Ask: Joyce Myopia

Bitter beat me to this one, but I thought I’d riff on the article a bit more. Its an article essentially pushing the latest Joyce foundation gimmick where parents dropping children over for play-dates to ask if there are guns in the house, and how and where they are stored. Etc. The first I ever saw of this of course was through our favorite glassy-eyed Joyce-Shill. Being pushed by Joyce, taints any valid points it may have. Joyce Foundation is a gun-ban group, with no respect for the 2nd Amendment, nor personal safety or self-defense. They’re pure evil, and this is no different.

Now as Bitter said the writer starts out by essentially quoting the NRA Eddie Eagle program, which BTW is one of the best youth safety program out there, and even if you don’t have guns, or even HATE guns, your kids should be trained in this VERY basic gun safety. More on that later.

The money quote in the article is here:

“I would say it in a self-deprecating way, ‘I’m over the top, but I just want to know if there are guns in your house,'” she suggests saying. She thinks this humble, nonjudgmental “you might think I’m crazy” approach can defuse many difficult situations.

Yeah well that IS kinda crazy. Its also EXTREMELY myopic. First up if you’re dropping such a point-blank and pointed question, obviously you don’t know me from Adam, and you’ll get the same answer I give every total stranger asking about guns and other valuable items stored in my house: “Of course not!” Now here’s something else I need to expand on.

Now of course the myopia of the whole “Ask Campaign” is pretty stupid. If you know a person so little that you need to ask a probing question about their gun ownership, what else don’t you know about these people? There are things worse than guns. Could there be a sexually or physically abusive member in the family.

Hell when I was younger there was a kid who lived near our school, and he had an older brother that had some emotional issues. I know he beat me up pretty good one afternoon which was pretty scary. Other people told me he’d pulled a knife on them and threatened to kill them. There weren’t guns in that home, but I decided that it would be best if we played at MY house.

There are of course far too many tales of sexual assault that may involve play dates, but no mention about that.

If you don’t know if the parents are the type of people who leave guns lying around, how do you know how well will they supervise your children? Will they make sure they don’t get into a swimming pool? Play with chemicals? Tools? Kitchen cutlery? Tree Climbing? Running in the house? Hell why don’t they mention inspecting that tree house in the backyard for safety?

How about drug use? What’s worse, finding a parent or sibling’s gun, or finding their Heroin kit, or some colorful pharmaceuticals in an unmarked non-child-safe bag?

The insulting part of this piece is that its just another Joyce Foundation anti-gun piece with little concern for safety.

Now back to my 2nd Point. What happens when they say “No”? Now I’m a legal gun owner, as well as a safe responsible one. I store all my non-defensive guns unloaded with the ammunition separate. I also lock them up so my investment is protected. Still I fail to see how an unloaded M1 Garand or Mosin Nagant tucked in a closet with the ammo separate has any danger to children, especially if you’re a good parent and set boundaries for playing kids. I wasn’t allowed to rummage through my parents things, and certainly I knew better than to do such things at friend’s houses.

Furthermore Massachusetts law (illegally) requires me to keep all guns locked up. Its a bad law, but I comply until its repealed.

Still children getting shot isn’t uncommon here in Massachusetts. Its not normal citizens, its seems to be cops improperly storing their duty weapon, or drug dealers who don’t follow ANY laws, so dropping a fully-loaded, unlicensed, stolen gun in a drawer, or under a pillows isn’t any more of a concern than the narcotic operation, or violent job security they also engage in.

So what if the Mommy you ask is a Mommy to a 16-year-old crack dealer living under her roof. Either she has NO idea, or she knows all she needs to know and is harboring him. First she’s a bad parent, and second, how do you think she’s going to answer your questions?

So this leads to my first point. THEN WHAT? Even if you ask all the questions in the world, there’s no telling if you’ll ever get a straight answer, and even if you make a decent effort to vet all parents, surprises happen. Maybe you know Gloria and little Bobby and Jimmy since they were in diapers…but now you might not be aware that Jimmy now goes by “Big Jim” and has taken to running with the local gang when his Mom thinks he’s out playing Basket Ball.

Unlikely? Maybe. But what if your kid’s number’s up. Teach them basic gun safety. Treat all guns as if they are loaded. DON’T TOUCH THEM! If you see one, leave the area and find an adult.

Do this even if you’re super-anti-gun hate guns, and would never let a gun in your home. You can’t ever be 100% sure your kid will never find a gun. The Anti-Gun idea is about as effective as the Reagan “Just Say No” campaign, or the abstinence Sex-Ed program. It just doesn’t take into account a worse case scenario, and actually makes children MORE susceptible to harm when life throws a curve-ball.

And of course this also illustrates the insane fixation of the antis with guns. Accidental gun death for young children is extremely rare compared to other accidents that could injure or kill kids, but guns are different…because they are different. And somehow thinking that getting a “No” from “Are there guns in the home?” question somehow makes kids safer is just foolish.

Of course telling your kids they can’t play with THOSE kids because their parents own guns for self defense DOES achieve OTHER goals.

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0 Responses to Ask: Joyce Myopia

  1. teke says:

    If they are dropping the kid off you could always take the alternate approach to saying no. and Say Of course there are. Then lift up your shirt and show them the nice piece on your hip. Or whip you pocket snubbie out and say wanna see. You may be cleaning brown and yellow stains up off your floor and your kid will never be allowed to play with mr/mrs future progressive but hey. Is it a real loss?
    Or the alternate approach. When you drop your kid off as them. When they say no ask why the hell not. How are you going to protect my kid if something goes wrong.
    My CHL instructor, a county police officer, told us that he won’t let his mother in-law take the kids anywhere because she will not carry and claims to be a devout pacifist and can’t see herself taking any violent step to protect the kids.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Hey, one thing to make note is that I’m a “Progressive” kid who was allowed to play in the woods with Conservative and Libertarian kids.

      Just because Mom and (unlikely) Dad are political missing links, doesn’t mean their kids are doomed down the path of constant misery and fantasizing about class warfare and government-sponsored mass-murder!

  2. Linoge says:

    Asking if someone keeps firearms in the house is about the single best way to prove to them that you do not trust them. There are about a thousand-and-one other ways Little Suzy can off herself and her brother when playing over at your house, and losing your collective gos-se over the prospect of an inanimate lump of metal also being in the house is just damned stupid. Either you trust someone to be mindful of your children and their safety in their entirety, or you do not. If you do not, do not let them play there.

    This ain’t hard, folks.

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  4. MiniMedic says:

    As I type this, I have my husband’s Kimber 1911 (unloaded, clip is nearby) lying next to me on my nightstand. I typically leave it there when I leave the house, as I don’t really expect anyone to show up unannounced.

    My neighbor’s 8-year old kid popped up at my front door and asked for a drink of water and a towel. (She was the unfortunate victim of a SuperSoaker strike orchestrated by her little brother.) She never ventured out of my sight until I remembered that the 1911 was out, so she and I quickly ran upstairs and locked it up, explaining that my husband used to do a lot of competition shooting. Hell, I think I had it out upstairs when we ran over to my unit for a quick snack!

    Her parents still have no clue that this even happened.

    Then again, we live on a military base…

  5. AuricTech says:

    I would go with a variant of my response on Walls of the City about how I would respond to a door-to-door pollster asking whether I had any firearms [my thoughts in [brackets]]:

    “You know, I’ve thought about having guns in my home a lot recently [I just cleaned them all yesterday after my range weekend! ~big grin~]. After all, there are a lot of crazy people out there who might want to harm my children [Why, I’ve even heard of anti-rights people threatening to sic Child Protective Services on a gunblogger who had the audacity to demand that his child eat at least one forkful of peas.].

    “Thank you for bringing this subject up. I haven’t quite decided on buying a [backup] home-defense gun [Shotgun or pistol? Polymer or steel? Decisions, decisions….], but your question may well help me make up my mind on the matter. After all, I’d hate to see something bad happen to your child while (s)he is playing with my child in my house.”

  6. Weer’d, I always shake my head at your firm affirmation that children who are told to avoid guns will do so simply because you “set firm boundaries.” Having young children of my own, and being around others all the time, I can say quite easily that even the most well-behaved child doesn’t always follow the rules, and many kids are not so well-behaved.

    And you *always* downplay the dangers of guns in the home, scoffing at careful parents who ask critical questions, including about guns, trusting that gun owners are always going to be responsible with their weapons, yet you are so paranoid that the people you don’t know well could be sex abusers or heroin addicts or whatever. And you call *us* myopic!

    Could gun-owning parents lie about owning a gun when asked, as you admit you would do? Sure. But I know from experience that even the best friends don’t always reveal gun ownership, not out of secrecy for their ownership, but it just doesn’t normally come up in peoples’ conversations (unlike folks like you who have a fetish for guns). The friends I’m thinking of were truthful when I asked, and my kids still play there because I was wise enough to ask about how they were stored (in a locked safe). They weren’t bothered by the question, either. They understood the need for parents to insure their kids’ safety. Unlike you.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Interesting post Baldr, but you give some very curious logic.

      First why is it just common sense to ask about home firearms and their storage (I assume to total strangers, as if you get to know these people the subject can come up in large safety-oriented fashion), but its “Paranoid” to ask about sex offenders, or violent criminals, or illegal drugs under the roof? Looking at things like CDC and mortality firearm death and injury is almost nothing.
      http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe?_service=v8prod&_server=app-v-ehip-wisq.cdc.gov&_port=5082&_sessionid=xckxH.iEM52&_program=wisqars.details10.sas&_service=&type=U&prtfmt=STANDARD&age1=10&age2=14&agegp=10-14&deaths=1229&_debug=0&lcdfmt=lcd1age&ethnicty=0&ranking=10&deathtle=Death
      http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe?_service=v8prod&_server=app-v-ehip-wisq.cdc.gov&_port=5081&_sessionid=W//g0.iEM52&_program=wisqnf.nfipercents.sas&_service=v8prod&age1=10&age2=14&agetext=10-14&intent=0&_debug=0

      And it seems the CDC doesn’t specifically give data on “unintentional firearm injury” so the numbers include murder and suicide as well as kids who find and inappropriately use a firearm.

      As for Dangers in guns in the home, oddly enough growing up in Maine most homes had guns. Certainly before Clinton pressed for mandatory trigger locks, only the extensive collectors had safes. Most guns were tucked in drawers, closets, unlocked cabinets, or hanging on the wall. Never touched one without permission. Don’t know anybody who was injured by curiosity of a found gun. Know a few suicides and a few homicides, but those were guns in the home of residence, or offshoots of the illegal drug trade and NOT “Children on Play Dates”. Here in Mass where locks are REQUIRED, I’ve heard of several children shot while playing with a gun in the home. The owner of that gun was always a multiple felon with ties to the drug trade and with street gangs.

      I fail to see where I downplay ANYTHING. Maybe you can clarify that.

      As for concerns about child safety, there has never been a spokesperson for the Joyce Foundation or the Brady Campaign who has cared one wit about protecting human life. Your myopic view, and blind following of Joyce talking points makes you no different. Especially as a grown adult with access to the internet, and more so as somebody who has taken up the mantle as an activist in the 2nd Amendment issues. You should know better, the question is, why not?

      Now onto housekeeping. I’ll be sending this to your listed email as well. I appreciate you giving your unique opinions to the discussion at Weer’d World, but I will note your, and your compatriots past behavior of simply dropping talking points, and not returning to continue debate. Any point worth making, is a point worth defending. If you are not willing to defend your points with reasonable debate, I will start marking further comments by you appropriately as Spam. This is a blog for discussion of issues, not for your personal soap box. If you wish to discuss the issues I welcome it, if you feel the need to drop controversial comments and not follow up on them, you are abusing my blog.

      If you find this task daunting, maybe you should recruit some more voices for your cause.

    • Linoge says:

      Wow. I suppose I should give credit where credit is due, Baldr – if anything, over the past year, you have only gotten more bigoted, more intolerant, and more narrow-minded. Congratulations, I suppose.

      To take it from the top, there is absolutely no shortage of firearm-owning parents who also weblog, who have been 100% successful at keeping their children from unintentionally or intentionally shooting themselves or others through the use of “setting firm boundaries” in addition to self-imposed safety measures – SayUncle, JayG, NancyR, Les Jones, and Robb Allen are all ones that come to mind right off the top. But, hey, your parenting skills may just not be up to snuff, eh? Nice try at an appeal to authority logical fallacy, though.

      And you *always* downplay the dangers of guns in the home

      If you are going to say something like that, you had better have the stones to back it up, because, like Weer’d, I do not see him doing any such thing in his post. What I do see him doing is equating the dangers of firearms in a home to the dangers of chemicals, poisons, automobiles, bathtubs, and so forth in the home. Speaking of…

      trusting that gun owners are always going to be responsible with their weapons

      Do you trust that pool owners will be responsible with their pools? Do you trust that homeowners will be responsible with their insecticides, bleaches, detergents, astringents, gas stoves, gas ranges, bathtubs, refrigerators, automobiles, lawn mowers, power tools, trash cans, stairs, decks, hot water taps, and all of the other thousands upon thousands of ways a child could find to wound or kill themselves or others?

      If you do, then why are you so narrow-mindedly paranoid about firearms? What is it about an inanimate hunk of metal that you so irrationally fear?

      Do you, in your infinite bigotry, even know what the leading causes of death are for children?

      For 1-4, you are looking at unintentional drowning (22.3%), unintentional motor vehicle traffic (20.8%), unintentional fire/burn (9.9%), homicide unspecified (8.5%), and unintentional suffocation (7.2%). So do you ask about all of the various ways those fatalities can come to pass, or do you exclusively focus on on the 2.3% that die from “homicide firearms”? Is it any wonder we call you “myopic”?

      For 5-9, we have unintentional motor vehicle traffic (40.4%), unintentional fire/burn (12.1%), unintentional drowning (10.8%), homicide firearm (4.2%), and unintentional suffocation (3.7%). Again, where do you think your focus should lie?

      And finally, for 10-14, we have unintentional motor vehicle traffic (41.8%), homicide firearm (9.2%), suicide suffocation (7.1%), unintentional drowning (6.1%), and unintentional other land transport (4.8%). Firearms finally shoulder their way into the top three, and that vindicates your stupidity, right? Wrong. These children were killed by people wielding firearms, yes, but no mention of the age of the person doing the killing is made, and, unfortunately, this age bracket is where gangs start their recruitment. Unintentional firearm deaths rank in at 1.6%.

      For that entire age range (1-14), homicide firearms ranks fifth, and unintentional firearm deaths do not even place in the top 10.

      So, tell me, Baldr, do you interrogate your play dates’ parents about their driving habits as well? Or what kind of plastic bags they leave around the home? Or any kinds of pools of water? Or bicycles, tricycles, wagons, and whatnot else? Do you demand to know about any gang activity in the area? Or are you single-mindedly persecuting firearm-owners simply due to your own phobias?

      (unlike folks like you who have a fetish for guns).

      There you go again, misappropriating words you do not comprehend. Tell me – are you ever going to define “gun-like rhetoric”? Because I really want to know what that means…

      They understood the need for parents to insure their kids’ safety. Unlike you.

      Once again, Baldr, if you are going to say something like that, you had better have the material to back it up. I am starting to get genuinely concerned about the prospect of you actually having progeny, given your inability to be an adult and substantiate your arguments. Hell of an example you are setting…

      Where in Weer’d’s post does he demonstrate a lack of understanding regarding the need for parents to ensure (the correct word – unless you are talking about buying an insurance policy) their kids’ safety? Be specific. Take all the time you need. Because what I see is Weer’d expressing his desire for parents to be aware of all aspects of their child’s safety, not just some narrow, specific point – about whether or not other parents are keeping their chemicals under control, about the potential criminal dealings of those parents, about ensuring your children know what to do with a firearm (to wit, nothing) should they stumble across one, and so forth.

      He really is quite accurate with his analogy of your methodology to the whole “abstinence” program – it works great, right up until it does not (and make no mistake, it will eventually not work), and then it fails miserably. I would very much rather my eventual children be prepared and know what to do should they ever stumble across a firearm, rather than your mentality which seems to be to shield them from any and all possible encounters they might have – so, tell me, as a parent with so much experience and knowledge, how well is protecting them from the world working for you? And what will happen when you cannot be there? And do you even comprehend how much you are failing to prepare them for that world?

    • Thirdpower says:

      Interesting that Baldr is being a hypocrit even w. his own stated beliefs:

      “No home with children should have a gun, even if it’s locked up”

      But the people that he knows are ‘different’. Everyone else is ‘sick’.

      • Weerd Beard says:

        I’ll probably do a post on it early next week, but he’s not even interested in standing by what he beliefs, and I don’t suspect we’ll see much of him around here.

    • Some Dude says:

      Pathetic little fat Jason Alexis Kilgore keeps pretending that he is a “father.”

      He’s the custodian of another man’s seed.

  7. Patrick says:

    I have a fetish for guns like I have a fetish for hammers… of course *I* only blog about the guns and not the hammers because I realized that someone was trying to remove my ability and right to have and carry a firearm. Nobody has tried to do that with hammers or I might blog about that too.

    As for conversations.. almost everyone I hang around is a firearm person and has firearms in their home.. and it’s not because I only hang around people who have firearms. It is normal in Ohio. And we talk about shooting some.. we talk about what new firearm someone just got.. but we also talk about a million other things as well.

    Do you do nothing but talk about how we need gun laws to restrict ownership around your friends? One might say you have a fetish for gun-control….

    • Weerd Beard says:

      I’d have a fetish for cars like I do, guns if they were as inexpensive as guns, AND could be stored as easily. I certainly have a fetish for movies, Own over 400 DVDs, and still get a continuous supply of Netflix via mail and internet streams.

      Of course we don’t have Joyce Foundation front groups working to demand a background check on any DVD or theater ticket purchase, and ban TV broadcast and internet streaming. Or say ban all films containing violence, or nudity.

      I still have a “Movies” tag up there and to the right were we can read about such things.

  8. 45er says:

    I’m hearing those crickets that Weer’d prophesied about. No debate, only drive-by posting. I never realized how very few and far between passionate antis were until I started blogging. I was going to say “I can barely keep up with all the gun blogs”, but that’s not correct. I flat-out can’t keep up with them. They are so numerous I would spend all day reading and linking pro-gun blogs. I’ll bet I could hit all the anti-sites in half an hour (if I could find them, when I Google anti-gun, all I get are pro-gun blogs).

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Yeah, nothing here on the blog, I did get an email response to the statement I said I’d email him. Since the guy updates his blog about once-a-month, and manages to squeak out less than one tweet a day from his twitter feed (and that’s counting re-tweets) I’m going to grade him on a much slower timeline than a fully-functional human.

      But there will be a post on this.

  9. Linoge says:

    There is scant little more pathetic than a coward who lacks the conviction to defend his beliefs.

    Except, of course, a coward who hides behind the government while attempting to impose his own intolerance on the world…

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