Jason Kilgore of the Joyce Foundation has a rather short-sighted Tweet (as if there is such a thing as a “Brilliant Tweet” Sorry even people who I know and love, and consider quite smart sound dumb on twitter)
Recovery continues for OR child shot in head by friend – why child access prevention laws are needed
Austin was at a friend’s house when the boy tried to scare Austin with his father’s duck hunting rifle, police say.
The boy thought it was unloaded, but it wasn’t.
Police say the gun was left out, unsecured in the living room.
For that, Austin’s parents say there is no excuse.
There is no mention of the family who left the gun out…not even their name. So I don’t even know how to look up to see if charges were filed. This is indeed a horrible case. Now first up I assume the gun in question was not a “rifle” but a shotgun loaded with field loads. Otherwise a shot to the head would have been instantly fatal. Also pretty sure its illegal everywhere to hunt ducks with a rifle.
Still I want to focus on Jason’s tag line of “why child access prevention laws are needed” (BTW he had to fragment his statement so he could fit it into twitter. This is why even smart people sound dumb on twitter. But Jason is for-real dumb)
OK so we have a family that has not only their young kids at home, but have OTHER PEOPLE’s kids in their home, and they leave them totally unsupervised, and leave a loaded shotgun lying around.
I’ll make a quick assumption. There ARE people who use long sporting shotguns for home defense, and there are people who think bird and skeet loads are useful for home defense (they aren’t DON’T!), there’s a strong chance that this isn’t a home defense gun, and a better chance that its just a hunting gun that was either intentionally left loaded, or never properly cleared for storage.
Now let’s step away from the guns issue for a second. The anti-freedom cultist’s mantra is “Guns are different because guns are different”, but in this instance we can look at other dangerous stuff you find around the house.
Vector and Rockstar have a young daughter. Their house is FULL of safety stuff to make life safer for a young girl exploring her world. They have gates on stairs and around the kitchen. Cupboards that hold various things that can be harmful have child locks on them, and bathrooms have safety knobs on them to keep them from being opened by curious fingers. Heck they even have a safety latch on their toilet (which can be a pain if you don’t know the trick to open it and you desperately need to pee!)
None of these things are mandated by law. Nor are their any laws that say you can’t leave your chef knife in the play pen.
OK now let’s look at things that there ARE laws for. Drunk driving is both very dangerous and very illegal. Does this keep people with bad judgement from doing it?
Nope!
What helps is the people who are caught drunk driving lose their licenses, and repeat offenders often spend some time in jail. Also we don’t catch all of them, and some drunks get home safely, and other kill themselves and others in accidents.
Life isn’t safe, and the solution is NOT to ban alcohol, or say that people ONLY may imbibe adult beverages in a location where they are sleeping.
Punish bad behavior, and punish severely bad behavior severely. You leave a loaded shotgun around where kids are playing, you should be in deep shit if you get caught (and I hope these jerks are). But when I’m in Maine and I’m in a house where there are no kids, and everybody is a grown adult who is far smarter than to play with a strange gun, I don’t pass a law that would make me a criminal for leaving a gun on my night stand.
But this is how these idiots think. They think if we make murder or drunk driving illegal nobody will murder or drunk drive, or if you force “Safe Storage Laws” on people everybody will lock up their guns…and when criminals get caught storing their guns unsafely they’ll be punished for it.
Nope, the laws are junk. REPEAL THEM!
You mean that adults don’t have to live like children? That’s crazy talk. In the view of gun grabbers, we’re all essentially children who need the supervision of our betters.
“Nor are there any laws that say you can’t leave your Chef Knife in the playpen.”
Uh, sorry, but there are. “Child Endangerment” is the Big One. So leave the Chef Knife in the Kitchen where it belongs!
All Snark aside, I do think that “Child Endangerment” is going to be the Anti-Gunners Loophole, (if they ever get enough money to pay for Lawyers, of course). Lord, the Nanny State is bringing “Child Endangerment” charges against Families who’s kids are “Too Fat!” Stay Tuned.
That’s not how “Progressives” work. You can’t drive down the highway with your nose buried in your cell phone typing with both hands because that’s “Reckless Driving” or “Driving to Endanger”, but “Progressives” assume that because people do these dangerous things anyway we obviously need yet another more specific that also punishes reasonable behavior. So Massachusetts passed a “Texting while driving law”, so now I’m breaking the law when I skip to the next track on my MP3 player plugged into my truck.
And of course they’ll ignore the lack of results from said law.