BOYS AND GUNS. Didn't Know T'Was Loaded.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 291, 27 January 1906, Page 6

BOYS AND GUNS. Didn't Know T'Was Loaded.

NOT long ago, some small Wellington boys were shooting- ■ with one of those harmless^ little pearrifles, in one of those great back-yards— 2oft. x 16ft., or there- . abouts. A stranger passing was missed by one of the harmless little pellets, and interviewed the dear little souls who were firing at or over the fence, it did not matter to - them which. Being told the gun: was harmless, the stranger " asked permission to have a shot at a strolling chicken. The tenderest hen- ' mother wouldn't have known the chick afterwards. * * • , The harmless gun was a rook-rifle, with lots of nice rifling, and' the "pellets" were hollow bullets in am inch-and-a-half loaded shell. They' woudn't have killed a\ bullock at over a hundred yards, perhaps. We relate this true anecdote to show that the average boy is quite unaware of" the deadly nature of some of the shooting toys they are so often seenj - carrying. The recent telegram in; the press, telling ,of the death of' a young man from a pea-rifle bullet wound, "fired in fun" by a girl who"didn't know it was loaded"; the case in which a Northern man shot an interloper dead with a pea-rifle; the case in which a youth had been> firing promiscuously, and had subsequently wounded a Maori, who developed consumption in consequence, all go to show that the pea-rifle still takes its toll, and that nothing is* ' being done to minimise the danger to> the public by the use of these small firearms by irresponsible people — particularly little boys. * ♦ ♦ There are, or have been, a large number of wounded old horses round about Wellington at various times, thanks to the harmless nature of the pear-rifle and the boy behind it. k If to the harmless old horses of Wellington are added the harmlessold gentlemen, small boy comrades, and other people not expecting to be shot, it will be seen that it is time for the Government to prohibit the sale of riflesi to boys, and the use oy small boys of borrowed fire-arms, or powerful air-arms, or any "other kind of weapon that is capable of killing: people. * • • '/ What with flannelette, pear-rifles, chloroform, and tinned meat, there are a numbeir of tombstones in our cemeteries that ought not to be there. Boys will be boys, and about the best way of being a boy the malechild knows is to go out and kill' something with a gun. When he succeeds, and the game is human, he is distressed for life, and thepowers that be ought to make it less. possible for the shooting' youngster to be distressed by prohibiting him, from shooting. * • • The said powers that be prohibit the small boy, thanks to Mr. Field;. from killing himself by smoking tobaccoi, but they don't prevent him> killing people accidentally with firearms. You are not going to prevent the small boy either smoking or using rifles, if you wink your eye at either offence. Perhaps, if you made it necessary for the purchaserof a rifle to> swear an affidavit that no boy under volunteer recruit age would use the fire-arm, and if .it were made an offence for the seller as well as the buyer, there would.beless need for those tombstones.