I have a buddy who reads my post,s and then does what he is not supposed to do on the internet and reads the comments as well.
Then, he lets me know his opinion.
I have to agree with him (and I know Miguel says this too), sometimes law-abiding gun owners are our own worst enemies.
For those of you who understand what I am trying to say, this post doesn’t apply to you.
For those of you who felt the need to argue with me when agreed with Brady just a little bit, the rest of this post is for you. I’m going to spell it out very clearly. If you get offended, well, this is my opinion and Miguel has very graciously given me room to voice it.
From AL.com
5-year-old killed in accidental shooting in Madison County
My son is five years old. This already is heartbreaking.
The victim of a deadly accidental shooting in Madison County has been identified as a 5-year-old boy.
The fatal gunshot wound to the head was accidentally self-inflicted, according to the Madison County sheriff’s office. The child, whose name wasn’t released, was inside the family’s parked vehicle at a home on Berry Creek Drive in Harvest when the shooting happened Sunday afternoon. A parent found the child and the authorities were notified.
“It’s obvious it was just a horrible, horrible accident,” he said. “It’s just a horrible thing.”
At the scene on Sunday afternoon, emergency medical workers attempted life-saving measures, authorities said, but the child was declared dead after being taken to Madison Hospital.
I’ve checked other news outlets but no other information has been released. No charges are expected to be filed but that is little more than thinnest silver lining on what is probably the darkest possible cloud in these parents’ life.
Given that, this is probably a case of a CCW owner who left an unsecured gun in his car and the boy in the car found it.
These accidents do happen when little kids find unsecured guns.
When it comes to politics, I don’t want the government all up in my shit. Part of that means that I have to behave in a way the doesn’t give the government, or someone else, a reason to get up in my shit.
For gun owners, that responsibility to behave in such a way to not invite people up in our shit is collective.
So let us take this hypothetical but very realistic scenario.
Family A, they are not gun owners. They might not be totally anti-gun but are definitely not pro-gun.
Family B. They own a handgun for home defense, it’s hidden in a nightstand.
Kid A goes to Family B’s house to play. Kid A finds the gun and kills himself.
Family A decides “there needs to be a law.” That law REQUIRES everybody store their gun safely. Bloomberg and Watts get a whiff of this shit and decide that in order to get a gun permit, the police have to verify you have safe storage with an inspection. That’s how they do it in England, Australia, New Zealand. I know Canada has safe storage laws, but I don’t know if the police are required to inspect the safe storage. In the US, inspected safe storage also applies to FFLs, so there is some precedence there too.
The law gets named after dead Kid A and Hogg and his bunch march around demanding it be passed or else politicians have blood on their hands and faces.
So now in a number of states, to get your FOID, FID, Firearm Safety Certificate, or handgun permit, the police have to inspect your safe storage. That means they have to make sure it’s big enough to hold all of your guns, so now they get to see all of your guns. If you buy another gun, they have to right to make sure your safe storage can accommodate the new gun, so they get to see all your guns again.
Now, do you see how bad this can get very quickly?
And what will be the argument made by the anti-gun activists?
“Do you want more kids to die from gun accidents? What sort of monster are you?”
So what do we do to prevent this?
Lock up your fucking gun so that Kid A doesn’t find it and shoot himself.
No accidental dead kids takes the bloody shirt away from the bloody shirt wavers.
And what do we get, besides less government all up in our shit?
Fewer accidental dead kids. Seems like a win-win to me.
If that’s not enough of an argument, how about this?
When your kids were little, did you put a latch on the cabinet under the sink where you kept the drain cleaner?
Do you think that a 9mm is more or less dangerous than a spray bottle full of bleach?
Then lock up your fucking gun.
And lastly. For those of who have made the argument “but I need my gun in a heartbeat if someone kicks in my door and I won’t have the presence of mind when just woken up to the sound of my alarm to punch in a four or six-digit combo into my handgun vault or wave a finger over the biometrics.”
Guess what?
If you are too uncoordinated and bleary-eyed to work your gun box open, you are way too uncoordinated and bleary-eyed to be running that fucking gun.
Will, you properly identify your target? Will you be able to line up your sights and hit it? Or will you get your gun out of your nightstand in a wink and put a bullet through your teenage kid sneaking in after curfew?
Besides, if you are anything like me and most of the people I know who use their cellphone as an alarm clock, I have to punch in a code to unlock my phone to shut off my alarm, so I’m sort of used to having to punch in a code within the first 20 seconds of waking up from a sound sleep. I do it 6 days a week.
If you don’t have kids, and you don’t have kids that come over, and you don’t worry about your nightstand gun being stolen, fine.
But for every other law-abiding gun owner in America. Lock up your gun so it isn’t used by some kid to accidentally hurt themselves. If not for the kid, as a courtesy to the rest of the gun-owning community that doesn’t want mandatory safe storage laws thrust up our asses.
That is how it is supposed to happen in NZ but the mosque shooter last year was not inspected. There were numerous policy and procedure violations by police to let him have firearms. Some people say conspiracy I just say lazy “public servants”. More work now blaming others for their mistakes.
I agree. I have a full on Winchester Big Daddy for the main safe. My nightstand and my truck have gun vault Sliders. My wife’s car has an Alpha Elite. There is no excuse for leaving guns lying about unsecured.
Well said. I have no children but your explanation nevertheless makes 100% sense. Especially your explanation why the comment from a couple of days ago about “I can’t deal with a cipher lock” is wrong. Thanks for making that clear.
My gun safety course instructor recommended keyed pistol locker. He provided multiple arguments for and against each type. He also warned strongly against electric locks. Having a friend, who had a problem with batteries on his safe, I tried only a fingerprint one.
Thus, as a sceptical human being, I tested three types of lockers for a pistol.
My thin dry Asian skin does not give a distinguishable print (finger printing me is always a very long affair, providing much amusement to onlookers).
It is not easy to put in a code in in the dark on a rotary code lock.I have not found luminescent ones, and perfect alignment in a hurry is not easy, especially when the lock is not right in front of you. At that point of time I could not find any mechanical non-rotary types.
The key worked best for me from the access point of view. Storing the key separately, though, is a problem. It cannot be close – – defeats the purpose of repelling guest kids. It cannot be too far, should be easily and quietly found in the dark e.t.c.
At this point I shrugged and relented and decided to put my faith in statistics.
If we move away from our very safe neighborhood, I will revisit my options.
Look for Hotel Room Safes. Some come with illuminated keypads for use in the dark. For speed, some models have a magnetic card reader that allows you to lock/unlock with a card of your choosing.
One of the things I like about Hotel Safes is that many come with a battery detector and will refuse to lock if the battery is low. It can still happen, but there is a hard key bypass covered with a plate secured with torx screws. Old models did not have a bypass which made it fun if worse case scenario happened. It will give you a screen read on the batteries’ condition so you only have to keep an eye opening and closing the door. Having some spare batteries already inside the safe makes for fast replacement.
Now, this is a low level safe (but better that the crappy Barska stuff) which I recommend only to keep away from the hands of Children and maybe a fast break in to your home.
I would say that is generally a good go to and in this case we are worried about unauthorized access not theft but many cheap hotel room safes can be easily defeated with magnets or paperclips. I would not rely on that for anything other than a 5 year old especially if they are especially curious or like to get into trouble. There are many videos on YouTube of this being done.
Don’t get me wrong the sentiment is 100% correct, I just want the person buying a cheap safe to be an educated consumer and have proper expectations of what such a safe can realistically do.
Did that instructor give any reason for “warning strongly against electric locks”? Without a reason it’s hard to see if there is any merit in that advice, or if the issue can be overcome.
After having had to get up several times in the middle of the night to shut off low-battery beeps on smoke detectors, I now use lithium batteries in mine. They are rated for 10 years and so far indications are good. If you don’t want dead batteries on your gun storage containers, do the same thing there. Replace them every 5 years to be super cautious.
It is EXACTLY the same argument that the OC Idiots need to hear and understand.
When I was 6 y.o. I accidentally caught my father putting away his service weapon for the night on some top high shelf with closing doors. There was no lock. My dad noticed me, got the pistol down, set me down at the kitchen table with the weapon between us and explained, what would be the consequences of my mishandling the pistol. I do not remember all he said, just something about him in prison for a very long time being the best scenario.
He showed me how the weapon was used and explained why he kept magazines and ammo separately. That was enough for me to never even dream about opening those doors on the top shelf.
Some children mature later than others. Having unlocked loaded guns around 5 Y.O. is just nuts.
When I bought my first gun in the US, I did the same as my father: explained the consequences. I must have gone too far, because my youngest even locks the door to the safes’ room when we have company over.
Throughout history relatively young kids were trained to handle weapons responsibly. Now parents are just abrogating this responsibility and are blaming everybody else.
Boiling water can kill too. Very painfully.
I am sorry if my views are monstrous. I was brought up by strange people who believed in benefits of proper education and instilling sense of duty in their young.
P. S. As a military brat, open carrying around me on the base was a normal everyday sight. It also was a normal sight for the previous generations of US citizens. How low have we fallen.
Growing up, we had a handsome wooden gun rack in our den, mounted to the wall, and had on it 2 shotguns and 2 rifles. They were unloaded but I always knew where the ammo was kept. They could simply be picked up and taken off the rack. My dad taught me well enough to not touch them without permission that it wasn’t ever an issue.
Of course, this was small village upstate NY and we didn’t even have locks on the front door of the house. Times change, I guess.
Even the “pro-gun” side is crying “what about the children”…
The problem you both have here is that what you’re decrying is NOT the reason the anti-gun side calls for whatever it is they are calling for.
It’s a justification after the fact. It can be, and will be, anything they can get the public to bite on (and here’s the important part) including nothing.
We will NEVER live our lives so squeaky clean that they cannot capitalize on our actions or inaction to justify banning guns.
But they most certainly will read this and the take away will be, “even the pro-gun side says to lock up your guns!” Thus justifying making it mandatory.
Oh My God! The Other Side will take something we say and twisted for their nefarious purposes? How could they?
You seem to be missing a difference: While they cry for laws, we demand higher standards of ourselves. It is hard (not impossible) for the Opposition to appear righteous if we have a constant campaign and effort to keep our guns secure from the hands of untrained children. That is why I beat constantly on securing vehicles and using lockboxes.
But simply saying you don’t want to do even the slightest of effort because you don’t want to “help” Brady and Company?
We do not have the Four Suggestions of Gun Safety, we have the Four Rules. We badger and harpy on those who violate them because we have a higher standard and we enforce it.
We can’t do the same when it comes to gun safety in vehicles? Absurd.
While I agree with the ‘secure your guns’ sentiment (properly securing deadly weapons from kids is a basic moral duty IMHO), it is completely useless as a political strategy.
So what if every single law-abiding gun owner in the nation secures their weapons? Do you think that’s gonna stop calls for ‘safe-storage’ laws (which will be designed to impede self-defense, and with draconian penalties for violating them, as always) the next time a kid offs himself or someone else with his felon baby-daddy’s illegal owned gat?
Considering that the OG safe-storage laws were pushed with that exact narrative (a convicted felon with an illegally owned gun didn’t secure it, and his kids suffered for it), I don’t see how anyone can honestly claim that political considerations are at all relevant to this issue (other than the obvious ones of ‘anti-civil rights activists are scum-bag liars,’ which everyone here already knew).
Do you think that’s gonna stop calls for ‘safe-storage’ laws
I don’t care if they keep asking for them till they turn blue in the face. What I care is that they do not get them and we do that by showing we, Gun Owners, have a higher standard of safety than anybody else without the need of a regulatory body.
If you are seeking to shut up and start bothering you, I have bad news: It ain’t happening.
You reasonably call for responsible behavior. It only becomes a problem when it is mandated behavior. I think every gun owner and household member should receive gun safety training. I think there should be a means of securing guns at all times (on your person in a holster is secure) especially if unmonitored. I do not believe the government should require any of the above. Seat belt laws have been around for 50 years, people die daily from not wearing them when they crash. Legislating responsibility does not work, but they will try if we give them an opportunity. We will never be able to stop the children finding the felon’s illegally possessed and improperly stored gun but we will receive the blame.
I liken storing your gun properly to wearing a helmet while riding you motorcycle. It a a reasonable and logical precaution to take for a variety of outcomes from catesteopic crash to just falling over at a stop light. I’d never tell you you need to wear a helmet or that there needs to be a law telling you to but I might say you should do it and think you stupid for not.
Some people make it a point of pride not only to ignore reasonable and logic precautions but to put it down as an insult directed at them. I also fear they hide behind the “Muh Rights!” so they are given a pass on the subject. It reminds me the South Beach Gay scene where it was another point of “honor and freedom” to “ride bareback” (AKA not to use a condom only) to wake up a few years later and find out a third of the gay population was infected with AIDS and/or other maladies.
Now, if keeping your gun unsecured in your vehicle under the excuse of Muh Rights or because you are just lazy leads to one of your kids dying, hey, it is on you asshole. For the rest of your life you will have to deal with the fact you were directly responsible for the senseless death that could have been avoided by $30 and a little responsibility.
And that is a general purpose “You”, not directed at anybody in specific…. Just in case 😀