Whether gun control were a touchy topic or not, it would still be imperative for us to call out our own for acting wrongly with regard to how they handle their guns.
What I call “how not to be a gun owner.”
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of things people have done that made me want to slap some sense into them. However, this might be among the worst.
The incident began Saturday when a mother drove her daughter, two sons and a nephew to the home on Rockcrest Road. Her 10-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son rang the doorbell and dropped off a Halloween goody bag on the porch for the girl’s friend, police said.
When the children returned to the car, the girl told her mother the address may have been incorrect, so they drove back, and the boy went up to the porch to get the bag full of candy, police said.
That’s when the man opened the door and pointed a handgun at the boy’s head, they said.
Police later determined it had been the wrong address.
Michael Yifan Wen, age 43, was arrested and charged with menacing and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
If only “terminal stupidity” were a charge.
Understand that if I’ve got people mucking about on my porch, I’m likely to investigate myself. I will likely have a gun on my person when I do so.
Up to this point, there’s no issue.
Yet a six-year-old kid is not a threat, especially to a fully grown adult and when on the porch by himself. There was absolutely no reason to point the gun at anyone, and yet that’s what’s alleged.
Wen will answer for that in court. If it’s determined that yes, he did in fact point a gun at a small child, I’m not really going to have a lot of sympathy for him.
Especially when you couple this with the shootings we saw earlier this year, where people were shot over somehow being on the wrong side of a property line or trying to get into the wrong car.
While we have a right to defend ourselves, we also must make sure people understand when there’s an actual threat to themselves.
A six-year-old getting a goodie bag that was placed at the wrong doorstep is not a threat. Not in this or any other universe known to man. Nor was someone ringing the wrong doorbell, chasing a ball into the wrong yard, nor mistakenly trying to open the wrong car door.
It’s up to us to hold our own, meaning gun owners, accountable. We need to point out bad behavior and demand better from everyone else.
This is what we need less of. This is the epitome of “how not to be a gun owner.”
Wen is facing charges, and if he did what he’s accused of, he deserves the punishment he gets. Arguable, he’s likely to get off far lighter than he would have if he’d pointed a gun at the head of my kid.
