Fear of Guns: 3 Year Old Accidently Shoots Himself

This is a tragic story I felt to post. My first thought as an Australian is that we wouldn’t have guns. I walk at night alone and don’t have anything to protect myself. I am working on facing fear. Yet many people watch t.v. and believe that the world is an unsafe place. What if I was to say it is not unsafe and that fear attracts fear. You can even think of a person who looks scared tends to get bullied.

I feel deeply for the parents who had the gun to protect their family and I can only see a society around them reinforcing the message of ‘protect yourself’. Sadly they will live with the guilt of their child killing himself accidently with a gun. Others will come out with advice that the safety should be on, for me the issue is deeper. You don’t need a gun!!! I remember when I was studying Peace Studies at university, we spoke of the gun. Is it the person or the gun that is lethal. Well the person becomes lethal because of the gun, the object of a gun instils fear and escalates fear, so more people get guns. So many movies showing killing like it is normal, never do we see the consequences, the lives ruined, the insecurity that causes the gunman to carry it, to feel power as he doesn’t have it. There is no inquiry by society into the psychology of guns and to help people de-escalate fear. When you do there will be no shootings at schools or accidents like the one below. If you want to protect your family teach them non-violence, teach them how to communicate with confidence and respect, teach them about the world they are in and how to de-escalate a conflict, teach them to build a community of friends and to connect with their community helping people to solve problems. Get to know peope in the neighbourhood (as they say in the States). I would have conflict resolution as manadatory in schools so there is no need for guns or weapons. Also I wouldn’t recommend violent videos, just feeds the fear of violence and trains in behaviour of arming up for protection. If you are looking at drug crime then educate kids about the drug industry and the gangs and organised mobs created for profit. Teach them they don’t need unnatural highs, that being happy is a natural high, show them how to really laugh and feel a sense of belonging in their community. They are my thoughts around this.

I send love to the parents and the other child, may community come around them with love and support. May the US and other countries start to understand a Culture of Peace is not only possible, it is the way forward and a lived experience. Why not start in the home and lead by example fearlessly. Do not have arms, have alms!

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/13171618/3-year-old-us-boy-kills-himself-with-gun/

A three-year-old boy fatally shot himself with a gun he found in a car while his family stopped at a petrol station in the western US state of Washington, police say.

It was the third recent shooting by a child in western Washington.

“It is incredible in light of the other ones,” said Naveed Benjamin, a police officer in Tacoma, where the shooting occurred. “You would think people would take more care, not less.”

The family had stopped for petrol about 12:30am (1530 AEDT). The father put his pistol under the seat and got out to pump petrol while the mother went inside the convenience store, Benjamin said.

They left their son and their infant daughter in the car. The boy climbed out of his child seat, found the gun and shot himself in the head, police said. He was declared dead at a hospital. The girl was not injured.

Detectives questioned the parents and have called the shooting a tragic accident, Benjamin said. The father has a concealed weapons permit, and no charges are anticipated, he said.

Washington state does not have a law specifically concerning child access to firearms.

The shooting follows the death of the seven-year-old daughter of a Marysville police officer in Stanwood on Saturday when a sibling found a gun and fired while the parents were out of their car. And on February 22, an eight-year-old girl was critically wounded in a Bremerton classroom when a gun fired inside the backpack of a nine-year-old boy as he put it on a desk.