Education or Ignorance?

There has recently been a social experiment, produced and underwritten it would appear by the local police. Their mission, to prove that children and guns do not mix! In a staged scenario, a room was filled with toys and other such things that children of today would be interested in. additionally, a strategically placed firearm was also left in the room. This firearm, although real, was rendered inoperable by the group conducting the “study”.

Whilst it cannot be considered a great scientific study, after all there were only 8 subjects in the test group, the result of the test is all but ignored by not only the group conducting the study, but by pretty much all the media. So why has this unscientific study been almost completely ignored and swept under the carpet. The answer, the result was not quite what they wanted. The selected children were left to play in the room, monitored on CCTV. Eventually one of the children found the gun and started playing with it, pointing it at the other children and pretending to shoot them.  Out of the 8 children left in the room 6 played with the firearm in the manner previously described. However 2 did not, and this is the reason why the video did not get considerably more coverage in the media.

You see of the 8 children involved, 6 came from homes where guns and gun ownership was not permitted, for whatever reason, by the parents. Therefore the children had no experience, or education, on what to do when they came across the firearm. The remaining 2 children came from homes where guns and gun ownership was permitted. These children and been brought up with firearms and were aware, by virtue of training in their upbringing, that they should not touch the gun, and what they should do if they found one.

In conclusion, the experiment was designed to show that guns and children do not mix. The unintended consequence was that, education from an early age, especially concerning the safe handling of firearms is not something that should be ignored, even if you do not have a gun in the house.

To watch the video please click HERE.