[Glenn E. Meyer]

A teenage story:

1. Kid is an honor student - straight A's
2. Always obeyed parents - no sassing back, etc.
3. Gets his drivers license at 16, perfect scores in Drivers ed.
4. Dad swears he is wonderful kid and always listens. Dad is the master, patriarch, spirtual leader and kid is his loyal disciple.
5. Day after gets license, kid asks to drive Dads' pride and joy around the block. It is a souped up Chevy Nova with a 496 blah, blah. Dad says only if you go around the block.
6. Wonder child picks up a friend, crashes into tree at 100 mph and is killed.

This dad swore up and down what a great kid he had and the evidence documented it.

Just as all guns are always loaded, you cannot blithely assume your kids are always going to 'obey' your rules around guns. It is not PC crap, it is reality. In fact, the risk is a kind of conservative PC crap of parents who assume that their rules are obeyed as law, that the kids don't have secret lives or that a momentary pressure can't lead to problems.

However, I believe in Darwin and so those who just want to trust lectures and not have a careful view about unsupervised access to firearms by kids can go give one for evolution.

We have so much trouble with kids doing drugs and committing suicide that I take a very jaundiced view of those who swear their kids won't do XYZ and in fact the more sure they are - the more I wonder.