You bet. Venerable journalist Bill Deedes passed this information on toDaily Telegraph readers while reporting on child soldiers in SierraLeone.
What is the relevance to Britain? Lord Deedes is pointing to "theastonishingly young age" at which children can handle firearms. It is awarning, he says, to ministers who are talking of lowering the age atwhich carrying a gun attracts a penal offence. Automatic penalties forteenagers might mean drug-running gangs start employing nine-year-oldboys as gunmen.
Logical up to a point, m'Lud. But surely it is the drug-running gangsthat ought to be most wary. There are more immediate risks of handingover weaponry to children. The under-10s, newly endowed with power,might not give them back.
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