Who's fault is it?

Out & About, by Howard Delo

I was reading the Daily News the other day and came across a couple of things that really bother me. I know this is the holiday season and that I should have "good will toward men," but I need to say this before I move into the holiday mode.

The first item was an editorial about the 13-year-old kid in Florida who shot and killed his teacher a couple of years ago. In a civil action, the jury has awarded millions of dollars to the teacher's family and assigned partial blame for the shooting to the gun distributor who legally sold the gun 10 years before. The manufacturer of the handgun has been out of business for several years or they would have probably been sued also.

The jury also assigned blame to the man from whom the gun was stolen by the kid, for not locking up the gun in his own house, and the school district for not having better security. The kid who killed the teacher was not assigned any blame for his actions.

The related item was a short blurb about how an attorney in New York has filed suit against McDonald's on behalf of the state's children who have supposedly become obese by eating "fast foods." A third point related to this so-called logic is the great tobacco settlements from a few years ago. This whole mentality is bordering on insanity.

I do not condone the use of tobacco products, or eating until you gain 40 pounds, or killing people with guns. On the tobacco point, being a "reformed" pipe smoker for the past 20 years, I probably am more "anti" than your average nonsmoker. No one made me start smoking and no one made me quit. Those were choices I made myself. I often shake my head over the legal arguments that led to the settlement.

I was dumbfounded at the arguments various cities around the country have used in filing lawsuits against firearms manufacturers for the criminal misuse of their products by a third party. Thankfully, virtually all of those suits have been dismissed as groundless, but the mentality of suing a manufacturer or distributor for being somehow responsible for the criminal actions of a third party escapes me.

When I was a kid, I was held responsible for my actions and their consequences. I attended schools where the teachers had the authority and responsibility to discipline me (and I'm not talking about just detention either). My parents would have come down on the school had they failed to discipline me. I quickly learned that whatever the school did paled in comparison to what my folks would do if I seriously broke the rules. They were fair, though.

If I started the fight, I had "heck" to pay. If somebody started a fight with either one of my siblings or me, I got in trouble with the school for fighting, but my folks never once disciplined me for defending my siblings or myself. I do not condone fighting in school either. But I recognize that you are responsible for yourself and, sometimes, that means you need to fight. That reality holds true in life, just like in sixth grade.

Alaska finally figured out that a drunk driver is responsible for his/her actions while behind the wheel of a car. The brewery that made the beer or the automobile manufacturer who built the car are not responsible for the criminal actions of a person who chooses to abuse both things together. Yet the prevalent fear of guns being somehow responsible for crimes makes no logical sense to me.

Have we, as a society, lost the concept that each one of us is responsible for our own actions and their resulting consequences? Sometimes I wonder.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist living in Big Lake. Send your comments and ideas to editor@frontiersman.com, or call (907) 352-2268 and leave a message for Howard.