Pakistan got the right idea…
 
That guy from the NRA, he really spoke a lot of sense (“guns don’t kill people – movies do”), but I think I’ve spotted a small flaw in his plan to have armed adults in every school. Granted that the only thing that can “stop a bad guy with a gun” is a “good guy with a gun,” what if the school accidentally hires a bad guy to be their armed school attendant? I mean, that would completely defeat the purpose of the idea, wouldn’t it, and surely sooner or later some school’s “bad guy” checker will come up short, and there’ll be lots more infanticide, and the guy from the NRA would have to do another big talk and think of another solution entirely?

Well, over here in the UK, watching events unfold with an open mouth, I think I’ve come up with the solution…

Arm all American schoolchildren.

Now, given that I myself live in the almost-gunless nation, and I’ve never even seen a gun outside the hands of specialist armed police, I suppose I don’t really know what I’m talking about, and guess it could be somewhat dangerous, maybe, perhaps, letting a few million kids go around armed.

A little bit of online research, however, reassured me. I quickly came upon a video (see below) made by an American called Casey Lavere, all about how to ensure kids handle guns safely.

The film, called Kids With Guns, begins with Casey addressing his camera, alongside his thrilled looking son and daughter (who are, I think, about five and seven respectively):

“The kids have been dying to shoot their guns, so we’re gonna do a really quick video on how to show your kids how to shoot guns safely and properly, and steps that I take with my kids so that they understand gun safety and the importance of it. Gun safety is very, very important, there’s a lot of people who are killed every year by kids playing with guns without their parents around.”

Casey then turns to his son. Now I could be hearing things, but I’m pretty sure that he addresses the boy as “Gauge.”

“Gauge, what’s the very first thing I ever taught you about guns?”

“Don’t point them at pee-pull,” obliges young Gauge.

“Very good,” proclaims Papa, before turning to the camera and delivering the fully-grown version of this motto. “You don’t ever want to point a gun at anything that you don’t want to shoot.

Turning to his daughter (who I think is called Brailey, not Hollowheadettea or anything), he invites her to recite his Second Golden Rule.

“Never touch a gun without parent supervision.”

“That’s right, you never want to be around a gun without an adult around… I feel very strongly about this! But I also feel very strongly about teaching kids to shoot a gun and to enjoy it.”

Surely. What responsible parent wouldn’t want to see their child enjoying messing about with a lethal weapon?

The safety shtick over and done with, we’re then treated to a couple of minutes of kids firing guns to a ropey rock guitar soundtrack. Casey’s kids look like pretty good shots! After a couple of minutes, it’s time to introduce the guns themselves, which Casey does stood in front of his pick-up truck.

Behind him, Brailey and Gauge sit clutching their huge weapons like miniature henchmen, their little legs dangling from the back of the vehicle.

“This is a little .22 we bought Brailey when she was five years old.”

“Four!” Brailey brusquely corrects him, from behind a fetching pink rifle.

“Four” concedes Casey, fondly, “I got a little excited and bought her a .22 when she was four.”

Cultural relativity’s a funny thing ain’t it! Here in the UK, getting “a little excited” and buying a four year old a gun would make you an extremely dangerous psychopath: In Utah, Casey Lavere’s making home movies about it. And showing them in public.

“And this,” he goes on, indicating the larger rifle resting in young Gauge’s even smaller lap, “this is gonna be a Gauge’s gun, this is a .22 magnum I bought…”

Wrapping things up, Lavere explains that he just wanted to “show you guys a safe way to get the kids out” [sic] and implores any watching shooters (as opposed to flabbergasted Englishmen) to make sure they pick up the detritus following target practice, and to “keep firearms locked away from kids,” a truly worthwhile message unfortunately undermined by Casey’s own two heavily armed children sat at either side of him.

Young Gauge helpfully illustrates Dad’s solemn admonition by wagging his finger at the camera and then turning it into a trigger finger, which he pulls, five times.