Seems to be a lot of safety specific groups and a lot of talk about gun safety lately. The latest effort I blogged about before today was the post about EvolveTogether.us yesterday in which the reaction in the comments educated me on them a bit.
This video:
The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) and The Advertising Council, Inc. (Ad Council) have created a Safe Firearms Storage public education campaign to encourage firearms owners to store firearms safely by locking them up where children, at-risk youth, potential thieves, and those who intend to harm themselves or others, cannot access them. The ad campaign also asks firearms owners to report any lost or stolen firearms to local law enforcement immediately. (Source)
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think kids should have access to firearms if you haven’t educated them on the dangers of them. What good is a locked up gun though if you’re keeping it around for home defense purposes? Sure not EVERY home defense scenario is going to require you need millisecond access to your gun, but that’s not the point. This is an issue which is going to have different solutions for every family. Judging by what I see on the internet, hundreds of kids aren’t dying every day from curiosity related gun incidents but regardless if things like this can be prevented by education and telling your kid (who hopefully listens to you) “DO NOT TOUCH THE GUN IN MY DRESSER DRAWER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.” The predicament though is that guns are cool… we know this and kids know this.
Thoughts?
Hat tip: Marc
Comments
22 responses to “Is Safety Talk The Genesis Of A New Anti-Gun Angle?”
Is this some gentle form of gun control? Maybe. Is this good, common sense advice. Yes. People should lock their guns up. Guns are expensive, and people are stupid. Educating your children about guns is a necessity, but what happens when you’re not home, and your kid is being a kid? They get into things, they snoop, they are curious.
Oh, look. Another commercial/PSA/video short with kids telling adults what to do. Aren’t those precious snowflakes cute.
FO.
Indeed, grow up, get a job and support yourself then tell me what I should do…
” What good is a locked up gun though if you’re keeping it around for home defense purposes?”
That’s what a good kind of small safe is for. If you have kids, even if you have kids educated in guns, kids bring friends over.
My current small safe definitely takes about 5-7 seconds to get into once I’m next to it, and it has a digital code. Additionally, it’s ugly so I don’t keep it out in the open so that would add time. I know there are smaller “lock boxes” which could go under a bed etc.. but I’m assuming they at least require about the same time, except for that new http://www.thegunbox.com style option might be a bit quicker.
but if you don’t keep the guns locked up, they only bring them over once.
The whole jest is: you taught me to be safe, but not about gun safety.
It’s like buying a bike for your kid then putting a lock on it to prevent them from getting hurt.
This honestly feels like the anti-gun group created a think tank to see what approach would pretty much guarantee a catch 22 for the “common-sense” safe storage act. If you disagree, you don’t care about dead kids and you’re an extremist, yet if you do agree, you are giving The anti-gun people an inch, and we all know what happens whenever they are given an inch.
Could be a compromise on their part. Maybe some small fraction of “them” figured out that we’re never going to change and decided to address an issue they can effect; safety.
+1 to Stan Darsh. It’s hard to disagree about gun safety, but you just know that’s the game. Eventually someone defines levels of safe that are absurd. Isn’t it the case now in DC that you have to store the gun and ammo separately, both locked away? That goes beyond reasonable.
The other avenue of attack is no guns for anyone with any variant of “mental illness”. Like Oppositional Defiant Disorder? Which has been used against anyone who disagrees with the government? How soon until just liking to target shoot is a mental illness?
+2
Funny thing is… they don’t lock up the swimming pool to keep kids from drowning… the teach the kids how to swim… so why not teach the kids to be safe with firearms… rather than lock them up…
I mean, you kid may still encounter an unlocked pool or firearm somewhere else when you’re not there… don’t you want them to be safe… teach them pool safety and gun safety!
Dann in Ohio
At the same time! Hey… we haven’t had any instructor Z water-related videos!
You’ve obviously never watched TV in Arizona in the summer time.
I think AZ has law(s) that require a fence around your pool, door alarms, or some sort of safety device(s) if you own a pool and have small kids.
Not to degrade the lose of lives due to pool drownings, requiring a gun safe is like requiring your pool to be fully encased in a steal box. There are always going to be people that don’t think and accidents will happen. I do remember a few years ago reading a story about a parent that was so scared of her kids falling into their pool that she had it filled in.
I get it that some folks think they need to have their gun read to go at all times when they are at home. Do they believe at any moment someone is going to kick the doors down and kill them? If you fall into that group and say yes, maybe you need an alarm system. Not feeling safe enough add an alligator moat, electric fences, and a panic room if possible. I get it not everyone lives in a safe neighborhood but living like its a war zone isn’t good for your health either.
So back to locking up your firearm. What about when you are not home and that gun is still sitting in your nightstand. How about when you bring friends over for dinner who happen to have small curious children. Are you going to walk the family into your bedroom and educate them all? Bravo if you do, but you most likely won’t do that. Heck your friend might be an anti-gun and doesn’t even know you have a any firearms. You have a plan to protect yourself and your own family but what about those you grant access to your castles and fest with. I’m just making up some scenarios as to why locking up a firearm when its not in your direct control is a good idea.
Now in WA there is already section 9.41.050 on the books that covers pistols in cars. ( http://goo.gl/8cT55M ) :
“(2)(a) A person shall not carry or place a loaded pistol in any vehicle unless the person has a license to carry a concealed pistol and: (i) The pistol is on the licensee’s person, (ii) the licensee is within the vehicle at all times that the pistol is there, or (iii) the licensee is away from the vehicle and the pistol is locked within the vehicle and concealed from view from outside the vehicle.
(b) A violation of this subsection is a misdemeanor.”
I’m more likely to have a LEO encounter while driving then at my home. Enforcement of the above is difficult. Now imagine requiring every gun owner to lock their firearms up while at home. Good luck enforcing that. It would be something tacked onto another reason LEO came into your house. I don’t think we need a law for how guns are stored at home but I think the writing is on the wall already. A law will not actually stop another accidental death. Its up to us gun owners to think outside the box and the ones around us.
This could actually be the greatest ploy ever devised by the gun control lobby. I mean, just marvel at the sheer brilliance of it…
They know that if you tell the average gunny that the sky is blue, he’ll look up, the smile and nod approvingly. And if you tell him water is wet, he’ll again smile and nod approvingly.
BUT… if you tell him the sky is blue, water is wet, AND guns are bad, he will tumble right off the rails, fists clenched in rage, denying *all three* statements with every fiber of his being. Then all have to do is stand there silently, hands out stretched, faces contorted in confusion, pointing to the jackassery.
They’ve finally found our critical flaw; the inability to think outside of a vacuum.
Brilliant I tell you.
No kids. No problems.
Guys. There are, on average, under 700 fatal firearms “accidents” yearly. I say “accidents” because a lot of them are negligence, and I’m sure some of them were actually intentional.
Still, 700. Compare that to the 90 million gun owners and you get (90,000,000-700)/90,000,000×100%=99.9992% of gun owners NOT being negligent each year. Call me callous, but I think that’s a frickin’ victory. Now, how do we get even MORE victorious?
Well, safes are expensive. Safe storage laws are terribly intrusive, as the only way to enforce them is the mandatory home inspection we rightly fear. What can we do?
I think we should have a standard and universal guideline on whether or not to unload/store/disassemble our firearms. Do you home carry? Well that should probably be loaded and on your person. Do you keep your home defense firearm next to your bed? Then you should only have it loaded/out of the safe/assembled when you’re in the same room.
So what are we going to call it? On your person or within 10 feet WITH NO OBSTRUCTION, keep it condition However I Want. Otherwise, keep it hard to use.
If we can all agree on this and get it pushed by the big groups, then it might make a positive difference.
Jake,
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say. First you show that there’s really not an issue with gun accidents, then you seem to say that we need to try and prevent any accidents.
Your chances of dieing from an assault is 1 in 214, while your chances of dieing from assault with a firearm are 1 in 331, if someone wants to carry a gun for protection, the numbers don’t show a problem.
If you want to see some numbers, look here: http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_odds.htm
this is actually the best possible conversation to have, because it is an issue that gun groups are experts on. the conversation can become about how to teach children about guns (it’s not just about hiding them, it’s about teaching them how to use them) and it leads directly discussions of how to get more guns into safe storage (ie, tax rebates for buying quality gun safes).
What video is the guy pushing the buttons in the elevator with his gun from ? I can’t remember .