Who blames the gun?

"The love of a child, is the love that carries you forward"

You often hear people playing the blame game, judging from their armchairs, or thinking they would have handled what ever far better. People are quick to say that if we get rid of guns there would be less murders. Or my favorite is that video games are to blame for kids growing up to be mass murders. 

I was reading a news story about a man who killed his twin infants. They were just 5 weeks old. Their mother had left them in his care to go to work. They were not living together and he had a shady violent history. 

I made the mistake of reading the comments. 

Mom had known that dad was a drinker with violent leanings. This means she should have some how known he would kill the kids. She should have defied the law and the custody papers. And because of his actions, she should be equally blamed for the death of her kids, if not carry the total weight of it.

*blink blink* Really?  I get that I would have tried to find another sitter. I get that there may (heavy on the may) have been a way to prevent him from seeing the kids alone. I get that there was issues. I don't see how that means she caused their deaths. Do people really think she doesn't beat herself up enough over this and the choices she made?

No gun can fire without human help. It must be left unlocked for a child to find it and kill their best friend. It has to be bought, loaded and carried to some place to be used to rob and kill. It is not the gun that kills.

It is not a video game, TV show, book, song or a movie that causes children to become off centered. Parents are the ones who buy or allow their children to watch, read or play the items. If they don't offset the lessons in them with lessons of right and wrong, then they are allowing the potential for bad things to happen. But at some point everyone must be responsible for their own actions no matter what they watched on TV when they were kids.

A parent should use care when leaving their children with someone. A parent should put the welfare of their children first. BUT the reality is that if they are at work and the child's other parent commits a crime, it is not their fault. What they do about it, how they handle it, and what they do in the future is what they are responsible for.

The parent that comes home from work and finds the baby in pain but doesn't call 911, they deserve to be held accountable. If the boyfriend said that they feel like harming a child, but the girlfriend sends the baby with him anyway, she deserves to be held responsible. If you hand the drunk the keys knowing he has downed a fifth... You all get what I'm sayin'

We can never really know if we would have done better, if there really was warning signs, or if there was really something that could have prevented the tragedy. We are not the judge, jury, or all the perfect ourselves who are we to try and say? What we can do is learn from it, raise our kids right, and hope we don't screw up as badly.