The dangers of BB guns

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Do you remember getting your first BB gun? How old were you? Was it a Daisy BB gun? Have you looked at he BB guns that they sell now? These new BB guns are NOT like the BB guns that we played with as kids. These are high powered BB guns! A few years back, my nephew gave my children his old BB gun (a Daisy). I didn't think that they were old enough (ages 6,7 & 8) or mature enough for it so I put it in the top of my closet. I came home from work one day to find that th babysitter had allowed them to get it and play with it! I took it from them and threw it in the garbage can. I returned from work the next day to see that they had taken it out of the trash and were playing with it again! I disassembled it and threw it away again. This solved that problem. Two years ago they asked for BB guns for Christmas. I decidedto get them the ones that shoot plastic BBs and told them that if they showed responsibility with these B guns that I would let them get a real BB gun next year. They showed extreme caution and responsibility with these BB guns and I was very proud of them. Wel Christms of last year they didn't ask for BB guns and so they didn't get them.I thought that maybe they were beyond the BB gun thing. The day after Christmas I took them shopping so that they could spend the money that they had gotten. We were at Walmart whn they came to me with the BB guns and BBs. I tol them that they should find something better to spend their money on but they insisted that they really wanted them and reminded me how they had been with the other BB guns and what I had said about them. Besides, they were now ages 11,12, & 13. That was the worst mistake of my life. Later that night (after 9pm) they were talking on their new cell phones (free nights and weekends). My daughter was in the livingroom, my oldest boy was out on th side porch ofthe house (I could see him out the side door), and my youngest son was on the front porch ( I could see him through the fromt window). I told my daughter, as she is the oldest,to give them a few more minutes and then call them in because it was getting late and I would be going to bed soon and hey would need to go to bed too. I walked back to my bedroom and proceeded to put on my night clothes. All of a sudden I hear a loud thump and feet running across the porch. My first thought was that the boys were horseplaying, so I went to tell them that it was time to come in and settle down. When I opened the door, I saw my youngest son lying face down on the porch and his older brother standing over him looking as though he hsd seen a ghost. I asked what the hell was going on and my oldest boy told me that he thought a BB had hit his brother. At that time my baby boy lifted his head and I saw that his right eye was swollen out as far as his nose! I freaked! We got him up and into the house so that I could get a look at it (I used to work in a doctors office as a medical assistant). As soon as I saw it I knew he needed to go to the hospital. He never passed out and never stopped talking to me, so I didn't figure that it was life threatening. Boy was I wrong. See, what had happened was that my oldest boy had finished his phone call and decided to shoot off the BB gun a few more times before coming into the house. He aimed the BB gun towards the empty pasture and fired it. He said that he heard his brother make a grunting sound and then heard him fall so he ran to him. As it turns out, the BB hit an iron dinner bell that is mounted at the corner of the porch and ricocheted back into the direction of my youngest son. Once at the hospital, they did an X-ray and found that the BB had traveled all the way through his eye and had lodged in his brain 1 inch from the back of his skull. They told me that if the BB had gone 1/2 inch lower it would have hit his carotid artery and he would have bled to death before I could have gotten him to the hospital. Because of the severity of his injuries, he had to be life-flighted (taken by helicopter) to a childrens hospital. Once there, he had to endure hours of poking, prodding and questions out the a**. In the early hours of the morning they finally took him in to surgery. He was in surgery for 8 hours (the longest 8 hours of my life). After surgery, the doctors (an opthamologist and a neurologist) came out to talk to me and my mother (thank heavens she was there). We were told that the eye wasn't able to be saved. The BB had blown out the back of the eye and had destroyed the nerve. In addition to losing the eye, they also had to remove a quarter sized portion of his frontal lobe (brain) where the BB had entered the brain because it had caused a blood clot and had killed that part of his brain. They were unable to remove the BB without causing major brain damage so they left it in it's place. They couldn't be sure if there had been any brain damage and informed us that we wouldn't know until he was completely healed. Because of the extensive damage done to the eye socket, they were unable to put the spacer in at that time. He would have to have another surgery. This happened 4 months after the original injury. Two months after this surgery,he was finally fitted with a prostetic eye. Through all of this, he has never lost his sense of humor or love of life. When he first learned that he had lost his eye he said, "you mean there's no eye in there? Cool. That's ok, I will still get the girls!". He now charges $5 to people wanting to see him remove his prostetic! He is more popular now than he was before (he was very popular before this happened). He has more "girlfriends" than he knows what to do with. Even though he is doing so well, I wished that he had never had to go through any of this. So, to all parents out there, please take caution in buying a BB gun of any kind for your child. Also, 2 days after my sons accident, a 13 year old boy died of the exact injuries that my son substained.