A toddler remained in critical condition at the Ben Taub General Hospital on Sunday, a day after he was shot in the head by his 4-year-old brother.I know the proper snark would be to label this "Bobo's World," but that's not why I couldn't shake this case. This incident is a result of many things, not the least of which is our society's totally insane idea that guns = "magic crime shield."
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The shooting was sparked by an argument that erupted after the 2-year-old threw a toy at his older brother.
The 4-year-old told police he shot his brother in the head with a .32-caliber semiautomatic pistol he found in his mother's purse.
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[CPS spokeswoman Estella] Olguin said the boy has been asking for his younger brother. "He probably doesn't realize the consequences of his actions," she said.
Because he is under 10, the boy will not be charged in the shooting.
However, Olguin said he will need counseling in the future. "You can imagine the guilt he's going to feel," she said.
Their mother was in a bedroom when she heard the gunshot. She told police she had the gun to protect her family because of a rash of recent burglaries in the neighborhood.
Police said the case will be referred to the Harris County District Attorney's Office. The children's mother could face criminal charges for making the weapon available to a child, police said.
When I first heard this story, I figured the mother had the gun in her purse because of Texas concealed handgun law, and this was an example of the bad reasoning behind that law. Guns kept at home should be protected with a trigger guard, especially when there are children this young in the house. But a trigger guard on a concealed handgun sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? (We'll get back to the legitimacy of the "purpose" in a minute.) Now, the Texas law requires a license, and that license requires training. But whether or not this woman had a license to stick that gun in her purse, she certainly didn't understand much about gun safety.
Because most of us know about guns from TV and the movies, we imagine bullets are things that hit bad guys and walls; we never imagine they hit children, or pierce walls and go on to the house next door, or the apartment beside ours. And we seldom like trigger guards and other safety devices because, well, it sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
This notion of guns as benevolent and secure runs deep in our culture. There was a science fiction novel, The Weapon Shops of Isher, based on this fantasy. In an America of the future, guns are intelligent enough to be defensive weapons only. They somehow divine the intent of the attacker, and leap to the owner's hand and discharge only in self-defense. This insures, rather than destabilizes society, because every gun owner is a good-hearted person who only wants to be left alone by the criminal element and, not coincidentally, the government. It's magical thinking, of course, the purest kind imaginable. It's a vision of technology as that which will save us from ourselves. It's a powerfully alluring idea that modern society has adopted even as it abandons, by and large, any faith in deity. As the Last Whole Earth Catalog put it: "We are as gods. We might as well get good at it."
But we aren't; we aren't in the least. We are still as children; very foolish children, in fact. Even apes don't threaten the existence of their own kind as much as we do. Even animals don't put their children in harm's way as willfully as we do. This woman imagined that a gun would be a magic device that would protect her from harm. Instead, she has brought a snake to the bosom of her family. Now we can only pray for her, and for her children, and for the life of a two year old boy; and of a four year old boy, who may grow up on day to realize what he has done, and wonder and worry and despair over the many variations of the question: why?
Society has an obligation to answer him. How long can society continue to say: not our problem?
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