“The Key to Disaster”

I HAVE handled guns since I was a boy, but I will never own one again. We have a small farm, and I felt I needed a gun for rodent control. One day my wife and I were working in the field, getting ready for some planting. It was particularly hot that day, so we left our two sons in the house where it was cooler. We were only a few hundred feet away and felt that they would be all right playing together. I was on the tractor when the older boy came running to me and cried: “Daddy, I think baby’s been shot!” I ran to the house and found my wife on the back steps giving CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) to the child. As I dialed 911, I begged Jehovah to help my son live, but if not to please remember him in the resurrection. He died there in his mother’s arms.

He was two and a half years old. He was so tender and innocent. The official report lists the shooting as accidental. The older boy took the rifle from our bedroom, loaded it, and was playing with it. The loss of our son, particularly in this manner, is a blow we will feel until the day Jehovah restores him to us.

Leaving the boys alone was a mistake, but having a gun in the house was the key to disaster. A gun is nothing more than a tool of destruction. I will never be able to justify having had one.​—Letter received last December from a Witness in Arizona.