I was reading the latest tale of a pre-teen gunning down an adult (this time in a small town in the general vicinity of Pittsburgh) when I came across this bit of information: "The shotgun, which apparently belonged to Jordan [who stands accused of killing his father's pregnant girlfriend], is designed for children, and such weapons do not have to be registered..."

I've heard of the "gun show" loophole, which allows purchases of handguns without going through the required three-day wait and background check. But I've never heard of this "kids guns" loophole.

I suppose the logic behind this is that a kids gun is analogous to a toy. More specifically, where do you draw the line? There are Nerf guns, which are almost entirely harmless. There are BB and pellet guns, which can cause serious injuries--but usually don't. And then there's the child-sized shotgun that Jordan Brown allegedly used on Friday. Police say he shot Kenzie Marie Houk, put his gun in his room and got on the school bus. The police picked him up at school later in the day.

Where do you draw the line? If you're going to require registration (another question for another day), all guns that fire projectiles at a certain rate of speed (I'll let the experts argue about that one) ought to be registered, regardless of who will be shooting them. In my mind, "kids" guns ought to be more tightly-controlled than "adult" guns, but once again, that's another issue entirely.

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there wringing their hands about "the kids today" and other such nonsense. But the child here is not responsible for this crime. Even if he did pull the trigger (and we must reserve judgment; this is America, after all), he should never have had access to the gun in the first place.

This isn't a question of whether kids should be allowed to use guns for hunting or target practice. I know plenty of hunters, and I've even done a wee bit of (marginally illegal) hunting myself. I went to high school in New Mexico, after all. There are responsible hunters and irresponsible hunters. There are responsible gun owners and irresponsible gun owners. In this case, we're talking about irresponsible gun owners. I hate to play blame the victim, but Houk had two young daughters in the house. There's no way she should have permitted a loose firearm on the premises. Period.

Following a certain line of cultural stereotyping, it's almost certain that Jordan Brown's dad bought the gun and allowed his son access to it. That's irresponsible, and such irresponsibility directly led to the death of his girlfriend and their unborn child (eight months along). I don't care who pulled the trigger or why; the father is guilty of criminal negligence, at the very least.

My four-year-old son will occasionally make threats such as "If you tell me that again, I'll shoot you." Most often, this sort of outburst occurs because he's been told to put on his clothes. You might laugh, but at that particular moment he's more than angry enough to kill. The anger of a child is not merely less regulated than that of an adult; it's also much more self-righteous. Kids believe in the rightness of their actions with a fervor few religious fanatics can match. The world is truly black-and-white to a four-year-old, and their desires are sacrosanct.

So I wrote all that above, and then I went over to a friend's house and pounded a few pleasant Sunday beers. I mentioned what I was writing, and he told me he had a 20-gauge when he was twelve.

"And if my dad saw so much as a fingerprint on that gun, my ass would be bloody," he told me. I complimented my friend's dad. My friend appreciated the compliment.

I'm not advocating corporal punishment or anything like that, but kids have to know and understand the responsibilities of owning a gun. If they don't, there's no reason under the sun to give them access to a gun. If there is a seven-year-old and a four-year-old in the house (as there are in the Brown case), there's no excuse for having a gun and ammo accessible to any of the children. No excuse whatsoever.

Kids may intellectually know right from wrong, but they cannot control their emotions. That's one reason why most children are not charged as adults in murder cases. I expect that Jordan Brown will eventually be charged as a juvenile. I hope that his father will be charged with negligent homicide. The blame in these types of cases lies with the adults who did not take care of guns, not with the kids who throw extremely violent temper tantrums.

Jon Worley earned the rifle and shotgun merit badge at Boy Scout camp.