The Rifleman: "Mark's Rifle", 1962

I've seen this happen in more than one movie, the best known one being The Ref (1994). A family is held hostage by an armed intruder. One of the kids gets his hands on the criminal's gun and holds it on him and his idiot parents yell at him to PUT THE GUN DOWN. I don't know why they do that.

Under most circumstances, I wouldn't want a child killing or shooting anyone, but it's not always a bad thing.

So I was watching this episode of The Rifleman. It was produced in 1962. Mark, the Rifleman's son was 15 or 16. A man arrives in town promoting a circus and offers to let Mark fire a musket he claims belonged to Daniel Boone.

Mark hesitates. "I've never really fired a rifle before."

Things like this happened to the kid all the time.

The boy has been kidnapped, held hostage or threatened with death over and over and over on that show. His father is the Rifleman but Mark's never even fired a gun?

The Rifleman buys Mark a .22 caliber rifle. When he and his father disagree about whether the guy from the circus was a fraud, the Rifleman tells him, "You're old enough to own your own rifle, you're old enough to make your own decisions."

Is that it? He wanted to keep his son in an infantile state unable to make decisions?

Contrast that with the episode of Bonanza where Jamie Cartwright (Mitch Vogel) had to be told not to bring his .45's to school.

Maybe it makes sense. One of my high school teachers told us he had a foreign student from Bangladesh in the early '70's. He asked the kid to do a presentation and tell the class about his country. So the kid brought in some slides he had taken. It turned out he had taken part in the War of Independence and had pictures he had taken during the conflict. The class was horrified by the pictures. I don't think this was an issue, but how does a teacher discipline a student who's killed men in combat?