Outdoors column: Don't buy into gun paranoia

Looking for a last-minute gift for your favorite 4-year-old?

How about a rifle? No, not a toy gun, but a real, honest-to-God, bullet-firing .22.

"A .22 for Christmas" or "How the gun industry designs and markets firearms for children and youth" is the title of the latest news release from the Violence Policy Center to come across my desk.

The center, a non-profit educational foundation dedicated to decreasing firearm death and injury, says the gun industry is targeting (no pun intended) a younger audience to help declining sales.

"The gun industry promises that a gun in a child's hand is a shortcut to responsibility and maturity," said the study's author, Marty Langley. "In fact, the only guarantee is one of increased risk of death and injury."

Wait a minute. I had a .22 as a kid (a single-shot Remington short/long) and I never injured myself or any other human being. About the only things I ever shot at were old beer cans.

That's because my father pounded into my head that bullets travel fast, sometimes for miles, and that if I wasn't careful I'd "hit some farmer in his field, right behind the ear."

My father and I went to the shooting range a few times, but I gradually lost interest. I think it was that chemistry set I got for Christmas. Why waste time playing with guns when I could do something really cool, such as make my own gunpowder.

Fortunately for my neighbors, I lost interest in chemistry and devoted my energies to building a go-cart. Then it was sports, then girls, and before I knew it I'm 41 and worried about cholesterol.

But if you listen to the folks at the Violence Policy Center, buy a child a gun and next thing you know they will be sitting outside their school waiting to pick off teachers and classmates.

Remember 11-year-old Andrew Golden and his 13-year-old buddy Mitchell Johnson who shot up their school in Jonesboro, Ark., killing four students and a teacher and wounding 10 others?

The VPC uses them as an example of good boys gone bad because of guns. Did the boys murder because they liked guns? Or did the boys like guns because they were murderers? We probably never will know.

One thing is for sure: I bet they never heard that poor farmer who got shot behind the ear.

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