My dad thought he was controlling for the risk. But every kid in our house knew where he “hid” the keys to the gun cabinets. My brother was sure he was controlling the risk at his house as an adult – until the day he blew his brains out with a handgun after experiencing a mental health breakdown – couldn’t get him committed because he hadn’t threatened himself or anyone else. You are fooling yourself if you think you are “controlling the risk” sufficiently that nothing could happen.
So, so sorry intparent.
So sorry, intparent.
Years ago, but it just steams me that every gun owner thinks it can’t happen at their house.
@intparent, I am so sorry for your loss.
i haven’t met or read a post from one gun nut who doesn’t believe they are not a responsible gun owner, yet all the stats prove otherwise. You would think that someone who believes they are a responsible owner would welcome stricter gun laws but they don’t - they believe there should be fewer laws. They care more about their guns and being able to buy a gun whenever the mood strikes, then people’s lives.
I am a very responsible driver. I don’t speed, I come to a full stop at stop signs. I don’t try to beat a light and I never drive if I’ve had something to drink. I’ve only had one accident in my life and it wasn’t my fault. But I make sure I have the best auto insurance policy because I am not infallible.
Even if you’re not a gun owner, things can happen at your house. I was cleaning up and found D’s boyfriend’s gun on a chair, a rolling desk chair, in her room! I didn’t even know he had a gun. He though it was safe because it was unloaded, but the clip was right there and any industrious kid would be able to figure out how to load it in about 3 seconds.
He’s a legal and licensed gun owner. No mental illness, substance abuse, or criminal past. JUST AN APPALLING LACK OF IMAGINATION WHEN IT COMES TO DISASTER.
Maybe, just maybe, a required safety class would have told him not to store his gun that way. But there are no required classes.
Hugs to you, intparent. Pediatric data has long shown that having a gun in the house increases risk of both accidental shootings to those who live in the house and increased risk of suicide if there is a teen boy in the house.
We were trained to ask about guns in houses where children play and then shackled by the NRA and other gun lobby groups that that would be an invasion of privacy and so cannot ask those things now. Madness.
I remember during my residency in Cincinnati taking care of a four year old boy who’d been shot in the head by his cousin. The cousin’s family brought the gun from Florida for a visit to Cinti bc they’d heard that “Cincinnati was dangerous”. Cruel irony. I remember looking at this pink stuff sliding down the metal frame of the gurney and realizing it was brain matter.
Let’s look at this:
Drug and alcohol abuse
Lack of education
Mental illness
Criminal history
Gun ownership
Remove any one of those and leave the others standing, and gun ownership is still the one factor that, if removed from the list, will have the greatest impact for minimizing the kinds of events we are talking about. Remove any of them except gun ownership and you still have a disaster waiting to happen along the lines of mass shooting that happened this week (and all the previous weeks). Perhaps the only one variable that anywhere reaches what guns can do is driving under the influence, but again, driving requires a license/insurance, etc. - and the regulations have adjusted over the years as new studies who what protects the greatest number of people (i.e. seat belts, air bags).
I am so sorry, @intparent.
BTW… so sorry @inparent - I didn’t mean to ignore your loss in my post #247; even though it was years ago, I’m sure it will always haunt you.
I’m so sorry for your loss, intparent. Thank you also for introducing some reality to an otherwise theoretical discussion.
That is tragic, jaylynn. What happened with that stupid STUPID law being enacted in FL telling Drs they couldn’t inquire about whether there were guns in the house? http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/doctors-cant-ask-about-guns/375566/ This same state that allows guns to be fired on residential property and backyard shooting ranges, and the Stand your ground law. Frightening.
The law forbidding pediatricians asking about guns in the home? That’s federal. Same with the laws forbidding any federally funded research on gun violence (or they might just forbid certain agencies like the CDC doing research on gun violence). Those are federal laws. Thanks NRA.
Remove just one? LOL
It’s pretty clear we’ve come to the useful end of this.
Sure. If you outlaw framing hammers and collect all of the existing examples, that would do quite a bit to curb “framing hammer violence”.
Unfortunately, that would do nothing for “violence”.
We are not at a “useful” end of this at all. We are not at the end… we are mired in people making excuses about why they should not have any changes, inconveniences, or restrictions on their purchase and ownership of a dangerous weapon.
We’ve come to the useful end, because defenders of gun ownership in this country will not admit any truth to any logical argument, including the obviously devastating one that other countries not so different from the United States have taken effective action.
My sad conclusion is that the only way we’ll ever see any additional gun restrictions in this country would be if a lot of black people began to open carry where that is lawful.
Cardinal Fang, there was a federal injunction at one point, but that stupid Stupid law (the “privacy if firearm owners” law) was a FL law http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/doctors-cant-ask-about-guns/375566/
That’s what the Black Panthers did way back in the 60s. Didn’t help then.
I’m sorry for your loss, intparent, even though it was years ago. I know I will hurt over my nephew’s loss for a long, long time. 
My DH came home from work Monday to say that a coworker (younger guy with wife) shot himself in the head at work. Whatever he may have done at home if he had been having suicidal thoughts is hard to say, but it would have been harder to do on a impulse and he certainly wouldn’t have carried it out at work without the gun. People rarely survive or are talked down from suicide attempts made with a fire arm. We don’t get much touching video of heroic police officers hugging people who’ve been talked or pulled back from the brink and given a second chance in those cases.