By Guest Blogger Kimberley Blaine

Taking a LITTLE girl to a shooting range? To shoot a gun that shoots 600 rounds a minute? I’m speechless because this is all COMPLETELY ABSURD. Don’t we want our little girls to learn which sport is healthy and best for them? Don’t we want them to learn about their connection to this peaceful earth?

Most 9 year olds are reading fun books, ice skating, playing piano or soccer or kicking a ball in the street and so forth. This type of object, which is a killing machine, an unnecessary type of gun to be at a public shooting range, was put in the hands of an innocent little child who had so much to look forward to in life. This trauma will now part of her thought process/autonomic nervous system and will be a life long coping process.

Did this have to happen? That is the real question. My dad took me to a shooting range at 12 years old – he wanted me to be proficient at handling guns. All it did was make me fantasize how I could use it on the girls at school who bullied me.

Mental health is key. I’m a sharp shooter. My father taught me well. No matter how much I knew, and how much supervision I had, when girls bullied me in Jr. high school, my “new” knowledge of just how to use these guns kicked in. You can teach kids to shoot, but you’ll never be able to know their mental health status as they grow into the teen years. I knew how to use our household weapons – and that they were always loaded. I’m sure my father too told everyone how proud he was that I could use a gun… but the day I picked it up after being beaten by some girls at school and felt the heaviness of a loaded gun, I put it down. Had I not been exposed at that level, I would have never considered a family weapon as a solution to ridding my bullies who pushed me around in school.

Youth should not be exposed or encouraged to use weapons that kill living things. That poor man who died at the hands of a 9 year old girl… he was such dedicated instructor… he didn’t even know the realities of working with children. They all make mistakes… and often.

About Kimberley Clayton Blaine

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Kimberley Blaine, MA, LMFT, has been named one of the most powerful moms in social media by Working Mother Magazine and one of the coolest power Moms in L.A. and featured on Mom.Me’s Favorite 50 Blogger List. She is the executive producer of the Go-To MomTM web series – She is an inspirational speaker, family mental health advocate and digitial media pioneer. The Go-To Mom life style shows were designed to address the overall mental health & well-being of mothers and was one of the first grass-roots web series launched in 2006. Kimberley is a licensed therapist (LMFT), author and healthy lifestyle expert. She also contributes to the soul healing site of SimpleReminders.com – and is contributer to 3M’s Post-it Note brand. Kimberley is a founding partner of MomPulse.TV, the fastest growing YouTube networks for moms owned by Fullscreen. She is the author The Go-To Mom’s Parents’ Guide to Emotion Coaching Young Children. Her spokesperson work includes: Lego Duplo, Disney Consumer Products, Schick Intuition, and Sony Electronics digital imaging and DreamsWork Animation. She has made a commitment to educate and advocate for families with young kids. Kimberley is currently the Social Marketing Director for a Los Angeles based Early Childhood Mental Health Campaign (Project ABC) funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (SAMHSA).She has launched a national campaign to help American parents be all that they can be in order to give their children a healthy and fair start. Her original webshow, TheGoToMom.TV has captured one of the largest growing niche audiences — parents who have children birth to seven, through professionally produced yet authentic and real educational videos.

Watch Kimberley’s Video with Vice President Joe Biden on Reducing Gun Violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LYlkknrku4&feature=youtu.be

Kimberley is also my very good friend.

Would love your thoughts on this horrific tragedy and guns in America.

Erica3