Parents should have stricter rules in order to own a gun

Posted Jan. 18, 2023

By Alicia Pacheco Juarez 

News Editor

In the last couple of years, more and more gun related incidents have been at the hands of younger generations. This could be due to a lot of different factors that with time have added up to make up worse circumstances, but it mainly has to do with irresponsible parents exposing their kids to weapons from a very young age and possibly corrupting their minds when being exposed to a toxic homelife or bad media. 

Most if not the majority of school shootings happen at the hands of students that attend that school due to an altercation that had taken place that day or days prior. The number keeps alarmingly increasing each year with 10 in 2020, 35 in 2021 and  51 school shootings just last year according to an article published by EducationWeek.  

School shootings have been around since somewhere in the 1700’s and have been growing in commonality since. In 2000 a six-year-old boy from Michigan fatally shot another six-year-old classmate after finding a gun at his uncle's house where weapons were traded for drugs. Now, that might seem like a long time ago, but just at the beginning of this year, another six-year-old shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Virginia after obtaining his mothers gun.   

It is absolutely ridiculous how a six-year-old could take a weapon from their own home and bring it to school. That is a sign of neglect and child endangerment, charges that should be held against the parents of those kids, not just the one parent that owns the weapon, for exposing them to such things at a young age. There is a point where background checks, permits and other regulations just seem useless. They are not protecting anyone and are letting irresponsible adults create irresponsible children who are exposing other kids to the same traumatic cycle of having a life threatening experience where they go to learn.  

These incidents are not just present in schools either. Best example is the 10-year-old who fatally shot his mom because of a VR headset back in December of last year. Although the gun had been in a safe and locked space and the child had been the one purposely searching for the weapon there could have been other factors to the horrible conclusion it led to. Going back to parents being irresponsible, one of the causes for this outcome could have been not enough regulation of the child in regards to being on the internet. Just giving a kid a phone and letting the internet raise them is irresponsible, they are exposed to all kinds of media which could badly influence them and lead them down the wrong path, such as this incident. 

And so, what could parents do better? Take care and pay attention to their kids who are most likely already on the internet since very young. What could gun regulations do to actually help keep the community safe? There should be more rules or steps that need to be taken into place when a parent tries to buy a weapon. Such as the already in place check for mental illness there should be one for drug consumption, alcohol abuse. Is there going to be an actual responsible adult in charge of a gun? If not, then they cannot buy a weapon.