A Tale of Two 9-Year-Olds: The One on the Playground, and the One With an Uzi

[progressoid]

A Tale of Two 9-Year-Olds: The One on the Playground, and the One With an Uzi

You should be absolutely terrified that a 9-year-old’s constitutional right to fire an Uzi trumps your right to decide at what age your kids can play at the park unsupervised

Parents who allow their 9-year-old to play unsupervised at a playground can be arrested, but handing a nine-year-old an Uzi is perfectly acceptable.

Unfortunately, that’s not hyperbole. It’s just the sad state of affairs in which we find ourselves, after a 9-year-old New Jersey girl accidentally shot and killed her instructor at a firing range in Arizona. The girl’s parents paid for her to fire a fully automatic machine gun, but she lost control of the weapon and shot her instructor, Charles Vacca, killing the military veteran.

...

Let’s compare that to a story from earlier this summer, regarding a different 9-year-old, one in South Carolina.

Debra Harrell is a working mother who faces a common problem for parents when school lets out for the summer: finding affordable child care. The McDonald’s employee couldn’t afford to have someone watch her 9-year-old daughter, so the girl was playing on her laptop in the restaurant during her mother’s shifts. However, when that laptop was stolen from their home, Harrell armed her daughter with a cell phone in case of an emergency and let her go unsupervised to an area playground. Another parent noticed the girl there alone and contacted the police, at which point Harrell was arrested and charged with child neglect. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years behind bars.

more...
http://time.com/3222257/a-tale-of-two-9-year-olds-the-one-on-the-playground-and-the-one-with-an-uzi/

[eridani]

1. Don't tell me--let me guess

The Uzi parents were white, and the playground mom was black. Amirite?

[Fred Sanders]

2. Both incidents are examples of irresponsible parents. But one parent does it out of necessity.

And the other out of stupidity and criminal neglect.

And one arms their child with a laptop, the other with a deadly assault firearm.

One parent is charged with a felony, the other is not at all.


The law is an ass when it comes to firearms, and an avenging angel when it comes to poverty.

[Gormy Cuss]

4. There is nothing inherently irresponsible about letting a 9 year old play unsupervised.

I did it EVERY day at that age. Like the girl in the above story, there were strict limits about where I could play and how often I had to check in. I was allowed to ride my bike to a public park over a mile away in the summer and not come home for hours. There was nothing unusual about this. Nearly every kid had the same privileges at that age. In fact, my parents were stricter than most because of the long list of places that I couldn't go alone.

This 9 year had a cell phone and knew how to walk from the park to her mother's workplace. Unless there are some salient details missing from the story charging the mother with a felony was over kill.

[Fred Sanders]

5. Absolutely overkill, but leaving a child in a public park all day, day after day? A citation perhaps

but agreed, a felony?

[Gormy Cuss]

6. The child wanted to go to the park.

IIRC the mother had been bringing her to work each day (McD) and the girl hung out while her mother worked. The girl wanted to go the park instead and the mother let her try it ---with a cell phone for emergencies and probably with some instructions.

And FWIW, children this age in low income households are already shouldering a lot more responsibility than other children, out of necessity, and do tend to be a bit better at decision-making because of this. Granted, they are still children using a child's approach to problem solving and thus need lots of guidance and a sense that they can access a trusted adult when needed.

[obxhead]

9. If it is OK to do it one day, it's OK to do it everyday all year long.

I was allowed to ride my bike just about anywhere I wanted at that age. I never got hassled and neither did my parents.

[Cali_Democrat]

3. Kick

Why is this country so stupid?

[malthaussen]

7. If such laws had been in force when I was 9 years old...

... my mother would be doing life without parole.

-- Mal

[GoCubsGo]

8. Mine, too.

And, I feel bad for that girl who shot the instructor. She's going to have to live with that for the rest of her life. I hope her jackass parents can afford the help she's going to need.