety training.
I still think every good Christian should kick Rev. Falwell square in the ass as AuH2O suggested.
TJP,
You are correct. It’s not as direct as I would like. The point I was trying to make was that ignorance is almost never a solution to a problem.