According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in the year 2010 guns slaughtered 31,076 American citizens in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. “Give a Boy a Gun” a novel by Todd Strasser, addresses the disagreements towards gun control laws due to all the deaths caused my guns. The story takes place at Middletown High school where two boys are victims of continuous bullying, and one day seek revenge by trapping their peers at a school dance with the help of guns and bombs. The young adult novel makes readers question who is to blame for gun incidents; the bullies, gun laws, or the kids using guns against others.
The book is focused around two boys named Brendan and Gary, and is told through quotes from acquaintances. Through these quotes you are able to gain an understanding of the emotional and physical torture the two boys suffer. Ranging from punches to exclusion, Brendan and Gary are in pain everyday at school and quickly become angry and suicidal. One teenager, a friend of the two boys, described the bullying they face everyday by explaining when someone calls him a faggot, “to him [the bully] it’s nothing...but it’s burned in your brain. It’s a permanent scar.” The words from the teenage boy give the reader a sense of how crude nicknames can affect a person forever. After a year of bullying from football players it’s described Gary doesn’t “...really care. He was the past the point of caring. He wanted them to die.” Quickly after the bullying begins, Gary and Brendan become tired, and search for a way to make their bullies feel pain like they do. Additionally, another teenager in the book describes an event where a football player attacked Brendan including “Sam was definitely going for Brendans face”. The same kid even adds “...If I’d had a gun…, I would have shot Sam myself.” This teenager proves how terrible the bully is, because even though he isn’t the target of the attack he feels rage like Brendan and Gary do. If it wasn’t for the teasing and pushing in the hallways the two boys suffer, they wouldn’t have had the depression or rage they deal with throughout the novel. If they hadn’t been wounded by words or fists, they wouldn’t have had the rage that led them straight to guns.
The terror in the Middletown gym was caused by guns, and the gun manufacturers could be at fault for that reason. Gary and Brendan wouldn’t have been able to disable a peer permanently, or hold their grade hostage if they hadn’t gotten their hands on guns. The gun laws in the US are very lenient. A fact in the book states, “more than 50% of male youths say it would be easy to obtain a gun.” Brendan was able to buy a gun for $100 from “...this kid in school.” These proves any person (even a child) with cash could obtain a real gun with real bullets, that could cause real damage. Someone could kill others or themselves, because they don’t know how to property use a gun. Or some people could purposely kill or harm others (like Brendan and Gary) due to personal problems. A quote in the book supports this by saying, “I’ve heard the argument that it’s okay to give guns to kids as long as you make sure they’re trained on how to use them safely. I have to disagree. These are children, and they can be extremely emotional or impulsive and not always completely in touch with reality…” Lastly, many people have guns to hunt animals, or to protect their family (which doesn’t always come to use). But, the book explains how the guns Brendan and Gary got their hands on “...are pretty much the same thing the army uses. They’re not made for hunting or target practice. They’re just made to kill people…” This fact makes the reader wonder why stores would be allowed to sell these guns, or why they could even be obtained by the public. If military weapons couldn’t be given to hands of any age with a few hundred dollars (like they are now), the tragic accidents events occurring all over the Nation could be prevented. If Gary and Brendan couldn’t have gotten the right weapons for their plan, they wouldn’t have made newspaper headlines.
Finally, the blame could fall down onto the two boys holding the guns, Brendan and Gary. A gun’s trigger needs been pushed by a human hand to fire the bullet, a person fires a gun. In the story Brendan says, “Gun[s] don’t kill people. People kill people.” A gun is only a tool used in Brendan and Gary’s “revenge”. The two teenagers are the ones who created the plan, held the guns to students heads, and hit three people with bullets. “At lunch [Brendan would] put his arm on the table and plant his chin behind it so it looked like he was peeking over a wall...he’d stick his thumb and point his finger at the kids he hated. He’d go “Point and click, point and click. Die suckas.” Like he was picking them off one by one.” A girl describes how Brendan would practice shooting a gun at classmates around him. This portrays how Brendan was ultimately the one pointing and shooting the gun to harm people, and he had the motive behind it to make it an easy task. The two teenage boys were the ones who ultimately set the plan into action, and if they hadn’t created the hostage plan, or even set it into action, the events at Middletown High could have never happened.
Bullies, gun laws, and the teenagers, all contribute to the tragic story of what happened at Middletown High. Each side of the story has compelling reasoning for being the cause of the incident, and leaves the reader wondering who to blame. Are the people giving Brendan and Gary the anger and sadness, the reason why the high school class was taken hostage? Did a teenage boy become disabled, because Brendan and Gary were able to shoot military type bullets into his knee? Or were the actual people behind the idea of the attack, the ones who should be punished? The choice is yours. Is there anyway to actually punish whoever is behind the violence? Is there anyway to stop the innocent shootings? It’s up to us. We have to take charge and do what we can to preserve the innocent lives that could be taken in gun violence.
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