Maybe I’m way off base here, but 5 years old and being carefully taught that killing ANYTHING NOT A THREAT TO YOU and not needed for survival, is not only irresponsible, and outrageous it is a hideous and inappropriate way to raise a child. Then teaching him to brag about being a little ‘sh_t ’ is even worse.
That was my first impression of the whole thing when I saw the news article on tv the other day. My next thought was “How is this any different to so-called desensitizing of kids by playing video games?” especially since this *was* an innocent living creature that he violently (and needlessly) shot dead - and was praised for doing so.
What about later in life if he gets taunted at school…? “Oh, you think you’re so tough? Eh? Just ‘cause you killed a bear when you were 5.” Is he going to have no remorse in killing the bullies too?
What about later in life if he gets taunted at school…? “Oh, you think you’re so tough? Eh? Just ‘cause you killed a bear when you were 5.” Is he going to have no remorse in killing the bullies too?
Goofycabal, I didn’t see this on television and am curious how the news folks felt about the event (though I’m pretty sure personal opinions were neatly capped to silence)?
That’s a very good point, and here in the United States, this may be a larger problem that most would want to admit or realize. It’s my understanding that while US children rank extremely low (overall) academically when compared to many other countries, their self-esteem remains at the very top: so, they appear to be unusually proud about what they do happen to ‘know’ or ‘think’ they know?
The problem isn’t our children though, the fault lies with the adults who are supposed to be delivering wisdom as well as knowledge.
And if we adults believe we’re doing such a good job, then we are just as disallusioned as our kids
I don’t really see much wrong with teaching a five-year-old how to properly use firearms, so long as you’re not actually letting them run around with them. If a responsible person who knows proper firearms procedures is there the entire time right at the kid’s side, and the child isn’t allowed to just play around with a loaded weapon, then he’s learning to use it properly without there really being any risk more risk than there is in many childhood games. Most gun-related injuries among kids are because the child holding the gun didn’t really know what he was doing with it and was just playing around with it. So if he actually knows to check the safety and the chamber and not to point it at anyone and to treat it with respect, then if he does happen to get ahold of a gun on his own he’s less likely to cause chaos.
You should still most definitely keep guns away from him when he’s unsupervised until he’s much older, of course.
As for teaching a kid to actually hunt. . .well, I suppose that depends. If you’re just doing it so that you two can go out and blast away at the wildlife together in a few years and then brag about how many bears or deer or wildebeest or apatasaurs you shot, then I’m not too thrilled with the idea. If it’s a family that does a good bit of hunting for food or to protect livestock or something useful like that, though, then that’s a different matter.
I don’t really see much wrong with teaching a five-year-old how to properly use firearms, so long as you’re not actually letting them run around with them. If a responsible person who knows proper firearms procedures is there the entire time right at the kid’s side, and the child isn’t allowed to just play around with a loaded weapon, then he’s learning to use it properly without there really being any risk more risk than there is in many childhood games. Most gun-related injuries among kids are because the child holding the gun didn’t really know what he was doing with it and was just playing around with it. So if he actually knows to check the safety and the chamber and not to point it at anyone and to treat it with respect, then if he does happen to get ahold of a gun on his own he’s less likely to cause chaos.
You should still most definitely keep guns away from him when he’s unsupervised until he’s much older, of course.
As for teaching a kid to actually hunt. . .well, I suppose that depends. If you’re just doing it so that you two can go out and blast away at the wildlife together in a few years and then brag about how many bears or deer or wildebeest or apatasaurs you shot, then I’m not too thrilled with the idea. If it’s a family that does a good bit of hunting for food or to protect livestock or something useful like that, though, then that’s a different matter.
This is pretty much how I feel about it. And even if there are local grocery stores or what have you…many people still rely on hunting to off-set the cost of groceries throughout the year.
Goofycabal, I didn’t see this on television and am curious how the news folks felt about the event (though I’m pretty sure personal opinions were neatly capped to silence)?
Well, I only saw it on our lunch-time news, and since it was an American news clip (I’m in New Zealand by the way), there wasn’t really any comment about it (other than the intro from the news presenter). I think the clip itself was lifted straight from CNN or Fox news, but the reporter in the clip didn’t give much opinion on the matter either - nothing more than asking a few questions about things like ‘Where did this take place’, ‘How did it happen’ etc…
As for the issue of violence in later life, it’s not much of an issue here in New Zealand as gun violence is fairly dmall and mostly isolated to gangs so I was making a personal judgement call on that based on what I’ve observed in the news here about gun problems in the States. The problem might not be as bad as I think it is, but I agree that in any case, parents should be the first line of defence in teaching kids the proper use of firearms if there are any in the house as well as making sure they only have access to them under strict adult supervision.
Though, I’m still against randomly hunting and shooting innocent creatures who are busy minding their own business in their wilderness homes…
There are still a lot of areas where the people hunt mainly for food because they don’t have ready access to modern necessities like supermarkets. It’s a lot easier for them and a way of life that extends back centuries. Having been bought up near such an area I can vouch for the fact that if it werent’ for the hunting many of those people would have starved.
Indeed. There are a number of reasons for hunting that I haven’t any objection to. Hunting for food is the main one; it can be a lot less expensive than buying meat from a store, and stores aren’t always within a reasonable distance. Hunting the animal because the animal is an excessive danger and has to be gotten rid of is another. And in developed countries, it is often necessary to hunt animals such as deer because all of their predators have been killed or scared away by people, and if the population isn’t culled then all the deer will starve.
It’s the people who just go out and shoot things so that they can bring home a big pair of antlers, or who don’t even bother to do that much and who just shoot things for the fun of shooting things, who I object to. If you’re going to shoot a bear or a deer, take it home and eat it (or donate it to one of the groups who feed the poor).
In the case of this kid, it’s pretty clear that at least one big part of the reason for shooting the bear was to teach the boy how to do it; shooting at paper targets is all very well for learning the technique, but at some point you have to shoot at the real thing in order to really become proficient. I just wonder which from among the other above reasons they did it.
