Child Soldiers! Hate It!

I'm still on A Long Way Gone, but while I was reading this book, I started to think about something. Something terrible. There were child soldiers in the book and there are still child soldiers in countries today. Think about this! Children that are our age being legally taken away from their families by the government, and are trained to kill people (well, there are ones ho are just crazy and would have no problem killing people). But why would any government not want the children of their people not have a good life and just want them to join the military? That's just messed up and intense for anyone.

As of today, there are only 14 countries that have child soldiers, and the ones who recruit them are mostly the rebels or terrorists in those countries. But that is not enough, there are still many children that have only known how to shoot people. In 2001, the number of countries with child soldiers was more than double of the countries that have child soldiers today. Here is a map of the countries that have child soldiers today.

This was exactly what happened at the end of my reading of this book. He was taken by the government and he was given an AK-47 and expected to go out and kill some rebels. Honestly, the children didn't want to be in the army, but wanted to because the rebels would pay for all the people that they killed and the number of families that they destroyed. He ended up losing his friends, for sometime, and he was alone with a bunch of random children and only some adults that he was sent with. 

In this country, there's something called a shooting license and a legal firearms age. So don't expect us to carry M4A1s and Scars and shooting people. But if you go to the countries that are in red in the map, expect the government to hand you a machine gun or an RPG and to tell you to shoot people. To me, this whole idea of child soldiers is messed up and devastating. I don't want to see people as old as me in the battlefields or me even being in one! It's terrible that this still exists. I actually feel bad for the children that have to spend their childhoods with weapons.

What do you think about child soldiers? Should it be taken out? What do you guys think about the miserable children in these areas?