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You know the old routine about kicking the cat. Hard day at work
and you can't vent on your boss, and when you get home you can't vent on
your spouse - so you kick the cat! Doesn't make much outward sense, but psychologically it's very understandable. It's called 'displacement', and it is a mechanism used to relieve tension when the logical outlet is frustrated. In this particular case, it's unfairly hard on the cat. Displacement is used when the logical object of one's ire is either too dangerous or too costly a target. The result is that some unlucky innocent victim bears the brunt. There is an unfortunate and extremely dangerous movement in our society to incorporate such displacement into social policy. An early symptom was Ralph Nader and his Unsafe at any Speed A movement began to require products to be intrinsically safe. Abandoning the time-honored precept of "Caveat Emptor", it became accepted to hold the producer liable for any damages caused by their products and services - whether or not such danger was known, and whether or not the producer warned the customer. The movements against tobacco companies, bartenders and even gun manufacturers are prime examples if this type of thinking - or rather the lack thereof. But things do not get to such a pass in one fell swoop. There are intermediate steps - little creeping assumptions which gradually pare away the boundaries of freedom. It is with just such an intermediate philosophical stage that I am concerned. Recently, instances of children and youths either accidentally or intentionally harming themselves or others with guns they have happened across or have stolen, have been much in the news. However, there has been a gradually increasing lack of differentiation between drastically different scenarios. There is a world of difference between the following 3 scenarios: 1. A parent leaves his loaded, cocked and unlocked .45 semi-auto on the coffee table where his unsupervised 3 year old toddler finds it. 2. While babysitting, a girl of 16 finds a gun in a drawer, picks it up, drops it and then shoots herself trying to put it back together. 3. A boy of 14 breaks into his grandfather's home and then into his gun cabinet to steal weapons to commit premeditated murder. Now in each case, who is at fault? The currently fashionable answer is "the gun owner!" While that is obviously true in the 1st case, it is patently ridiculous in the 3rd case. Therefore, let us examine the 2nd case. Let us assume that in the 2nd case the gun was not in a drawer that the babysitter was authorized to open. In that case, it is logical that the girl did things she should not have done. A person of this age should have long ago been taught certain things by her parents: Actions of the girl: Failure of her parents to teach her: opened the drawer Don't poke into other people's property touched the gun Don't touch other people's property picked it up Don't handle other people's guns without their permission Don't handle unfamiliar guns dropped it About guns and their handling picked it up again Learn from experience mishandled it About guns and their handling If the girl had been taught these rules, and chose to disobey them - then she is to blame. But even if her parents did teach her those rules - they are still somewhat to blame - for not making sure she had learned her lessons. 
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