When Kids Can Get Guns, Where Is Safe?

Add guns to the suburban cocooning phenomenon and the fear escalates, because we might have guns ourselves, but guns in the hands of people we neither know nor trust are especially frightening.

"When I was a mover, I saw lots of people with gun cabinets in their houses, and you wouldn't believe how many of them had bullets lying right where kids could get to it," says David Martin, a barber at Image Creators in Germantown, just up the road from where the shooting occurred.

"I wouldn't even think about having a gun in my house. I have four little girls. They get into everything. I even put my kitchen knives way up in the cabinets. My lady thinks I'm crazy, but I even drill the windows shut. You could be cooking or vacuuming and next thing you know, they open the window and fall out and then you're responsible. If somebody's going to come in my house, let 'em come and take what they want. My life and my children are worth more than anything in my house."

No matter where people are on gun regulations, they seem okay with holding a parent responsible when a child gets his hands on a firearm. How else to assert some control over such people?

Todd Barbee manages the Torrid Paintball shop in Germantown; like many of his customers, he believes owning guns is not only an American right but something of a social obligation, a way to hold the upper hand over the bad guys. But the shooting down Wisteria Drive angered Barbee. It made him question not only anti-gun activists, who he believes would create a country in which only criminals owned guns, but also the pro-gun side, which he thinks is too soft on safety.

Barbee, who owns firearms but says he keeps them unloaded in gun safes at home, wishes gun advocates would line up with frightened parents on the side of tougher requirements for gun owners.

"I'm all about safety and responsibility," he says. "Parents are way too loose with kids, and the law is too loose with parents."

In the aftermath of Tuesday's shooting, the standard pro-gun line trotted out after such tragedies -- guns don't kill people; people kill people -- seems even more empty and callous than usual. No one I met doubted that there are guns in many of the townhouses and apartments within view of the day care where the little girl was shot. What people wanted to know was how to assure ourselves that those who own guns handle them responsibly.

The answer, Tindle suggests, is to step out, break the shell of isolation and connect with those around us.

But where we cannot rely on personal bonds, we turn to the law for protection. And in matters of life and death, we use the law to impose stricter standards than when the stakes are lower. The rules for driving a car are stricter than those governing bicycles. So why would legitimate gun owners object to being held to basic standards, just as drivers must demonstrate proficiency and maintain a decent record?

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