Op-ed: The benefits of arming 14-year-olds

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared at WorldNetDaily.com. Republished with permission of the author.

by Gerard Valentino

For the second time this year, the 24-hour news outlets are reporting that a 14-year-old boy used a gun to thwart a violent home invasion. The most recent case took place in Phoenix, Ariz., and the boy not only saved his own life, but also saved two younger siblings. In January, a 14 year-old boy from North Carolina found himself in a similar situation and was also forced to shoot an intruder.

Since the establishment media grossly underreport the number of times gun are used legally in self-defense by adults, it is a pretty good assumption they do the same when children are involved. When an innocent child is killed with a gun, however, the establishment media jump at the chance to sensationalize the event and further the myth that thousands of young children die every year via gun accidents.

Luckily for the families in Arizona and North Carolina, their respective legislative bodies didn't believe the statistics conjured out of this air by the Violence Policy Center, or the latest permutation of Sarah Brady's anti-gun corral. So, families in North Carolina and Arizona can exercise the constitutionally protected right to bear as they see fit.

In contrast, California is often on the tip of the spear when it comes to anti-gun insanity, and over the years lawmakers have embraced one anti-gun fad after another. So, when safe-storage laws became all the rage, California's elected officials jumped right in – with devastating consequences for at least one family.

Aug. 23, 2000, seemed to be another normal day for 14-year-old Jessica Carpenter and the rest of her family, of Merced, Calif. With her father at work and her mother getting the family car fixed, Jessica was left in charge of her siblings, age 13, 11, 9 and 7.

As with most gun owners, Jessica's father always made sure to obey the law – and because of California's safe-storage requirements, he kept his .357 magnum hidden away and unloaded when he wasn't home. Just locking the gun wasn't enough for Jessica's father; he also sent her to a class at the age of 12 to make sure she understood how to safely handle the gun.

When confronted with a naked intruder, Jessica first retreated to her room and tried to call the police, but found the phone line was dead. She then remembered her father's gun, which she was trained to handle. But, she also knew her father made sure it wasn't accessible while he was away, so instead she chose to jump out of her bedroom window and run for help.

Once he realized Jessica was gone, the intruder, who was now armed with a pitchfork, turned on the rest of the children. He killed 9 year-old Ashley after she tried to stop him from hurting her younger sister, Anna.

The youngest child, 7-year-old John was killed while he slept.

Anna and Vanessa were able to escape through a window and met up with Jessica who ran to a neighbor's house and called the police.

When the police responded, they were able to use their guns to shoot the intruder 13 times – an option Jessica, and the rest of the Carpenter children were denied because their parents were forced to choose between following the law and the safety of their children – a situation created when laws are based on the lies disseminated by the anti-gun movement.

We live at a time when the wounds inflicted by the anti-gun experiment are starting to heal, and when Americans have rejected the notion that only the government should have access to firearms. It isn't a surprise that such a drastic change in opinion on guns followed the free flow of information created by the Internet, exposing the lies perpetrated by the anti-gun zealots.

But, the real damage came from the pop-culture myth that only the paranoid or men trying to compensate for a lack of power are stupid enough to carry a gun. So, today all over America, people are the victims of violent crime because criminals know that most people are unarmed.

As concealed-carry laws chip away at the social stigma of carrying a gun, more and more people have begun to take up arms in their own defense. Despite the establishment media's crazed reaction, America is a better place for it.

Gerard Valentino is a co-founder of Buckeye Firearms Association, and a member of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation Board of Directors.