Been watching too many violent movies and all he knows is guns are used for robberies? http://www.wral.com/fla-8-year-old-stole-mom-s-gun-tried-to-rob-store/15321374/ The boy rode a bicycle from his home to a King Food grocery, looked around the front of the store before heading to the checkout counter. Kids with guns! They are lucky he didn't accidentally shoot anyone in the store. Gun owners need to be more responsible. Keep guns away from children.
I'm glad you said this, Rainman, and didn't turn it into an Obamaesque-rant on guns. That annoys me soooooo badly but that's a thought for another time and another thread, isn't it? Yes, gun owners need to be responsible... no question there whatsoever. If a child overdoes and dies on Tylenol, there isn't an uproar each time to get rid of Tylenol... just lock the medicine cabinet.
I can't believe he actually had enough guts to go and do that. That'd be so embarrassing and horrifying for the mom.
It's quite sad that the child thought that was normal, and with all the news coverage of gun incidents I can see why. Maybe the parents need to keep an eye on what they watch, who they hang out with, and as OP said, keep the guns locked away.
Sadly in the future I think that these types of stories will become more and more common. While 8 years old is younger than you'd expect for someone to do this, the more violent the world becomes, the younger people are going to think that this is the normal thing to do. Having said that, the mother does have some responsibility to one, make sure an 8 year old can't have access to a gun, and two, instilled a sense of discipline for him to know it's not right to go and rob stores in the first place.
The thing is, he is still a kid. He doesn't really have a full grasp of what's right and what's wrong. In that sense, it's entirely up to the parents to keep him from doing anything violent. Why did they make the gun easy to reach by their child? Why did they allow him to watch violent movies without guiding him about it? I'd say this incident is still at the parent's fault. I won't say the kid is liable since he is still so young. They are the parents. They made the steps to make this happen.
Again, another bizarre story from Florida. Never seems to fail. Hate to see tragic stories like this. Gives gun owners a bad name. Then people try and use the irresponsibility of some gun owners to attack the 2nd amendment as a whole. That's wrong. We definitely need to stress gun safety more but there is only so much you can do. Instances like this will happen from time to time.