The inimitable Will Rogers once said that when Congress (make that any legislature) was in session it was sort of like when the baby gets hold of the hammer. But what if the baby got hold of the gun.

If anyone needs more evidence of the accuracy of Rogers' troubling analysis of democracy, they only need to look at what the Iowa House of Representatives did the other day. They passed and sent a bill to the state Senate that makes it legal for children younger than the age of 14 to handle a pistol and ammunition as long as they were being supervised by a parent or another person. Hopefully that precludes one of the many homicidal maniacs shooting up the American landscape under the watchful eyes of constitutionalists. But I wouldn't bet on it.

The justification for this insanity is right out of the gun lobby's guide to bringing up baby in the sacred gun culture. It based somehow on the belief that the younger a person learns to handle a gun, the less likely he is to abuse it. Talk about tortured reasoning. I think John Dillinger's father must have had the same thought. Perhaps the mother of the kid who shot up the elementary school in Connecticut was thinking that way when she kept buying him guns, one of which he used on her before fulfilling his destiny.

Are they nuts? Or are they utterly ignorant or insensitive to the mayhem that has occurred on a regular basis from the "accidental" slaying of adults and other children by youngsters who handle firearms?

http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/opinion/op-ed/iowa-gun-law-screams-ignorance/article_cf8bccee-87d2-5290-a3ed-166d16dfbf57.html