11 years old, and ready to kill

Steven Hallock

teaches journalism at Point Park University in Pittsburgh

As law-enforcement officials sorted through the grisly details of the shooting death of a young mother in the borough of New Beaver, near Pittsburgh, family members and residents of the hilly communities of Western Pennsylvania struggled to make sense of it.

Kenzie Marie Houk, nine months pregnant, was found dead by her 4-year-old daughter on the morning of Feb. 20. The accused killer is the 11-year-old son of her fiancé. Investigators say that as Houk lay in bed, the boy shot her in the back of the head with a youth-model .20-gauge shotgun - a Christmas gift from his father. He then wrapped the gun in a blanket and boarded a bus for school with Houk's other daughter, a 7-year-old. The unborn baby reportedly died of oxygen deprivation.

"An 11-year-old kid - what would give him the motive to shoot someone?" the victim's father was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Maybe he was just jealous of my daughter and the baby and thought he would be overpowered."

But not to be lost among the issue of motive and how to treat this case in light of the boy's age are two other compelling questions: What was an 11-year-old boy doing with his own shotgun in a society that deems him too young to drink, drive or smoke? And just how closely was access to this gun supervised?

I telephoned a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, whose initial reaction to those questions was to note that the incidence of children murdering seems to be increasing.

He e-mailed me a list of links to news articles: "Ohio teen convicted of killing mom over video game." "Angry Ohio boy, 4, shoots baby sitter." "Brother shot girl in the chest." "12-year-old Arizona boy guilty in mom's shooting." "Boy, 8, admits shooting Dad, neighbor in video."

"And that's only what's in my file going back to mid-November," said Ladd Everitt, the coalition's director of communications. He blamed the content and desensitizing effect of the films and television programs that children watch and of the video games they play, combined with a relatively new factor.

"A child who does such a thing somehow has received the message that guns are a solution to problems, and that if you're a 'good guy' and you shoot a 'bad guy,' then that kind of violence is OK," Everitt said.

The bearers of that message are not responsible gun owners, he said; it is the avid gun-rights activists who view the victims of such shootings as "scumbags." These activists oppose all gun control.

"As I am seeing these shootings where children are murdering people in cold blood, I'm beginning to believe that children are picking up on these messages, that there are no repercussions, and that you are doing the right thing to do this," said Everitt.

That, he said, "is a dangerous message to send to a child" who has no developed sense of right and wrong.

The relentless campaign of the gun lobby over the last couple of decades has escalated the anti-gun-control agenda from the simple right of ownership to the legal endorsement of carrying concealed weapons and what Everitt called "shoot-first" laws enabling the use of "lethal force whenever they deem there is a threat to their lives."

Easy access to guns increases the danger. Reputable surveys have found that American kids who want guns can obtain them quickly, that nearly two of five American homes with guns and children have at least one unlocked weapon, many of which are loaded or stored with bullets.

Certainly, the questions surrounding the issue of children who kill, and why, are complex, involving social and psychological factors. But surely this nation's political leaders can agree that something is wrong in a culture that invites guns into family and neighborhood disputes.

In a changed political environment led by a president and a new breed of ethically sensitive legislators promising an end to lobbyist-dominated policy-making, we need a response to one more compelling question: When will this nation's leaders stand up to the gun lobby?