Atlanticmike wrote: ↑Tue Feb 01, 2022 7:46 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:57 pm
My Dad has told me dozens of stories about how he and his brothers used to break into where my grandfather kept his guns, take and shoot the guns, and put them back so grandpa wouldn't notice. When I bought the house I live in now from my parents, it came with the family guns. I had middle school age kids. I gave them to my brother and told him to keep or sell them. I didn't care. It's not that I'm afraid of guns. It's that I was afraid my kids would be just as clever as my dad and uncles.
Do you lock up your poisonous household chemicals? Do you lock up your prescription medication?
My kids shoot, all the time. They're better marksman than me. Actually, I suck at shooting. My kids know how to handle guns. They don't care about guns, they just like to shoot. I have biometric safes that two of my daughters can open if there's an intruder. Do you think it's dangerous my kids have access to weapons? The guns are loaded and a round is in the chamber. Just put your finger on the biometric reader and slide your finger. Door drops in 2 seconds. Inside the safe is a very very very very very very very very scaaaaaarrryy black gun that's just laying there hoping one day it gets to kill someone!! Am I terrible dad?
Where do you think I implied you were a terrible dad? At the time I gave the guns away, I wasn't using them. The guns weren't being stored in a gun safe when I bought the house, and I didn't want to shell out the money to buy one when I wasn't using the guns. So, knowing that kids can be clever and that even very careful people can have accidents, I eliminated the risks that someone in the family would end up shot with my own guns. A costless reduction of risk is a no brainer.
I'm dubious about the benefit/risk tradeoff owning a firearm for home defense. I don't do it. But I don't try to stop anyone else from doing it. I think storing your firearms in biometric safes is smart. If you are giving your daughters access to firearms, then making sure they are trained an having them shoot on a regular basis is smart. In fact, if you choose to have firearms in your house for self defense, training and regular practice for everyone is smart. I'm dubious about the notion of storing a firearm with a bullet in the chamber. That seems to me to be an unnecessary increase of risk with a remote chance of benefit. I wouldn't do it. But I wouldn't to prevent you from doing it.
I think analogizing guns to household chemicals or prescription drugs is silly, because there are some pretty important differences. When my kids were young, I took reasonable precautions to prevent them from getting their hands on household chemicals and prescription drugs until they learned not to drink bleach or take other people's pills. Guns are a little different. There's an attraction there for young kids and teenagers that isn't present in bottle of bleach. And the potential for a fatal accident when playing around with dad's gun or showing it off to a friend just don't exist when it comes to a bottle of bleach. School shootings with mom's gun is a thing; school bleaching isn't.
The worst thing for me when it comes to discussions about guns is the volume of silly arguments and overheated rhetoric.
1. No one can take away all the guns from Americans. The second amendment is a real thing. It's silly to even include that possibility in a serious discussion about guns.
2. No rights are absolute. All of them have boundaries. And the government has the power to regulate them all in some ways, especially when it comes to public safety. It's silly to pretend that anyone has a constitutional right to be armed with any weapon at any place and at any time, so it's silly to even include that notion in an argument.
3. Because Americans have a constitutional right to own guns, some people will inevitably be injured and die from gunshots. There is no way to reduce that risk to zero to kids, school children or any other subgroup of citizens. Claims like "gun owners hate their fellow man" are simply overheated rhetoric and have no place in a serious discussion about guns.
I think a rational approach to injuries and deaths from firearms is harm reduction. That requires us to have enough data to understand what the actual risks and benefits are. There has been political resistance to conducting this kind of research, which is incredibly short sighted. Without good data, we can't make smart decisions. There are risks that are fairly unique to firearms. They are designed to be quick and efficient tools for killing. They aren't too forgiving of mistakes in their use. So it makes sense to gather data that tells us not only the amount of injury and death, but informs us about patterns of when that injury or death is more likely to occur. Then we can use that data to see if there are things the government can do that make a substantive difference in the risk of injury and death in ways that are permissible under out Constitution. I get it that what I'm suggesting takes away the fun of taunting each other about being "killers" or "cowards," but that's kind of the point about having a reasonable, adult-type discussion.
I think another rational issue to consider is who bears the burden of the risk. Or, to put it another way, why should I be exposed to the risks of others who own guns? When the second amendment was enacted, a critical part of the country's defense depended on citizen militias. It doesn't today. There is no shared benefit of gun ownership. So, why should gun owners be able to pass off the risk of injury and death from their guns to people who don't choose to own guns? That's a general fairness issue, and it's rational to at least talk about measures to shift the cost of that risk onto those who choose to purchase guns.
But we don't ever get to have serious discussions about guns because of all the silly noise.
. I bet you wear two mask, don't you? Because if you trigger lock a gun then put it in a safe then hide the safe, you definitely wear two mask
. What the HELL!! Do your kids walk around with an acetylene torch?!?! Maybe C4?
https://youtu.be/7fiGCJJo0QQ