1. They’re going through an awful lot of effort for such a miniscule number of lives lost to unsecured firearms. You’d think if they wanted to use that energy to save the most lives, they’d talk about pools or bathtubs or household cleaning supplies or other things that actually kill a lot of kids.

   Why is it that the tiny number of kids killed by guns is so much more tragic than other preventable causes? Why the lopsided allocation of resources to prevent them? Aren’t all deaths tragic?

   • A friend’s young cousin died in a pool just last week, even with lifeguards were on duty. It reinforces 2 important lessons: pools can be plenty dangerous, and don’t trust your kids safety to just anyone.

   • B-but g-g-gunz are scaaaaary!

   • I find that comment rather callous. I have zero non-adult children in my house, and I keep all of my weapons locked up. My son invited a friend over to spend the night, and my oldest son left his unsecured loaded handgun on his bed. I told him the next time that happened, either him, his handgun, or both are out of here.

     It seems so sensible and so easy to lock up weapons that are not on your person in a secure place. I would think that would be second nature to a responsible person. I don’t think we need safe storage laws here in Georgia. I do approve of the message.

     • The message is good, but requiring everyone to lock up their guns under criminal penalty? Everyone’s situation is different, and responsible adults should be able to determine what level of storage security is appropriate for themselves, and should suffer the consequences if they were negligent.

     • I find that comment rather callous.

       You find what callous? Something I didn’t say, apparently. I’m not against getting the message out, I’m saying that it’s a poor use of resources if the goal is to save the most lives. But that’s not the goal. Because if it were, there are better messages to spread to do that. Like “Hey, lots of kids die in the pool. Don’t take your eyes off of them. Ever.”

       Yet someone said “Hey, let’s spend all this money and time and save one-tenth of the kids we could save from drowning instead!”

       That is what I take issue with. You’d have picked up on that, had you bothered to try to comprehend my comment.

       • I find it callous that the number of kids affected is even an issue. Don’t try to stoke your own ego. I don’t care.

       • I find it callous that the number of kids affected is even an issue. Don’t try to stoke your own ego. I don’t care.

         You’re not making any sense. If you can spend $1 to save 10 lives, or spend $1 to save one life, isn’t the better option to save 10 lives? Well, it is unless you’re an anti-gun crusader. Than, innocent deaths are only meaningful if they further your agenda. It’s like you picked an argument nobody is making but you, and then doubled down on trying to show how wrong you are, but tried to wrap yourself up in self-righteous arrogance by claiming you’re above saving as many kids as possible. Or something. What was your point? It’s better to keep wasting money on saving fewer lives, because at least they won’t save as many lives? Get over yourself.

       • You got the point. The only reason you have a problem with this is: GUNS!!1?! What do we call that? Gun control control? I never said anything about the worth or lack thereof of saving more versus less kids. You are making up stuff to support your position. What do we call that again? As for all that other stuff, well, you can’t fix stupid.

       • The only reason you have a problem with this is: GUNS!!1?! What do we call that? Gun control control?

         Wake up. They’re not trying to save children, because if they were they wouldn’t be trying to save as few as possible by targeting something that kills almost zero kids. No, the message they’re cleverly trying to drill into everyone’s head is that guns are evil and will kill your kids. I don’t know what baggage you’re bringing into this discussion that so skews your views – maybe it involves a dead kid? Saying silly things on the internet probably won’t fix that.

   • Why is it more ‘tragic’?

     Because drunk driving, drowning, and other ‘death by misadventure’ involve things that its “okay if a few people die if I get to keep drinking/swimming/etc.”, apparently. Same reason why it is ‘okay’ for more people to get killed by assault hammers/clubs than Modern Sporting Rifles, but the MSRs get the bad rap.

     And, more importantly, they don’t like it so it must be evil, no? Rationality plays no part in it.

2. Does sleeping with a pistol under your pillow count as secured or unsecured? Note that I haven’t taken a minor to bed in over 45 years when my wife turned 18.

   • Depends how heavy of a sleeper you are I guess.

   • I’ve woken up too many times after one of “those” dreams with a pillow somewhere I will leave to your imagination… lets just say an ND at that moment would be… um…. unfortunate.

     • I sometimes throw my pillows across the room in my sleep.

       • Yeah because of some night terrors I prefer a locked door to my room instead of a loaded gun under my pillow. If I need to get to a gun it’ll take a bit more time but I’d like to make sure I’m conscious…

   • I thought about having my gun under the pillow for easy access. The problem is, sometimes in my dreams, I thrash about and there’s a possibility that I could grab the gun and fire it in my half sleep.
     Also, my wife comes home from her swing shift job, and wakes me for a few moments. I could mistake her for an intruder, if I was dreaming about somebody being after me.
     It has happened before where a person has shot a family member, mistaking them for a burglar.
     I have my gun in my pants on the floor, far enough away that I must reach a ways to get at it, which hopefully would wake me up.
     There are also inexpensive devices, or alarms that cast a beam, that if broken, will trigger an alarm. These can be placed near a doorway inside your home.

3. Another program fighting diminishing returns. I am sure we can pass 100 new safe storage laws and around 60 children will still die each year from gun accidents. That is why I feel these campaigns have an ulterior motive.

   When I lived in MA a lot of people ignored the safe storage laws.

4. Unfortunately, if I locked up ALL of my guns, especially the way they suggest, then I would have no point in owning a home defense gun. Storing ammunition separately is definitely a deal killer.

   I’m not going to reopen the “own a safe/safe isn’t important” debate, but if you don’t have at least one firearm ready to go then you are effectively disarming yourself.

   I don’t agree with keeping weapons loaded and unsecured at all times. My kids are educated on firearms, know how to get to them in an emergency, and know what to do should they encounter a firearm “in the wild”. (Example, at a friend’s house, find a gun, leave it the hell alone. Let me know so I can tell the parents) At the same time, I keep loaded magazines with my home defense gun. It is not loaded. If I need it, it will only take a few seconds to load a mag and rack the slide. I’ve practiced it many times.

   My biggest annoyance with these campaigns is not encouraging people to be safe. Safety is important. My annoyance is they ignore education, as though kids are too stupid to understand gun safety. I’d rather the kids understand what a gun is, what it does, and why they need to be careful around them. If we don’t want kids playing with guns, teach them they are not toys. So far my kids have been able to understand why you don’t stick metal objects in light sockets, why you don’t play with kitchen knives, where the fire extinguisher is, and why wearing seat belts are important.

   Why do we act like kids are dumb when it comes to guns?

   • In a quick access lockbox with a spare mag or two under the bed qualifies as “in use”, and if you home carry why not have it on your hip? Leaving a loaded gun a cupboard or on the coffee table is inviting trouble, and that’s completely ignoring the tactical disadvantage aspect of the gun purportedly for home defense not being in the immediate possession of the defender.

     I will say I disagree with the “ammunition in a separate locked container” but… what good does this accomplish? Honestly? Get a nice safe with plenty of room, guns on the rack, ammo on the shelves, or honestly ammo anywhere in the house that you have space… bullets have an unbelievable knack of being very hard to set off on their own and even if set off on their own, Mythbusters and others have shown that even the mighty 50BMG is mostly flash and bang and not much else if touched off outside of a gun. Without a gun bullets are just as dangerous as rocks and sticks, so secure the gun, and put the ammo anywhere you have space.

     I understand it is tenuously connected to increasing the number of steps for an unauthorized user gaining access to a usable weapon… in my house at least, the authorized user is me, no one else has the combo to the safe and if something happens to me they can pay a locksmith to drill the lock out. The only other way an unauthorized user is getting in is with a pry-bar or other heavy tools so at that point it doesn’t matter if the ammo was separate, the gun is what makes ammo dangerous anyways. When my son is old enough to buy his own guns he can get an additional safe. My only “maybe” exception to this rule is that when he is old enough teaching him the code to the quick access box under the bed for emergencies.

   • “if I locked up ALL of my guns, especially the way they suggest, then I would have no point in owning a home defense gun.”

     Ding, ding, ding. That statement is a winner, and that does seem like the vector they are trying to put us on.

     “Lock up your guns. It’s the law.”

     Once that is in place, short step to, “Well, how can you claim you need a gun for self defense? It’s locked up, and there’s no way you can get to it in time! Might as well not even own them.”

     • I see this line of argument frequently in my local newspaper Letters to the Editor. Disputing the effectiveness of guns for home defense because if gun owners are as responsible as they claim to be, then why off course they have their guns and ammo locked up. So what’s the point of having a gun for defense if you cant get to it ? QED – please turn in all your guns.

       I have two teenage kids and I do struggle with balancing safety and accessibility. A locked safe next to the bed gets unlocked when I turn in for the night. A daytime home invasion – I’m SOL I guess ?

       • Home carry solves that particular problem.

5. If you keep screaming and shouting about how the lawn isn’t cut maybe some won’t notice your house is on fire.

   They are subtlety trying to make people think everyday citizens are the problem, continuing the flawed and misleading CDC conclusion that “death by gun” is equally spread across all areas of the US and all demographics when the vast majority of the US is extremely safe with pockets of high danger for certain demographic groups. If people think the problem consists of the law-abiding citizens that own guns it’s easier to frame the changes to remove those guns for safety. They really don’t want people to know the real problem is crime driven by socioeconomic factors that are mainly under democrat control.

   On top of that they want to keep using children as their platform and without any school shootings in the news this is their backup. They will keep throwing children and emotions in our face as much as they can in any way they can. This is a slight change in how they are framing the movement. How many people would really rally around positive decade-long economic and judicial policy changes focusing on reducing gang activity in inner-cities? Not many, but for the children they’ll jump.

   • “They are subtlety trying to make people think everyday citizens are the problem”

     nailed it.

     The pro-gun side cries “law-abiding citizens aren’t the problem, it’s the crazies and criminals”

     the anti-gun side’s answer “paint law-aiding citizens as the problem”

6. My house is a child-free zone. Visitors to my house must leave children securely locked in the glove box or the trunk of their car.

   • lol same here I don’t need those things in my home 😉

7. This is a lot of effort and money for such a miniscule number of deaths. Obviously, one must suspect a more sinister ulterior motive once the meme of “properly secured firearms and ammunition” is established…(sarc on)…but what could it be? (sarc off)

8. This is what I heard in the commercial:
   —
   You taught me how to properly and safely handle and ride my bike.
   You taught me how to correctly and responsibly use scissors.
   You taught me what is acceptable behavior around a dangerous location(the pool), you even spent money on swim lessons with a “professional” lifeguard.

   LOCK UP YO KIDS, LOCK UP YO WIFE. THEM GUNS GONNA GET US ALL.
   —
   Seems like we should take some lessons from other areas and train our children, not scare them.

   • I’d like to see an addendum to the commercial.
     “And thanks for teaching me to safely and responsibly handle firearms”.

     • I’d like to see an addendum to the commercial.
       “And thanks for teaching me to safely and responsibly handle firearms”.

       Never going to happen, because people fear what they don’t understand. The anti’s will never agree to teaching people about guns (or even gun safety), because people would come to realize guns are not so scary and their whole fear mongering to get gun control would implode.

9. How much you want a bet that not even one dime of bloombergs $$$ was spent.

10. Are we to lock our kitchen in order to keep the rugrats away from the stove. Keep the refrigerator door in the garage? Empty the pool when not in use? Shut of the electricity when kids in the house?

11. It seems odd to me that they are making such a fuss about these accidental deaths when every year over 1.2 million pregnancies are aborted. Oh, I forgot, It’s a woman’s “choice” to kill her baby.

12. My thoughts are the more ready you leave a firearm, the more secure the storage needs to be of you have kids around. I keep a loaded pistol in the nightstand, but its in a fingerprint lockbox.

13. Canada has safe storage laws. They are rather vaguely written and are often used as a “catch all” or “when in doubt” charge when something happens. Basically, if the guns are stolen expect to be charged and lose the guns and the ability to own them. That’s probably the ultirior motive.

    • Yes. I can’t wait until something of mine is stolen and I am the one liable, not the criminal who did the stealing.

14. I really feel like the best response is “You’re right, and the NRA/Responsible gun owners have supported the securing of firearms for a long time. We’re still suspicious of these efforts though, since so few children are killed in accidental/found gun situations, and because ‘gun safety’ is often a Trojan Horse for ‘gun control’ used by people who don’t know a thing about actual gun safety.”

    In sales that’s called ‘Tell them yes to give them no.” It’s very effective.

15. I 100% support a consistent message of safe storage of firearms in all homes, not just those where children live. That being said, if every law abiding gun owner had his guns locked in a safe 10,000+ gang bangers would still kill each other with guns each year.

    • Don’t forget 19,400 people would still take their gun out of their safe, their ammo out of their other safe, load it up, and commit suicide. The only real gain would be saving ~60 lives from accidental deaths. So there are about 30,000 that would still occur (not counting justifiable shootings by LEO and non-LEO individuals). In the long run it might dry up some of the supply of stolen guns, but that effect is completely unquantifiable.

      • That’s a fair point dude, but it doesn’t negate the whole “of course we support responsibility” message. We can also point out that there’s almost no scenario in which an accidental gun does doesn’t involve negligence. None of that stops us from also pointing out that 96+% of gun deaths involve intent, making them incredibly hard to predict and prevent. 100% of gun “accidents” are 100% preventable.

16. Coming from Rand, does this surprise ANYONE here?

17. I think I saw this new ad. It is about control-gun control. Lock it up! You won’t be able to protect yourself OR shoot the you know who breaking through your door at 3am( at the wrong address). And drowning is way more likely. BAN WATER!

18. I keep all my firearms locked in a box that is locked in a safe. They are field stripped and the barrels removed, which are stored in a storage facility on the other side of town. To ensure total safety, I do not own any ammunition. For the kids™.

19. Its hard to believe people out there still think the agenda is for safety. If you don’t recognize the in your face campaign to smear, villainize, and even criminalize legal gun owners, then you are in a coma.

20. The Civilian Disarmament Complex has been playing a long game for decades. They will never stop and they will exploit any opening. The defeat of the push to criminalize the transfer of firearms between private citizens (Universal Background Checks) was a teachable moment for them. These “safe storage” ads have an underlying message, “children die because gun owners are irresponsible”. After it is repeated often enough, for long enough, their inevitable push to criminalize “unsafe storage of firearms” will follow.

21. Safe storage laws exist to empower governments by creating new classes of felons. Hammering citizens is a game that states and municipalities love to play. The citizens need to hammer back.

    OTOH, I don’t have children in my home (it’s a child free zone!) but I still have two gun safes bolted to the wall studs.

    • There’s no logical gap in supporting responsible handling and opposing laws mandating locks/safes/whatever else. To Kevin’s point below, if he doesn’t have children in the house he doesn’t really need the locks. The only law I’d support is one making the owner of the gun or home responsible for negligence involving children and/or unsafe handling.

      • I don’t support those laws either, unless someone else’s kid is injured. If it is your own kid, that’s enough of a life lesson for me. We don’t need to lock up people and use taxpayer money to feed them for a crime that they will pay for for the rest of their lives regardless. It is as idiotic as the war on drugs.

      • “The only law I’d support is one making the owner of the gun or home responsible for negligence involving children and/or unsafe handling.”

        This. Doubly so when someone else’s child is killed as as result the actions of your own

22. My guns are not locked up, This is a kid free zone. To Fk bad if anyone breaks in there not getting far.

23. “In Massachusetts’ residents must store their firearms in a secured in a locked container or equipped with a tamper-resistant mechanical lock or other safety device”

    Or they face one to TEN years in prison! M.G.L. C140, S131L. TEN years for not locking your AR or handgun, even if you are the only resident of the house! Safe storage laws are absolutely gun control, a way to make gun owners afraid of the state, take it from a former resident of Mass.

24. I really do not have any issues with PSA’s to remind people to safely store their weapons. I do not believe in laws that dictate how that storage is conducted. that being said, My primary self defense weapons are stored in quick access handgun safes and directional locks on my shotgun. the rest are stored safely in a gun safe. The sad reality is, there may only be 64 children that die, but how many are injured? How many other people get a hold of a weapon, that should not.

    Yes, we all know Adam Lanza killed his mother, yada yada yada. But how many other stories can we find where somebody did get access?? But honestly, the Dildo commercial makes me laugh…

    • “Yes, we all know Adam Lanza killed his mother” No we don’t all actually know this. We were told this.

    • When I was an ignorant non-gun-owner, the concept of mandatory safe storage made perfect, logical sense to me. Once I became an owner, I spent more than I was comfortable with on storage to make sure that I kept curious fingers away yet still have reasonably quick/easy access if needed. To me, safe storage is logical and part of the personal responsibility that comes with firearm ownership.

      Now that I’ve gained some legitimate perspective, I see how mandatory safe storage would infringe on the rights of those who can’t afford safe storage; how it would only serve to take guns away from the poor people who often need them the most. If someone has to really scrimp and save (like going on the Ramen diet) to buy a $250 HighPoint for home defense, getting a $200 BM safe is probably out of the question. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford good lockable hard cases. Is the average family in Detroit able to do that?

      Another thing to consider… I’ve heard some interesting stories from an old friend from South Africa. Legally obtaining a firearm there is very difficult and expensive. There are mandatory training, storage, and licensing requirements and you have to put up about $2000 before you can consider actually buying a gun. On the surface it seems like it might help keep guns out of the hands of criminals but the exact opposite is the case. The amount of violence (including gun violence) that takes place makes the USA look utopic by comparison. All those restrictions seem ineffective at preventing crime.

25. “According to a study by the RAND Corporation using statistics from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.4 million homes have firearms stored in a way that makes them accessible to the wrong hands – children, at-risk youth, POTENTIAL THIEVES, and those who intend to harm themselves or others.”

    Emphasis mine. That is what the anti-gunners get hung-up about. It is also the thing that it is impossible to solve. Nothing is impenetrable and if the potential thief has already broken into the locked house then he has already defeated the first layer of ‘safe storage’, and the only layer that is really ‘needed’ for people who live by themselves.

26. Not about safety. They’re hoping to push public law into private homes.

27. Edward Bernays would be proud of Eric Holder’s brainwashing work.

28. I looked up the study, something of interest:

    “Respondents from 35% of the homes with children younger than
    18 years (representing more than 22 million children in more than 11 million homes) reported having at least 1 firearm. Among homes with children and firearms, 43% had at least 1 unlocked firearm (i.e., not in a locked place and not locked with a trigger lock or other locking mechanism). Overall, 9% kept firearms unlocked and loaded, and 4% kept them unlocked, unloaded, and stored with ammunition; thus, a total of 13% of the homes with children and firearms—1.4 million homes with 2.6 million children—stored firearms in a manner most accessible to children. In contrast, 39% of these families kept firearms locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition.”

    So, as you can see the 1.4 million number includes firearms that were unlocked and loaded as well as firearms that were unlocked and unloaded and stored with ammunition.

    Firearm Storage Patterns in US Homes With Children
    http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP890.html

29. I keep my Ar locked and loaded on safe right next to my bed. It’s my right to do so, if you don’t like me having that freedom move to Russia.

30. Hey, remember…this is just keep the police safe when they execute that no-knock through your front door at 2 am.

31. I guess having our “moms” tell us to get rid of our guns wasn’t working that well, so now our “children” are telling us to. Sorry, but that’s how I read it. You can’t say the basic message isn’t worthy: guns should be kept away from those who have no business holding them. But this “moms know everything, listen to them on this” and now “kids are smarter than you are, listen to them on this” meme is just not hitting me right.

32. “we want owners to lock up their firearms to prevent accidents and keep them out of the wrong hands.”

    If I were to go with what some LEO’s told me, OUR hands are the wrong hands, especially if the 5-O boys crash your crib with an O-dark thirty raid. Criminals and children won’t be able to get your guns….and neither will you.

33. I don’t know about other states, but in AZ you can be charged with civil suits if your firearm is unsecured and then taken and used in a crime.
    I have a 5 year old daughter, so I also have a gun safe, which I recommend for any household with guns and kids. However, if you don’t have kids, I guess it’s up to you.
    Having a safe isn’t a guarantee that your firearms won’t be stolen (hell, anyone with a few tools and 2 hours to kill can break into most gun safes), but playing the odds, you’re less likely to have them stolen if they’re secured. Just my thoughts. There are a whole mess of people getting their knickers in a twist because asking someone to lock up a tool of death is just too much. If you’re not responsible enough to lock up your weapons, maybe you’re not responsible enough to have them…

34. Hmmmm…maybe if you consider it a “tool of death” you aren’t responsible enough to have them. This sounds like a meme from the anti-rights gun grabbers, if you ask me. Oooohhhhhh, it’s a “tool of death” so it’s ONLY REASONABLE that you keep it locked up. Only RESPONSIBLE people keep their “tools of death” locked up and IRRESPONSIBLE people leave their “tools of death all over the house to be stolen during a break in or toyed with by the kids or neighborhood dog.

    Sounds familiar, huh? Like those REASONABLE gun laws that are supposed to prevent another gun-related homicide/suicide/or any other -icide you can dream up. Those REASONABLE gun laws that we all know won’t prevent diddly-squat, but are intended to restrict ownership and make it more difficult to own firearms.

    Look, if you don’t feel the need to keep one readily available to protect your family from a late-night/early-morning break in, that’s fine. But don’t sit here and judge those who have seriously looked at it and determined it to be in their best interests to keep one or two out of the gun safe to protect their families in a crisis.

    • I usually debunk this one by pointing out the recent shooting in Oregon where the kid defeated his parents’ safe. After all, the “affordable” safes are not even classified as such, they are residential security cabinets that have no resistance against a $40 angle grinder. And if you mandate the expensive safes, you’ve made gun ownership unattainable for the poor people who might need them the most.

35. For the children.

36. Next step: classify firearms as “luxury items”. Impose special property tax on “luxury items”. In EU, there are countries where the annual taxes for 3 hunting firearms can be very close to the price of a good, second hand, small car.

    In EU, where firearms are a privilege and self defense is out of the question, conditions for storage are often more expensive (several times more expensive) than the firearm. Police can check, without any warrant or probable cause, anyone’s property, to see if the conditions for storage are respected.
    Also, in the same EU, only Czech Republic and partly Austria, are somehow closer to the idea of firearms being available to the citizens. Although, even there, it is a right, granted by the state, regulated by an ordinary law, which can be changed overnight, by a flick of a politician’s pen.

    Btw, only as a humble question: have you ever thought that when you are buying guns made in countries that do not rally to a form of 2A in relation to their own citizens, you are, in fact, financing the enemies of 2A?

    • “Although, even there, it is a right, granted by the state, regulated by an ordinary law, which can be changed overnight, by a flick of a politician’s pen.”

      So you are saying that the 2nd amendment may not be changed or repealed? Sure, the threshold to change/repeal the constitutional amendment is higher than that needed to change a law in the Czech Republic or Austria (since in neither the right to be armed is a constitutional right), but wouldn’t the same logic you applied to the two countries be valid also for US?

      With 20% of the Czech parliamentarians across the political spectrum having CCW licences, I don’t need to fear I would loose my firearms.

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