Natchez is 2-for-2 in ruining young lives at Christmas.

Early Sunday, a 17-year-old was killed when a friend began playing Russian roulette with a revolver as the duo played dominoes at a residence in the Morgantown area of Natchez.

Last December, another Natchez teen was gunned down in what police say was a robbery gone bad.

In both cases, the mourning will wind up being widespread as one side buries a son and the other prepares to defend against a murder charge.

All of it is completely and utterly senseless.

First, the obvious question of why are two teenagers out playing after midnight comes to mind.

Years ago, we heard someone say, “Rarely do good things happen after midnight,” and a more truthful statement may have never been uttered.

But the bigger questions are:

Why did a teenager have access to a gun in the first place? He couldn’t legally purchase one, so we shouldn’t get confused here. Tighter gun laws would not have done a thing to stop this violence.

The teen had to have either stolen the gun or obtained it through another person’s negligence.

And finally, how on earth does a teenager have so much disregard for human life that he’d ever point a loaded gun at another person?

Again, let’s not blame the gun here. Hundreds of thousands of Southern teens have grown up with access to their family’s hunting firearms and rarely do they play with them.

This is a problem that must be addressed, and the best way we know how is to go after the adults — the parents who should be responsible for their children’s actions.

How many more Christmases must be ruined by gun violence before parents of our communities’ teens get fed up and simply say, “Enough?”