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Why some parents buy guns for their children

Why some parents buy guns for their children



CNN

Paul Kemp, a 64-year-old who lives near Portland, Oregon, bought his son Nathan his first rifle for his 16th birthday more than a decade ago.

Nathan had landed his first hunt, a squirrel, at age 7, and the Kemp family spent time hunting together in the years that followed. When his son turned 16 in December 2012, Kemp thought he was responsible enough to own his own gun.

“Hunting was a family tradition. Everybody enjoyed it,” Kemp told CNN in a phone interview. “Call it, I guess, a rite of passage.”

This purchase reflects a relatively common American experience: parents buy and give firearms to their children for their birthday or during the holiday season. For these families, a donated firearm can bring people together around a common interest and represents an initiation into the next phase of life.

“A lot of people own guns themselves and view them as part of their lives and want to pass them on to their children,” said CNN contributor and editor-in-chief Stephen Gutowski. Recharging and a certified firearms instructor.

But these days in particular, Parents who wish to purchase a firearm for their child for the holidays must balance their hopes of receiving the gift with the risks associated with such a purchase, such as an accidental shooting, suicide, or the weapon being used in a crime .

For example, the shooting of suspects in a teenage school Oxford, MichiganAnd Winder, Georgiaallegedly used guns they received from their parents as Christmas gifts, and those parents faced criminal charges. Police in Madison, Wisconsin, are also investigating how the 15-year-old shooter Abundant Life Christian School had access to the firearm and whether the parents “may have been negligent,” Chief Shon Barnes said Tuesday. “But right now, that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

“Owning a gun is something that comes with a lot of responsibilities, as well as being people’s rights, and those responsibilities only increase when you add children into the mix,” Gutowski said. “But there are safe ways to introduce kids to guns, and people have been doing it for generations and generations.”

Paul Kemp personally learned the dangers of a gun in the wrong hands.

Days after Kemp bought his son a gun, a 22-year-old man shot and killed Kemp’s brother-in-law, Steve Forsyth, in a mass shooting at Clackamas Town Center mall. The murder led Kemp to become co-founder and president of Gun Owners for Responsible Ownershipa group of gun owners “who seek reasonable and responsible solutions to prevent gun violence,” according to its website. The group says it has distributed thousands of safes across Oregon so people can safely secure their guns.

For Kemp, the Ruger .22 bolt-action rifle for his son was part of a family history of hunting and respect for firearms. He said he grew up hunting with his father, uncles and grandfather in Michigan, where it was not uncommon to see a gutted deer in the back of a pickup truck on the highway.

This hobby with firearms came with responsibilities, however.

“I learned the safe handling and storage of firearms from my grandfather and uncles at an early age,” Kemp said. “My son learned the same safe firearm storage and handling practices from me. »

Generally, a parent or guardian can legally purchase a firearm or ammunition as a gift to a minor, depending on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). “However,” notes the ATF, “persons under the age of 18 may only receive and possess handguns with the written permission of a parent or guardian for limited purposes, e.g. employment, breeding, agriculture, target shooting or hunting.”

State laws on the legal age for gun ownership vary, depending on the Giffords Law Centera group promoting stricter gun regulations. Some states also have Secure Storage Laws which require gun owners to lock their firearms to prevent unauthorized access to children.

Black Friday, with its many sales deals, is one of the most popular days to buy firearms each year. This year, nearly 170,000 firearm background checks were initiated under the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) on Black Friday – the largest number in one day since Black Friday last year.

There are a number of reasons why parents would want to get their child a gun, Gutowski said.

They may want to teach their child to hunt or shoot for sport. They may want to teach their child about gun safety and how to behave properly around guns. Or they may want to pass on their own culture of gun ownership and self-defense to the next generation.

“For the vast majority of people, this is a healthy and reasonable pursuit,” Gutowski said. “It’s something they can also share with their children, just like any other hobby or sport.”

Jason Kelvie is the head coach of the Lakeville South Clay Target team in Minnesota and, as such, teaches high school students the sport of clay target shooting.

Students need a shotgun just to participate. Some use grandpa’s old hunting rifle, but other families without any firearms experience often come to Kelvie to ask about purchasing a rifle for their child, a- he told CNN in a phone call.

“(There’s) a lot of curiosity, a lot of anxiety,” he said. For them, he emphasizes the safety of the sport, emphasizing that the USA Clay Target League has had no injuries reported since its creation in 2008 and that firearm safety certificate is mandatory for all athletes.

Kelvie’s own children – aged 17, 15 and 13 – also participate in the shooting sports league. Kelvie purchased shotguns for their use, and he says he keeps these and other firearms safe in a safe in his garage.

Jason Kelvie (right) and his family went target shooting last August at Modern Sportsman in Burnsville, Minnesota.

Hunting and shooting are family pastimes in the Kelvie clan, and a photo from a trip to the shooting range made last year’s Christmas card, he said.

“It’s something we can do together, whether it’s a (Clay Target) league, fun shoots or get-togethers with friends,” he said. “It’s entertaining, challenging and rewarding.”

If not properly secured, firearms carry many dangers.

Since 2020, guns have become the leading cause of death among American children and adolescents, surpassing vehicle accidents. Guns accounted for 18% of child deaths (ages 1-18) in 2022, according to the most recent data available from the Wonder database from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 3,500 children died in gun-related incidents that year.

Additionally, in the United States, most children who die from accidental shootings play with guns at home or mistake them for toys, a study finds. 2023 study in the scientific journal Injury Epidemiology.

Failure to keep a gun safe has led to criminal charges against the parent(s) in a few cases in recent years, including in the Michigan and Georgia school shootings.

In the Oxford shooting, James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of the 15-year-old school shooter, were convicted of manslaughter after prosecutors alleged they were “grossly negligent” in allowing their son access to the gun and ignoring signs of his deteriorating mental health. They were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

Trial testimony showed that James Crumbley bought the gun for his son on Black Friday, four days before the shooting. The next day, Jennifer Crumbley took her son to the shooting range for target practice. “Mom and son day to try out his new Christmas present,” she then wrote on social media. The parents failed to properly secure the firearm because James Crumbley hid it in their bedroom but did not use any locking devices, the prosecution argued.

In Winder school shooting, Colin Gray, father of 14-year-old suspected shooter, faces charges of murder and manslaughter for allegedly giving her son access to a firearm despite a warning that her son would endanger others. Investigators testified In court, Colin Gray purchased the AR-15-style rifle allegedly used in the school shooting for his son as a Christmas present last year, just seven months after the family was questioned by police. law enforcement regarding online threats “to commit a school shooting.” »

Colin Gray has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and his attorneys have filed motions seeking dismissal of the indictment.

The Michigan and Georgia cases have pushed the boundaries of liability for a mass school shooting to include, potentially, the parent. Yet some legal experts, including the prosecutor who indicted the Crumbleys, have warned that these the cases were unique and well outside the norm.

“The vast majority of people who buy guns for their kids or teach their kids to shoot are not going to run into a negative outcome like that,” CNN contributor Gutowski said.