I just read a story about a 4-year old who “accidentally” shot herself and her mother with a loaded handgun that was in a bedside drawer. I sense that even ardent gun rights people will say that it was a careless adult who set up a situation where an accident was waiting to happen.

This isn’t a treatise on proper use of firearms or the rights of people to own them. Please debate that somewhere else. The quibble I have is with the word “accident.”

Let me backtrack to my radio broadcasting days for a moment. It was around 20 years ago that traffic reporters stopped using the word “accident” and replaced it with “crash.” “There is a 4 car accident on Route 95 north” became “There is a 4 car crash on Route 95 north.”

It was more descriptive of the incident and took the fluffy word “accident” out of the conversation.

“Oh, Billy had an accident in his pants.” No, Billy took a dump in his underwear is a more accurate description.

The word accident has come to mean it’s no one’s fault.

The word “reality” is not fluffy. Reality communicates that it either happened or it didn’t, and it doesn’t ascribe or absolve blame.

In my view, keeping a loaded handgun in the nightstand in a house with children is a reality waiting to happen. It’s not an accident. No one is absolved from creating this reality.

Again, my intention is to get you curious about the word “accident” and how it has become an excuse word in our culture. I encourage you to monitor your use of it and notice how often your intention is to shift blame and not to confront reality.

I’m not a big fan of Sigmund Freud and his philosophy but he did say something worth repeating: “There are no accidents.”

You’ll start to get a firmer grip on reality and personal responsibility when you hear this announcement on the supermarket loudspeaker: “Clean up on aisle 4,” and know it wasn’t an accident.

All the best,

John