MDA has a new website and a video starring Melissa Joan Hart to address the issue of securing guns. I guess after being beaten over the head about their self-titled Gun Safety Advocacy, they figured “Hey, we should actually like, put something out there.” And they still manage to screw it up in about 30 seconds.
We begin the usual blabber of guns are bad and yes you have a right but no you don’t (responsibilities!) and we follow with Mr. NYPD on Loan To Moms, a Beretta, a gun lock and a small gun safe, looks good.
Next, NYPD Officer unloads the Beretta. Still fine.
Next, he places the magazine inside the safe…
And locks the safe? Huh? So, what happens to the gun?
Ohh, the cable lock…about time too.
And that is it. I guess the gun stays OUTSIDE the safe.
So either MDA is going to provide a safe, a gun lock and a cop to every household, or somebody again did not do its homework by interpreting the “secure your gun and ammo in different places” in a rather bizarre manner. I can give you the double redundancy of having the cabled gun inside the safe, but locking the ammo and leaving the gun out? Oy!
By the way, there is not even a mention where you can get the cable lock or the gun safe. Helpful indeed, makes you wonder if they just did that section of the video for appearances’ sake…nah, they wouldn’t, would they? Does the cop come with the safe?
But wait! There is more! Remember the maxim “Liberal can’t do math”?
And now the Negligent Podiatric Discharge:
So, 1.7 million kids live in homes with unsecured guns and that leads to 100 of them getting killed a year. That comes about 0.006% of all the kids in alleged danger by living in a household with a loaded & unlocked gun. Not to say that 100 deaths do not matter, but 0,006 percent seems to be safer than going out to the McDonalds in the family car, well in fact it is since accidental deaths by vehicles ages 0 to 14 were 1,345 in 2013 according to the CDC (page 22).
Next they tackle Teen Suicide and mental illness. and they were doing fine till I heard “When it comes to young teens, the presence and availability of a gun in the home, may be a more significant risk factor than psychiatric illness.” Wait…What? So, if the kid is mentally sane but touches a gun, he will kill himself because gun? And that is even worse that if he had a mental illness? Oh dear lord.
And I stopped there. There is about a minute and 20 seconds left, but I had already developed heartburn.
I need another Tagamet.
[…] As my friend Miguel points out at the cheekily-named Gun Free Zone blog, the “safe storage practices” shown in the video (above) are anything but safe: […]
[…] As my friend Miguel points out at the cheekily-named Gun Free Zone blog, the “safe storage practices” shown in the video (above) are anything but safe: […]
I hoist a glass to you for even bothering to watch the vid.
Well, at least it’s something… After decades of misrepresenting themselves as “gun safety advocates” without ever actually advocating gun safety, I gotta give them that.
Still, I don’t think the people at Eddie Eagle need to worry about the competition.
Before someone says it again… Melissa Joan who?
Firearms expert Melissa Joan Hart?
Wait…. they’re now advocating cable-locks to keep kids from getting guns?
Well! Does this mean they’ll abandon their Smart Gun demands?
I ask because a cable-lock costs about 1/100th of a Smart Gun and can work with ANY semi-auto handgun.
The same thing could have been far more effective if they had simply said, Unload the firearm, and stick it in a safe. If you’re placing something in the safe, wouldn’t you want the one that can… I dunno… be used?
Personally, I like the idea of maintaining control of the firearms. If the firearm is not in my possession, I’d rather it be in a safe. HOWEVER this is the dumbest way to secure a firearm ever. And it won’t work.
So, uh, by their own (wildly include) stats, firearms are three nines safe to be around children?
As for the teen suicide thing, they think guns make people crazy (somehow), so that makes sense (to them).
(NJ forces FFLs to give away cable locks, and I think you can go to any police station and ask for one for free as well. They’re not GOOD cable locks, of course)
The cable locks we issue are made in Taiwan and are NOT overly difficult to defeat. I’ve also seen “lock boxes” that I was able to pick and that were so cheap (i.e., made with PLASTIC parts in the lock) that they either stopped locking OR (which I feel to be an even more dangerous situation) stopped opening with the proper code and needed the key override (or simple lock pick) to open. De-Mystifying guns and teaching kids safe handling rules goes much further than trying to secure guns from some of the most ingenious creatures known to Man: curious kids!
Locks famously keep honest people honest. It’s all a part of an in depth strategy. Among other things, if you have toy guns, putting locks on the real ones indicates that they ARE real.
For the record, I don’t support safe storage laws, nor mandated “giveaways” of trigger locks by FFLs.
Actually I thought they did a reasonable job with the video for people who do not have a gun. But the really dumb thing they don’t do is encourage gun owners to get proper training and explain to kids Eddie Eagle’s maxims.
I guess if they are still around 140 years from now (NRA’s safety rules are about 140 years old), they might have gotten right by then.
[…] —–Moms Demand finally addressing Gun Safety…sort of. […]