One of the weirder things about guns is the colorful vocabulary that accompanies them. Among these, the word gunplay is actually a misnomer. There is nothing playful about a gun. Merriam-Webster defines gunplay as "the shooting of small arms with intent to scare or kill." You tell me, is that playful? Nonetheless, each year children find their parents' or siblings' firearms lying about and horrible things either happen to them or to their family members. For instance, this weekend in Dolton, Illinois, a three-year-old got ahold of a firearm and while playing with it, accidentally shot and killed his 22-year-old mother from the back seat of their van in a parking lot of a grocery store. In Nashville, another toddler shot himself in the head with his mother's handgun he got out her purse. Fortunately, that toddler lived. Similarly, a sibling shot another sibling in Louisiana while playing with a gun.
Guns are deadly and are intended to be that. They are not toys. Can we at least recognize that treatin them as anything less than the instruments of death that they are is making them that much more lethal in the hands of those they should never be in--kids. Kids should be able to play and play safely. They can't be held accountable for the laxness of their family members who are playing with the devil by not securing their firearms. Anyone who is as careless as to leave their gun unsecured is a person who really ought not to have one. Like all rights we have, we do risk losing them by acting in less than responsible and, I would add, criminal ways. Can we agree that the 2nd amendment does have one important limit, people who are not responsible or lack the mental capacity to take care of securing their guns should not be given a pass when someone ends up dead due to their irresponsibility.
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