These guns keep our children safe ~ By Patrice Lewis

By Patrice Lewis © 2009 In a prior column I described the absurdity of the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a treaty that will very likely get ratified because Nancy Pelosi says so. After all, we can't have dim parents having the final say in their children's upbringing. It takes a village and all that. And now we learn one more aspect of this charming treaty: guns. Yes, guns. To put it bluntly, if you live in a community with children – and who doesn't? – you shouldn't have guns. Allegedly the CRC's justification is to keep kids from becoming child soldiers in third-world countries. No argument from me. Afghanistan could use some lessons in raising kids. But if the U.S. ratifies the CRC, then we must accept the UN's position to "believe, teach and promote the idea that all private gun ownership is dangerous for children, and children have the right to grow up in a community that is free from all guns" (emphasis added). Excuse me? All guns? Private ownership? So kids shouldn't play cops-and-robbers? They should be taught never to defend themselves? They should never want to become soldiers or warriors? Yes indeedy, I can just see it now. We'll become a country of wimps. Or slaves. In a UNICEF brochure entitled "No Guns Please, We Are Children," we learn: "Small arms and light weapons kill and disable more children and adults than any other instrument of violence in conflict and post-conflict situations and on the streets of cities worldwide. Every year, deaths linked to small arms and light weapons run into the hundreds of thousands, with those injured exceeding 1 million." No effort to distinguish how many of these victims are kids. No effort to distinguish between the streets of Kabul and the streets of Coeur d'Alene. No effort to explain that evil people are using those guns, not peaceable citizens – because the citizens have been forcibly deprived of their guns by the evil people. [Keep reading]

Digg story