Child With a Gun

We dined at a pizza buffet yesterday for lunch. Just a usual Sunday noon, but the restaurant wasn’t very busy. We’re sitting there eating our pizza and salads, and I happen to see a family come in the front door and walk up to the register. The family is a father, mother, probably 10 year old son, and a maybe 4 or 5 year old son.

The younger boy is carrying a gun. A full-size, black, 9mm Beretta pistol. The first thought to come to mind was, “Holy crap!” As one part of my brain was planning how to get my family out of the restaurant, another part noticed how the kid was carrying the gun. He was waving it in one hand, absent mindedly, just toying with it as a young child tends to do. There is no way a 4 or 5 year old child could wave a real pistol around like that—a real gun is much too heavy for that.

When I first noticed it, the child was about 15 feet away. I was packed into my seat between family members, and my 6 year old was between me and the pistol-packing child. Within a couple seconds, the child came to about 10 feet away, and I saw the muzzle of the gun had no bore (hole down the barrel).

It definitely wasn’t real, but it looked real. Very real. I’ve handled, carried, and fired real guns before, and it fooled me. Had an adult been carrying that thing, I would have acted to get the family out of the restaurant as quickly as possible. If the child had come closer than 10 feet, I would have snatched the gun out of his hand.

As it was, we watched the child wander around the restaurant for several seconds until his parents finished at the register and went to a table at the back. He was twirling and flipping the pistol the whole time.

His parents: what absolute morons. What the hell were they thinking? Letting a 4 year old walk into a restaurant with a real-looking pistol?

We left within a couple minutes of that family entering. I kind of wish I had done or said something; but what could I really do or say? Besides, I had my family with me and needed to get my kids out. And what if the kid was playing with a toy pistol because his father had a real one? Too many weird variables to contemplate in that situation.

I’m not a anti-gun guy. I love guns. I love to hold guns, I love to shoot guns, I own a couple guns (currently stored safely in the attic). But I say you never let a 4-5 year old play with a toy gun. A kid needs to learn the basics of civilized behavior before you give them a toy to simulate hard-core violence. (A 4-5 year old may not have learned to not hit, kick, or bite, yet.) And even when a child is old enough to understand the difference between a toy and the real thing, between play and real life and death, you don’t ever give a child a toy gun that looks real. That kind of thing can get the child killed.

And if you for some reason do give a child a real looking gun, don’t let them take it into a public setting. I just cannot express how terribly stupid those parents were. That was irresponsible to their child and to everyone in that restaurant.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com