Gun control advocates often bemoan the lack of “debate” over “gun safety” (i.e. gun control). Truth be told, their call for a “discussion” over “common sense gun laws” is nothing more than a demand that society embrace their vision of civilian disarmament. They’re about as interested in genuine debate as they are in discussing the relative merits of one type of hollow point self-defense ammunition vs. another. So when something bad happens involving a firearm, they don’t spend a femto-second contemplating the fact that positive firearms-related outcomes outweigh negative firearms-related outcomes. In other words, defensive gun uses more than make-up for the carnage caused by negligent discharges. Let’s start with the bad news . . .
A toddler reaching for an iPod in his mother’s purse grabbed a loaded gun instead before shooting both his parents in an Albuquerque motel room on Saturday, according to news reports.
Police said the bullet hit the father in the buttock and the mother, who is eight months pregnant, in her right shoulder, but did not strike a 2-year-old child who was also in the room. . .
“This case will be forwarded to the DA’s office and pending charges of felony criminal negligence will be reviewed on both parents,” Albuquerque police spokesman Simon Drobik said, according to ABC news.
“The Albuquerque Police Department cannot emphasize enough that if you choose to be a gun owner ALWAYS secure and lock up your firearm out of the reach of children and adolescents,” Drobik added in a news release on Saturday, according to KOB-TV.
That’s The Washington Post‘s take on a clear and compelling case of negligence.
Now I don’t expect WaPo scribe Peter Holley to put the heart-tugging tale into its proper perspective. The fact that tens of millions of children grow up around firearms without any firearms-related injury is not the story here. But I would expect – sorry, hope – that the paper would give equal time to this sort of item [via mlive.com]:
Deputies from the Lapeer County Sheriff’s Department responded around 3:45 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30 to a Five Lakes Road home where the girl was home alone when a vehicle pulled into the driveway.
A Lapeer County Sheriff’s Office news release states one person knocked on all the doors and forced their way inside the home when there was no response. The girl locked herself inside a bathroom closet with a shotgun.
The suspect eventually opened the bathroom door and closet where the child was hiding with the weapon. The girl aimed the shotgun at the suspect, whom then fled from the home.
Police said the girl was not harmed during the encounter.
Whom fled? I don’t think that one wouldn’t have made it past the Post’s editors. But I also reckon the Post won’t report this child-involved defensive gun use. Or the fact that even the most conservative estimates of defensive gun uses indicates that Americans’ gun rights are a net positive for society. And that’s without considering civilian gun ownership’s deterrent effect on government-sponsored genocide. (Trust me: it’s a thing.)
Luckily, we now have alternative media to establish an editorial balance. Are we as a nation getting the message that guns are good for society? I doubt it. Cynical as it may sound, I believe that the expansion of gun rights has more to do with self-protection than public morality. And you know what? I’m OK with that. You?
[h/t SS]
I have to tell you that the media has always been in the anti side but, truth be told WE can at times be our own worst enemy. Some of the ND stories make me wonder WHTF people are thinking. IF we held ourselves to follow the 4 rules of safe firearms handling 90% or more of those NDs would never have happened.
People don’t want to spend the money on fast access safes, or are simply in denial about the likelihood of child access in some cases.
If “gun safety” advocates were really interested in saving lives, they should be pushing to subsidize gun safes including fast access types.
The money is well worth it but at minimum ammo for unused firearms should be kept separate and locked up. The firearms in my uncles house when I was growing up were all kept in the upstairs hall closet the ammo for the those firearms were kept in the foot locker or the locked box in the blanket chest in the bedroom. The firearms that were used for HD were unloaded and the ammo stored in a separate location. 5 cousins in that house 3 females and 2 males all still living none ever shot themselves or a family member and every last one hunts and own firearms to this day.
Sounds like Massachusetts storage law. But self defense is technically not legal in MA, but juries are smarter than DA’s. They don’t indict in self defense cases.
An unloaded gun is not a Home Defense gun, It is a brick or a bat at best particularly when the ammo is locked up separately.
Locked and loaded is completely safe. If you are worried about kids getting into the safe, then you need a better gun safe.
I don’t have young children at home anymore. So if my pistol isn’t in my holster, it is on the side table in the den next to me or on/in my night stand at night.
The dog gave him enough time to get to the ammo for the HD gun which was kept in a different drawer. This was in Joisy in the 70’s and 80’s. A lifetime ago in a parallel universe. Survived 2 intruders on separate encounters. We where taught how to handles firearms from about 6yrs of age. We where also taught to RESPECT the property of others or got a butt whooping.
Javier, to each their own, but I will not lock up ammo separately from my firearms. I am not relying on the hope that I am awakened and my dogs slow down any intruder(s) enough for me to get to my 3 daughters before the intruder(s) do AFTER retrieving ammo from a separate place than the firearm. My bedside safe cost less than $100, it’s plenty of protection from curious children. By the time they would have the ability to defeat the safe, I will have taught them the proper use of firearms and they’d have access to it anyway, so long as I felt they were mentally, emotionally, and physically able to do so safely. Know your kids, teach them right, keep the firearms out of their reach until they are ready and you’ll avoid issues.
Fishydude, I don’t know where you got the idea that self defense is not legal in MA. I live there and just took a law class taught by a MA lawyer. If you believe that your life is in danger then you certainly are allowed to defend yourself. If any kind of evidence is present that self-defense might have been involved (like any weapon in the area with the other guy’s fingerprints on it, or anything like that) then the burden is on the state to prove that you did not act in self defense before you can be convicted of anything.
The firearms that were used for HD were unloaded and the ammo stored in a separate location. …none ever shot themselves or a family member and every last one hunts and own firearms to this day
Javiar, I grew up with three siblings and many cousins who came by all the time as well. My dad kept a loaded revolver in his nightstand and none of us ever shot each other or a family member either. My uncle kept a loaded 22 by the door at his farm. We knew not to touch any firearms. My sister 12 years ago did hold at bay a rapist with her loaded gun, a man who turned out to have committed several rapes and who would have gone on to do more if she had not effectively locked him up.
Anecdotes go both ways. The data show my anecdotes are 10,,000 more common than the NM shooting.
Let’s face facts. It did not take much research for another blog’s commenter to find a case were a four year old slipped a car out of park and ran over two people on the same day as this accident. Just a tiny local news item no national coverage. And cars are not even a explicit constitutional right.
This NM accident did not just make it top of the fold front page on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and Huffington Post, I actually got a BBC alert on my phone on it! NO coverage of two people stabbed to death in my town but if a person with a gun does anything it get covered.
Here are the facts: Serious gun accidents are down as gun ownership has increased. And gun murder has plunged more than 50% in 20 years although most Americans are unaware, democrats in particular are flat earth and have false view of this core metric.
I think that my natural right to life, from which is derived my right to self-defense, and therefore the right to keep and bear arms, is inherent, and not dependent on anyone else in society. The stupid, negligent, and/or criminal actions of others, no matter how many and no matter how egregious, have no bearing on my rights.
That said: I’m willing to have a discussion about the point at which a legitimate public needs for government intervention into safe firearms handling. As soon as the handling of firearms proves to be more risky and more deadly than any other aspect of life, we can have that discussion. Let me know when medical malpractice, automobile fatalities, and accidental deaths due to swimming pools, household chemicals, gravity, and all the other dangers that have higher mortality rates than firearms all get addressed successfully, and then we can talk.
Chipper – You just don’t get it. All of those things have legitimate uses and weren’t designed to be instruments of mass murder. Nice try, but we will get your guns; sooner or later. Time to wake up and see the writing on the wall. Resistance is futile.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programme.
Well, gun grabbers are quite Borg-like, and exhibit the characteristics of having a hive mind…
Yes, yes. Drones, all of them drones.
It’s funny, I looked up the definition of drone just to be sure I was using the most correct word.
Drone 2: one that lives on the labors of others : parasite
Funny how apropos that is.
You mean a mind that just goes BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ……?
Gman, fortunately, 3d printers make the gun control movement, which shrinks each year, an utter luddite fantasy
At the risk of being soundly flamed again, which always seems to happen whenever I disagree ever so slightly with the status quo around here, this is how I see it:
Chip, you simply cannot be so inflexible. I know there are politicians out there who want to disarm us. They have said as much. These egregious shysters stop at nothing to deceive the general public about us. They present us as “gun nuts”, as people who care only about our guns and not at all about anything else. We need to fight against that.
They will say, we have tried to mitigate all the other things you mention. Manufacturers of any household chemicals are required to use caps that are more difficult for a child to open. Anyone who runs a public swimming area has to hire a lifeguard. Seat belts are mandated to be used by adults in automobiles. Children are required to be strapped into an appropriately sized child seat when riding in an automobile.
So, they will say, what equivalent things have we done regarding firearm safety? We must be prepared to discuss that with them, in a reasonable and logical way. Saying “I don’t want to hear it, come back to me when all the other problems in the world have been solved” just doesn’t cut it.
Regarding the storage laws, I think there is nothing at all unreasonable about requiring that firearms, especially loaded firearms, be locked up when not being carried. Here in MA (contrary to what some others have posted) it is -not- required that ammo be locked up separately. As long as it is in a locked box, it is OK. Take a look at the V-line Deskmate, that is kind of thing I am talking about.
When you come across as totally inflexible, you give the low information voters the idea that we are indeed “nuts”, just like the anti’s say, and that we need to be “reined in” by more and more laws. By agreeing to laws that make sense, it gives us more leverage to argue against the laws that don’t.
Garibaldi,
The main problem (as I see it) is that so many people let gun grabbers and elitists frame the debate. Gun grabbers and elitists champion government intrusion for “public safety”. If you object, they claim you are against public safety, or they begin a pointless debate about numbers or studies, or just paint you as crazy, stupid, or corrupt.
We utterly fail when we entertain such debates. Rather, we must impress upon gun grabbers that gun control is patently offensive and an assault on our human dignity and our right to life.
And we should turn the tables to drive the point home. Data clearly shows that almost all violent crime happens in poverty-stricken urban centers and shoes are a critical element that enables violent criminals to perpetrate their crimes. It is obvious that criminals would commit drastically fewer violent crimes if they could not legally purchase or wear shoes and were forced by law to be in bare feet at all times. Therefore we demand that government force all people who live, work, and travel into poverty stricken urban centers to be barefoot at all times. Now imagine the uproar if we viciously pushed this agenda. And why would people be so insulted and furious about such a campaign? Because it is wrong to tell someone what personal property and protective gear they can acquire and possess, period. Whether that personal property or protective gear is a pair of shoes, and umbrella, a winter coat, or a firearm doesn’t matter.
That is all well and good, except that it really has nothing to do with what I posted. In MA they are trying to do more of what you mention, and I oppose that. They use the attorney general’s ability to pass “consumer protection” laws (that are supposed to protect us from “shoddy products”) to limit the firearms we can purchase. I am against that, and I support the people that are trying to overturn it.
But requiring that loaded firearms be locked up? Sorry, that just seems like common sense to me. I got flamed for posting that here before, but I have not changed my opinion. If we argue against that, we sound like we don’t care about the toddler described here that shot his parents. Loaded firearms simply should never be left unattended, and I have no problem with agreeing to a law that they need to be locked up.
There are major problems with safe storage laws:
1. How many accidental deaths will be prevented, versus the number of potential victims who are harmed by the lack of ready access to a loaded firearm at the moment of need?
2. How will such laws be enforced, in a manner that does not violate fourth amendment protections?
3. Where is the evidence that such infringement on the right to keep and bear arms would be effective in providing a public good? Where is the evidence that such public good is so immediate and pressing that it justifies what would otherwise be an obvious infringement?
But requiring that loaded firearms be locked up? Sorry, that just seems like common sense to me.
it would seem like common sense if you had no common sense. This was addressed in Heller. You are advocating laes proven not to work
graibladi, there is not a shred of evidence that laws requiring gun locks or gun safes have any effect whatsoever. the places that saw them enacted saw NO decrease in gun accidents, none at all, over the mean.
The fact is this event on NM is a statistically insignificant outlier. Most gun related accidents not associated with hunting are occurring in the homes of gang bangers and criminals who don’t care about any laws.. As police departments that use glocks have found, the lack of a external positive safety has NO BEARING on gun accidents.
by the way your examples are all bogus, You don’t have to have your kid in a car seat in the car on our own property, in fact your ten year old can drive on your property.
And you were not flamed” last time. You got your facts wrong and used “strawman” arguments and debunked false analogies
ChrisB, the “shred of evidence” thing doesn’t matter at all. Remember, we are talking about low information voters here. They don’t bother to look at “evidence”. The child seats law gives the appearance that something is being done, and that is what matters. We must also give the appearance that we are willing to do something. Agreeing to laws that seem to do something, even if they don’t, are therefore still a good idea as long as the laws aren’t too onerous.
And yes, I was flamed last time. I was called rude names for something that I never even said.
Typo – that should have been “as -long as- the laws aren’t too onerous.
Agreeing to laws that seem to do something, even if they don’t, are therefore still a good idea as long as the laws aren’t too onerous.
I would have agreed with you five years ago. But the gun control movement has shown time and time again when they get laws that don’t work, they say they need more laws. Or they used bogus studies to claim it does work, and therefore even more laws, (eg mandatory smart gun laws, mandatory locking of ammo and gun separately, criminalizing any access by minors including where no harm occurs, “may” issue, etc) are sensible and needed. You are playing right into the gun control movement’s modality.
And you got flamed because you are being dishonest. You said:
But requiring that loaded firearms be locked up? Sorry, that just seems like common sense to me
You in fact support making these laws mandatory. So to YOU it sounds like a common sense law even though it has no affect except to reduce people’s self defense effectiveness?
Look at the accepted LIES of the gun control movement. They claim owning a gun makes your home more dangerous when in fact if you are not a criminal, owning a gun makes you home WAY safer than unarmed homes. They used studies that contain three MAJOR manipulations of data to do this. First they only count crimes interdicted by firing the gun, when this excludes 98% of crimes prevented with a gun, almost all of which branding by the homeowner results in the criminal complying or fleeing. On the other side, the negative outcomes of the homeowner or someone in the family shot, 80% of the data, 80% are suicides. They count 20,000 suicides. The peer reviewed studies show in fact about 19,500 to 19,800 of those suicide would occur by other means if you removed all guns. Meaning they are counting 20,000 instead of the real number of 200 to 500. Of the remaining 18% are homicides. But over 65% of homicides in the US the victim is a FELON, and about 90% of homicide the victim is a felon, gang member or other criminal. When you put those controls in the study, gun owning homes, including in jurisdictions with NO safe storage laws are 25% SAFER than unarmed homes.
Australia has safe storage laws. Its self-inflicted death rate and death rate by accidents associated with suicide has done worse compared to ours. They had self-inflicted death by opioid, a known suicide method which is per se ruled accident, go up 500%. They also systematically undercounted their ruled suicide rate by 17%.
The next trope and tripe coming down the pike is confiscation of guns from people who have been targeted by protective orders. My sister-in-law was recently involved in a divorce. She was shocked when her attorney pushed her to get a protective order against her husband, because even though he had an affair, he had never threatened her or been violent in any way. She got a protective order. She was then doubly shocked when he easily got one against her. No trial, no right to cross examination, no exclusion of evidence, inclusion of hearsay, no jury , no right to state provided counsel. There are estimates that 80% of those orders are frivolous pressure tactics. We do want low thresholds for getting an order, but if constitutional rights are removed under those low thresholds there will be more abuse and a massively number of people who lose second amendment rights on a false basis.
The fact is 80% to 90% of death attributable to guns the victim is a FELON, gang member or criminal. Americans who are not felons are less likely to be murdered than Canadians and Australians are. Gun owning homes of non criminals are safer than unarmed homes. When the gun control movement advocates longer sentences for violent crime they will be part of the solution. They are scared to death that will sharply reduce gun violence
I don’t know if anyone is still following this post (articles get buried on this site pretty quickly) but here goes:
ChrisB, you went through a lot of effort you didn’t have to go through. First you want to convince me that the anti’s lie. Of course I know they lie. Then you say “they want even more laws”, like the protective order laws. Or course I know that. And we should fight against the laws that really prevent us from defending ourselves.
You accuse me of being dishonest, which I don’t understand. I don’t know why you equate dishonesty with supporting “making these laws mandatory”. Do you know of any laws that are not mandatory? I said that I don’t think there is anything wrong with requiring that a loaded firearm be either directly carried or locked up. It doesn’t matter whether it actually works to increase safety, at least it gives the impression that we care about safety.
Now both you and Chris Bennet, seem to think that this law would interfere in a major way with your ability to defend yourself. I say it does not. You really need to look at the V-line Deskmate as the example of the type of lockbox I am talking about. It’s totally mechanical, you just push a few buttons and the door opens. It doesn’t really take any longer than opening a drawer or a cabinet, especially if you practice it.
If you are that worried about a home invasion, then home carry. If you are worried about when you are asleep, well if you wake up to an intruder in your room pointing a gun at your nose, then it doesn’t matter where your firearm is, you can’t get to it. Hopefully what is happening is that a noise in another room wakes you up, and as I said before, it doesn’t take any longer to open this box than it does to open a drawer or a cabinet.
I think it is important for us to pick out battles. Sure, fight against the protective order thing, it obviously can be abused. But locking up loaded guns that are not being carried? I just think that is one place where we can give a little. If done correctly, I really don’t think people are going to be dying because they didn’t have time to push a few buttons.
Far be it from me to flame someone for holding a viewpoint different from mine. To the contrary, I enjoy the discussion.
Oh, but I can. 🙂 Part of being a nobody with no authority or political power, commenting on a blog post, is that I can discuss matters in terms of principle, which are themselves inflexible. That’s what I’m doing here. I realize that, would I ever have a role to play in forming public policy, there is a difference between a principle and the application of that principle in practice.
And I would say that we – the vast majority of the 100,000,000 of us in this country – do exactly that, every day, by the way we live our lives. While I agree that we need to be responsible and politically savvy, we also don’t need to walk around with our tail between our legs, when we comprise the largest voting bloc of any demographic.
And yet, all of those things lead to more childhood deaths than accidental firearm discharges. What makes me believe that government interference in the keeping and bearing of arms would be any more effective?
There are two issues.
One: the “equivalent things” for other childhood risks haven’t been even effective enough to make them less dangerous than firearms, so why would I even entertain the idea of doing “equivalent things” where firearms are concerned?
Two, those other things aren’t constitutionally protected against any and all government infringement. Shall not be infringed actually has meaning, and acts as a rather sharp distinction in what “equivalent things” are even within the enumerated powers of government to enforce.
Right.
Hold on, Mr. Home Invader. I need to unlock this lockbox to get to my gun. Would you mind just waiting over there for a minute?
There are three college students in Florida who would be dead right now had they been subjected to such laws, but who instead survived a home invasion just last week, thanks to the girl who had ready access to a loaded firearm.
What laws make sense? Which ones, specifically? What problem do they solve? And where they have been implemented, how effective have they been in accomplishing their stated objective.
(P.S. Adam Lanza’s mother kept her firearms locked up. That worked out well, didn’t it?)
Chris, you are correct about one thing at least, my use of the term “laws that make sense” was inconsistent with what I have been saying so far. I’m not claiming that the storage law I mentioned “makes sense” because I have proof that it works. I have no proof, and perhaps it is true that it doesn’t work. But by agreeing to it, at least it makes us “gun nuts” look a little less nutty to the low information voters. Even though we are a “large voting bloc”, low information gun non-owners are a pretty large bloc too and it would be nice to try to say on their good side, don’t you think?
As for this being too onerous because it prevents you from having “ready access to a loaded firearm”, please see my response to ChrisB above.
The toddler shooting has no legs. The dad was a convicted felon who couldn’t have a gun or have one in his home(or motel room). Good for the little girl. This will be grossly underreported…
Talking to some people who know the law far better than I do, at least in this state, felon possession is actually holding the firearm. So they can be in the same house, so long as the felon never touches them.
Even here in CA, as long as there isn’t constructive possession (the purse owner was just holding it for the man), and the purse owner is not a felon either, then it is 100% legal for him to be in the room with the purse with the gun in it.
If it is any other way, it would be restricting the rights of a law abiding citizen because of the mere existence of another person. First, that is not how our constitution, law, policy, and beliefs work, and second, as a gun owner, whom I suspect has at least a toe in the water about the future of his or her second amendment rights, you should be thinking about the LEAST restrictive ways that the gov should be involved with your rights. Your gut reaction was to believe FUD, that nobody in the room should be allowed to be armed because Mr. Felon would then be armed and dangerous. Exactly the thinking that we are trying to blot out of existence.
Makes sense. Otherwise, try to imagine, a cop is in the Burger King when the felon comes in for a burger, arrests the felon for being in the same room with the cop’s gun. That result would be too stupid for words.
Not quite. There’s something called “constructive possession” that applies when the firearm, while not in the felons physical possession, is still effectively accessible to him and under his control. In practical terms, this can get just every bit as murky as it sounds. In the present scenario, the father could plausibly be considered illegally in possession if the mother left the motel and left the gun behind, unless it was secured (how secured is “secured” is again, a little murky).
Well, I’ll grant you that it apparently was not so “secured” that a toddler couldn’t shoot them both with it.
And that’s what happens in actual real life. You are effectively barred from living with said gun. Maybe Ralph or Dirk can weigh in…
Again and Again and Again. THE issue is lawful self protection. Planting the Flag of gun ownership and its use into the moral high ground…no anti-gun, no Bloomberg, no Shannon, no Mothers. no Everytown can argue against.
MKNYNY – You assume they care about morals. They don’t. They will argue until their dying breath we have no legitimate right to self defense. They have to.
And…why…in the end they will fail.
This brings to mind a family I lived near in college. They had a couple of loaded guns in the house, and kids ranging from two to twelve. There was just one rule fr kids if they felt a need to move dad’s or mom’s gun: use the oven mitt.
It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard, but it worked!
The penalty for touching one without the oven mitt was adding a year onto the age when they would be given their own. That’s probably why it worked.
Correct, there is no reason to spend time discussing firearms with an anti-gun advocate, unless they want to truly have a discussion. Usually (everytime) they only want to tell their side of the story, e.g. a soapbox not discussion.
Humans make mistakes, it’s reality. I guess the anti-gun groups are infallible?
A law that prevents me from having ready access to a loaded firearm in my own home is, by definition, “too onerous”. FULLSTOP.
A blanket statement, I am more concerned about my dog’s safety, than most of these “parents” with firearms are about their children’s safety. Thinking ahead seems to be a lost art. “Planned parenthood” does not seem to be working. The caliber of the firearm owner is as important as the caliber of the firearm.
Poor decision-making all around for the first story. Couple of kids, with another one on the way, apparently out of wedlock, and money to spend on an IPod and living in a motel? This goes far beyond just a “negligent” discharge story.
There’s something to be said for agreeing to some laws that “make sense”. Any law that falls under requiring responsible gun ownership in terms of a disciplined militia would qualify.
In terms of secure storage, that would mean that all firearms not in use should be under child-proof lock. “In use” would have to include guns in places responsible family members have quick access to for home defense, not merely guns being actually carried. But that exception would have to be included in a secure storage law, or it would not make sense, since it would clearly infringe on the right of self-defense.
Another law that would “make sense” is putting a red flag in the NICS system for people who have been determined to be a danger to self and others. It would have to be written to include only obvious cases, such as people banned from a college campus after a long history of irrational and dangerous behavior, but to exclude any listing merely because a prosecutor or judge decided they didn’t approve of someone.
Such laws would have little impact on crime, but they would serve to show that owning guns is subject to a basic degree of responsibility and self-discipline.
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