Gun Safety Is An Oxymoron

For everyone’s safety, we must rid the world of firearms.

Yesterday, I read yet another news article about yet another school shooting in the United States. These horrific incidents have become so routine that the details have begun to blur together.

What stood out in this case was the age of the shooter: Six. Six. A six-year-old child deliberately shot his teacher, Abby Zwerner, with a handgun.

Virginia shooting of teacher by six-year-old 'not accidental', authorities say

When I read the age of this shooter, I immediately recalled another horrific image. On May 16, 2022, the arms manufacturer Daniel Defense tweeted a photo of a toddler cradling a rifle, accompanied by a Bible verse. The company soon pulled this post down in response to outrage, as they were the manufacturer of the gun used in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting just days later. But their original tweet is preserved in the Internet Archive.

Screenshot from the Internet Archive of a tweet by Daniel Defense, showing a toddler sitting on the floor holding a rifle. The text reads “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it”, with an emoji of hands together in prayer.

The suggestion that training a young child in the use of modern firearms is justified by the Bible seared this image into my brain with red-hot anger. The NRA and the Christian evangelicals who…