One appreciates that firearms present risk. The NYT's advocacy for gun control is clear, it seems to be your publication's mission to effect changes in the perception of the second amendment. You can storytize the issue, offering heart wrenching accounts of children being killed by guns - they are heart wrenching to be sure. It is your obligation, however, if you are interested in being journalists, to contextualize the risk relative of guns and society at large. 100,000 people die every year in preventable medical accidents - perhaps you might "amp up" your discourse on that issue - few kids to exploit there too.
Can you just imagine how it feels to have a gun pointed at you for no reason at all? Well it happened to me, and it has had a negative impact. The guy is still running around the streets.
In a recent ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts respectfully disagreed with his late predecessor!
Can we limit the types of weapons for personal use? NO. Can we require registration of all weapon purchases with no loopholes? NO. Can we require registration of secondary market purchase of guns? NO. If you are worried about what others will propose, please do tell us what (if any) laws you would approve? The NRA rejects all attempts at any type of gun control, no matter what the issue involves. That is honesty.
It's bad enough for an adult to leave a gun unsecured where there are children, but a loaded gun? Never! These cases should be classified as negligent homicides, not accidents. I don't care how much the responsible adult mourns and grieves, he or she should be tried, convicted, and incarcerated. After all, guns don't kill people, people kill people. Right?
There are laws being passed holding people accountable if they text and drive, there are continuous improvements made over the years in the design of safer playgrounds, I believe it is time to pass laws on gun safety and background checks as well as redesigning guns for safer use and safe transfer of sales to people of sound mind and responsibility.
Michigan's Upper Peninsula is a beautiful place, full of wonderful, spirited, hunters and families. But don't kid yourself that accidents don't happen and that just because you told your young children not to touch or play with a gun that they won't be exposed to other children or irresponsible adults who do not practice safety of gun ownership and respect the dangers of firearms as you were taught to.
It is really very simple:
All guns must be secured in:
A quality bolt down safe that children have *zero* access to the combination or keys.
or
A quality retention holster that protects the trigger from being activated.
These two simple containers can prevent almost all accidental gun shootings.
A sustained high profile campaign to create a culture of gun safety emphazing safes and holsters would make the biggest impact on reducing accidental gun deaths.
A sustained high profile campaign to ban guns is the way to make the smallest impact on accidental gun deaths.
Please note: requiring safes and holsters by law won't work as the government standard will be too low. for example here in Cali mandatory trigger locks can be easily opened without a key or any tool.
Perhaps gun sellers should be compelled to recite those chances to buyers. After all, cigarettes' lethality is labeled.
Leaving car keys around small children is not the same as leaving a loaded gun around small children.
Most laws are written precisely to protect against those "at the tail of the curve". Most people behave legally most of the time.
What does it matter if, as you say, more kids are killed from other accidents? Wouldn't any sane person want to take away ANY items that could cause harm to their children and family, whether it's Drano or a gun? If 10 kids lose their lives to Drano, and 5 lose their lives to accidental shooting, does that mean that it's safe and okay to have guns in the home?! Further, millions of children may have had access to guns since the beginning of the Republic, but I doubt they were firearms, which are much more deadly than the muskets that were used at the beginning of the republic, which a child couldn't handle correctly if he wanted to.
Any disease that would have killed hundred of children would be declared a major epidemic and trigger not only public health responses and research in the said disease. The NRA should not oppose research in gun safety and public health effects of gun ownership and shooting accidents it should promote it.
David, people fighting this suspect that the goverment (Obama) desires to take all the guns and make it impossible to get one - they don't trust that the government just wants 'sensible controls' in place. Frankly, I can't blame them.
no hope? That's what they said about the civil rights movement. Nothing is as strong as an idea whose time has come.
Read Joe Nocera's daily gun report comments section and you will see that causing people to move away from them is a high priority of gun fanatics.
What the heck, people die from heroine overdoses. So why not let little Johnnie play with heroine shot up his veins.
