Horrors! CNN video shows dad handing 2-year old son an AK-47 in a pawn shop

CNN is hyperventilating over this clip, and it's a little creepy. Not the idea of letting the kid handle an unloaded rifle--that's a bad idea, and bad parenting, but hardly national news. The dad's statements that "you're gonna be a soldier, because daddy's gonna buy you this chopper, and you can kill everyone out in front of you" is unnerving.

I remember very well the first time my dad let me handle one of his guns. It was a single action Colt revolver, and I still remember the sound of him turning the cylinder again and again, with a well-oiled tick at each engagement of the cam, verifying again and again it was unloaded before he handed it to me--with appropriate warnings not to point it at anyone and never to even touch it unless he handed it to me and said it was okay. The unusual degree of caution and seriousness from my usually laid-back dad made a powerful impression on me that lingers to this day.

I was about four.

He did not say, "this is a Peacemaker, and you can blow anybody's head off with it". The issue here is not the youth, it's the attitude.

And since we're speaking of the attitude: If CNN is so exercised about this, perhaps they would want to search for "Palestinian Child Abuse" on Little Green Footballs and start clicking a few of those links. If kids with guns is really such a big deal to them, this is gonna blow their mind.

Cross-posted at Patterico's Pontifications.