Cannot legislate behavior of family unit.
If a family has a known suicidal person living with it, it is up to that family to be responsible in making sure that guns are not accessible to that specific person. Pick your safeguard, as there are several, which are effective, but even if legislated, they are all useless if not followed.
And now another at North Carolina Central College in Durham.
From today’s Responsible Gun Owner file:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dog-trigger-shoots-owner_562e98b3e4b00aa54a4ad667
I guess she’ll know better next time and not name a dog Trigger again.
Next dog will be called Biometric-Gun-Lock.
Evidence emerging that Oklahoma parade crash was deliberate, and driver has mental illness.
http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/1026/Oklahoma-parade-crash-appears-intentional-says-prosecutor
Ban cars.
Are the police sure it was an accident?
Yes, it is interesting how so many do not get how childish their arguments are when it comes to guns and accidents. I wonder how many of their families could pass the following test.
From the Annals of Responsible Drivers file:
The pertinent question is how many people who reflexively hate guns have relatives just like this who they never take the keys away, never turn in after being the cause of an accident that no one saw, and thus these stupid drivers never get banned from driving cars? I bet a lot of anti-gun people are living in this glass house. But, these same people cannot understand an accident with a gun and need to label such as blatantly irresponsible. No wonder the anti-gun are losing the argument big time.
You can bet all you want, but unless you have actual evidence backing up your claim, I can alternatively conjecture that those who are risk-averse by their very nature–e.g., people who don’t drive and drink and always wear seatbelts–are a lot less likely to keep a gun in their home and MORE likely to tell a family member it’s time to hand over the car keys.
You can’t eliminate all risk, but there’s much that can be done to reduce it, whether you’re talking about death by car accidents or guns.
So now any argument between two people and one uses a gun, possibly to defend himself, is now reflexively a bad or criminal use of a gun? This is silliness worthy of middle school.
No details are known, yet it is assumed the gun was used irresponsibly and is a problem. Could also be self-defense, and the gun use could have been totally legitimate.
Could also easily be drug deal gone bad - drug dealers and thugs and the like deserve what they get in my book and anyway no gun law would stop them from getting a gun. The only thing gun laws could do is change how they acquire the gun.
It turns out that it’s difficult to stop someone from driving or get someone banned from driving, even if that person is your elderly parent, and even if you are convinced they are an unsafe driver. This is a subject that is discussed, with not a small amount of anguish, in the Parents Helping Parents thread, over and over. Glad to hear that you are in favor of getting unsafe drivers off the road, @awcntdb.
On the other hand, it is legal everywhere for doctors to talk to their patients about possible losses of driving skills over the years, and about whether the patient should stop driving. It’s legal for a pediatrician to talk to parents of patients about pool safety, and about child safety locks on cabinets. In many areas it is ILLEGAL for a pediatrician to talk to parents about securing their guns.
I knew those against gun control would bring up what happened in Oklahoma. You’re right, automobiles in the wrong hands are weapons and can cause mass casualties. This is why we require licensing, including training. This is why you have to renew your license at various intervals, because of the dangers involved. This is also why we ban certain types of vehicles from the road and require extensive safety features on the vehicles that are licenced. This is also why every vehicle on the road must be registered to a person, and there’s insurance required.
Guns will never be banned in this country. Never. However, why can we not require those who own guns to get extensive training? Why can we not make them less likely to accidentally shoot someone? Why can we not require EVERY gun sale to be traced? Why can we not require insurance?
And the CDC is free to study and publish information on auto-related injuries and recommend specific steps to reduce those, auto manufacturers are not protected from liability lawsuits, and we require drivers to carry liability insurance. Items like breathalizers that must be used for cars to be driven are commonly used, yet guns coded to the owners hand are an anathema to too many gun owners – so many that gun shop owners who try to sell them are threatened and cowed into dropping the products.
The issue I am pointing out is this silliness that gun owners are somehow more irresponsible, which is a stereotypical meme on this thread.
I am totally aware of the difficulty you mention. That is why there are millions of drunk drivers driving today who have multiple DUI offenses. And why there are millions of drunk drivers whose family members know who they are and know that they should not be driving, but never ask for serious legislation to stop them from driving - where is that clarion call? (As a side note, medically, the larger problems the number of people who are on medications who should not be driving, and their family members know they should not be driving, yet they drive and cause accidents all the time.)
More on point, you do not see gun owners running around stereotypically calling these families names and calling them irresponsible and the like and blaming the families for the drunk driving deaths that their relatives cause.
This is why it is stupid and childish to be listing gun accidents as irresponsible, as if all other accidents are somehow caused by responsible people. It is a dumb position to take because an examination of their lives, I bet would show high levels of errors AND thus accidents in other areas. Accidents happen and to keep naming gun accidents expressly irresponsible is nonsensical.
No wonder anti-gun people are losing the argument, as their lives probably could not stand up to similar unabashed name-calling if examined. But as they say, you know someone has lost the argument when hey have to name call and be snarky.
The difference is that we do a LOT as a society to try to stop drunk driving. But the gun owners and the NRA have cowed our legislators into doing NOTHING regarding gun violence. You seem to have NO suggestions for how to stop gun violence. I hear a lot of hand wringing about protecting your rights, and a lot of obfuscating by throwing up debunked studies – but you really have no actual interest in stopping gun violence.
Well, that depends on what you mean by “extensive”, and what you are trying to accomplish. I don’t recall all that much training before I could get my driver’s license, but I am also not sure how many people who hurt themselves or others do so out of ignorance - carelessness and a willingness to break rules is not easily trained out of people! Automobile drivers know to wear seatbelts and not exceed the speed limit or check their texts while driving and know not to use their vehicles to hurt people, but these rules are transgressed regularly. I am not trying to be flippant or dodge the issue, I am trying to understand what you think this “extensive training” will accomplish.
Also, from a strictly pragmatic viewpoint the right to bear arms is a Constitutional right, so there are limits on what you can require of someone to do before exercising that right.
How?
A valid question. Paranoia, mostly.
What do you think the insurance will cover and/or cost? Again, there are limits on how burdensome you can make the right to bear arms, and I am not sure how you can practically handle this issue, but it could certainly be explored.
Oh, the irony.
Touche
But car owners are not fighting tooth and nail to defeat any and all ways to make cars less dangerous. Car owners are not fighting seat belts, and air bags. Gun owners, on the other hand, via their lobbying group, are fighting every single way of making guns less dangerous.
Consider a loading indicator. Sometimes people shoot themselves or others because they didn’t realize their gun was loaded. If there was some obvious way that showed a gun was loaded, a loading indicator, some of those accidents would be prevented. But a loading indicator wouldn’t prevent any intended use of a gun. Nevertheless, the NRA will fight tooth and nail against requiring that simple safety measure. Same with a child trigger lock, although one could imagine that a child lock might prevent or make more difficult some intended gun uses.
In our state (IL), students are required six hours of driving time with an instructor, 30 hours of classroom time, and:
Let’s see the NRA demand these kinds of hours for someone wanting to purchase a gun.