Gun Safety ( was:Cold dead hands/Columbine)

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince
Winston)" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboy_mn at y...> wrote:
> 
> > Those three event simply do NOT spontaneously occur. Oh yes, I 
> > forgot to mention the most important part, the gun has to be
> > loaded. It must have amunnition in it, and that should never occur 
> > unless you are in a situation that actually requires that it be 
> > loaded; in the wood, on the rifle range, in defense of your life, 
> > etc....

> Catlady:
> 
> I hope very much that I don't irritate the gun-lovers, but it has 
> often occured to me that the advised safety practise of keeping the 
> unloaded gun locked in one drawer and the ammunition locked in a 
> different drawer kind of interferes with the idea of keeping a gun at 
> home for self-defense from people who break into the home during 
> the night. 
> ...edited...


bboy_mn:
In the loaded or unloaded debate, you have to weigh each situation. If
I lived alone in a house that was rarely visited by children or teens,
and on the occassion they were they, they were never unsupervised, nor
would they have any occassion to be in my private space, I might
consider keeping a loaded gun.

On the other hand if you are a parent with kids living in the house,
and you don't lock these things up separately, the risk of accident
becomes far greater than the risk of home intrusion. 

Everything in life is a judgement call. Even whether you choose to
access the gun is a judgement call. Make the wrong judgement and you
are in essence handing your gun to your attacker.

Personally, I am more an advocate of keeping a gun locked in the same
drawer as the ammo, but not loaded. It takes less than 10 seconds
(nore like 5) to load an automatic or a revolver with a speed clip. It
takes probably less that 20 seconds to manually load a revolver. 

The absolute greatest risk of injuries to kids is if a kid other than
your own comes into the house and finds the gun, or perhaps as an
error in judgement, your kid shows the neighbor kid the gun. Then a
struggle breaks out over who get to hold the gun, etc.... Next thing
you know, someone is hurt.

That very think happen in Minneapolis a few years back. A kid showed
his best, his very best nearly a brother, friend his fathers gun. The
best friend wanted to hold it, which the kid hadn't counted on; kids
can be so impulsive. They kid tried to keep the gun away for his
friend and in  the struggle the gun went off.

What went wrong?
1.) the gun should have never been loaded.
2.) the drawer should have been locked.
3.) the kid should have been taught that, in that situation, rather
than stuggle, he should immediately have gone for adult help. Also, a
very loud, "I'M GOING TO TELL!" as he ran out the door would have gone
a long ways toward getting his friend to put down the gun. Better to
get in trouble for playing with dad's gun than to have a best friend dead.

The main trouble is there are too many people out there with
Rambo/cowboys TV/movie attitudes toward guns. No one has wacked them
on the head with a two-by-four and pointed out the difference between
fiction and reality. In fiction, the dead men get to go home to their
families at the end of the day.

Sorry, guess I'm still ranting.

For the record, I love to shoot, but really have never been very big
on hunting. When ever I think of hunting, I picture myself out in the
middle of the woods with a dead deer, and I ask myself, what on earth
do I need with a dead deer? Although, I do support hunting because we
have take so much of the wild life habitat for ourselves that what is
left won't sustain the potential size of a herd left unchecked. So, we
either let the game animals go from near extinction to excess beyond
the habitat capability and back to near extinctin again, or try to
manage the a functional level. Besides it's mostly hunters who pay for
the preservation and expansion of wildlife habitat.

In addition, if anyone would like to start arguing the Constitutional
issues related to guns, I'm primed and ready for that. Sadly, very few
people understand the Bill of Right in even the most basic and
fundimental way.

bboy_mn