Another Story About Kids Playing with Guns Resulting in Injury:

You'd think that everyone knows by now that kids should not have access to guns without parental supervision. Well, that's actually the old southern heritage coming out in me when I say that, due to the fact that even though a female, I was taught during childhood to respect guns, how to use a gun properly, and how to hunt and kill animals for food.

Nowadays, it's taboo to show a kid how to properly use, care for, and respect a gun, and opinions range all over the subject as to who is right - and who is in danger of being shot.

And who is to say, really, with all the bloody, gory, grand-theft-auto, shoot-an-elderly-pedestrian, class-A-felon-gun-toter games that Nintendo and Playstation keep lining the gaming racks with for young minds to absorb, what side of the issue will win the debate, if there is still a debate, anyhow?

Perhaps the generation that the injured eleven year old in Birmingham last night belongs to should not be allowed anywhere near any sort of loaded weapon outside of a spit-ball straw.

It's too late for that determination, now, however. Friday evening, around 6:30pm, paramedics were called to a home in Birmingham where an eleven year-old boy had a gun shot wound to the neck. He was rushed to Children's Hospital and the family said he was in stable condition upon arrival. His injury was not life threatening.

But the thing is this - an old debate will now be springing up in group settings across Alabama. Should we just do away with the possibility that Junior may one day hold a rifle and aim at a bottle, or worse, at his sister?

Further, with all the constitutionally protected artistic expression on the stereo, Junior is repeatedly told he should not only kill East Siders or West Siders, or whatever Sider he particularly hates, but that he should also kill Feds who try to charge him with drug offenses (FBI, Dayton Family, 1996), and maybe even leave them dead in his closet.

I won't even begin to rant about the movies that uplift violence in this nation.

So, my question is this, America: can both worlds exist without the death tolls rising? What I mean by that is, can America have the same appetite for watching Billy Bad-Ass play Die-Hard on the Eminem Show and still expect Junior (or, at least in many Alabama cases, Junior's Sister) to respect the purpose and power of a deadly weapon - without the curiosity we allow to be embedded in them to play a neighborhood round of Duck-Duck-Goose with a Tech-9?

You'd think, though, we would still learn by now, as parents, that young kids cannot be left alone with a gun in the house. Even without media influences, I remember the curiosity and the cold steel - how powerful and cool it felt in my hand, though I should have not been holding it because Mama or Daddy was not aware. I just wonder if the generation of youngsters today have an even stronger curiosity due to all the violence and gangster-hero mentality that I never saw as a child.

To the eleven year-old who is said to be recovering fine from his injury of yesterday evening, I am sure many people have told you that your injury could have been a lot worse.

But I'm sure you felt the sharp, fast fear of this very realization at that split-second of discharge. I truly hope you soon understand why citizens of this country chose to have the right to own a gun or not - and when one day choosing for yourself, safely and respectfully remember the greater right of all Americans: the right to live.

Get well, soon, young man!