Why? I mean if there are no kids in the house, why does a gun owner have to check his gun every day to see if it is still here?
Well, Ok, I don’t know the actual motives. But I know the results- banning guns for law abiding gun owners, with nothing done for guns in the hands of criminals.
I didn’t change anything. I clearly stated they were in a safe in my previous post.
Of course the motives of others has to be impugned. Equating someone like me who has his unloaded arms secured in a safe in a secure dwelling to some schmuck that keeps a loaded weapon under his pillow for his children or thieves to get is insulting to me and arrogant of them.
Why? Explain.
So if someone owns 1 gun, keeps it unloaded in a quality locked safe, your saying they are required to also have a security system, alarms, cameras, dogs, etc to make sure that safe isn’t stolen while they are away at work?
And if it is stolen while they are away at work you would have them prosecuted because how dare they own a gun in the first place.
We were talking about the cabin you are away from for 6 months at a time. If your job takes you away from home for months at a time, yes, you should have a security system that alerts you if your gun is stolen while away. If not, then that was a pretty disingenuous case of goal post shifting.
I thought that this part of the thread, regarding the obligation of gun owners to keep their guns secure, arose out of a discussion of “gun owner insurance”. If so, my understanding of the proposal isn’t to make gun owners criminally liable if their gun is stolen and used to harm somebody. Rather, they’d be civilly liable - that is, they could be sued for the damages their gun inflicts.
This isn’t a suggestion to prosecute the gun owner. Obviously, the person who unlawfully used the weapon is subject to criminal penalty. Rather, the proposal is to allow the victims to also be able to sue the gun owner who allowed the gun to be used.
Thus, gun insurance. In the same way that an insurance company will represent you if you are in a car accident, in this case the insurance company would represent you if somebody seeks to hold you financially responsible for the impact your gun may have had.
As I see it, under such circumstances, keeping your gun in a safe or other secure location is akin to being a safe driver who was not at fault when somebody crashed into you - your insurance company would not find you to be at fault and would defend against any claim. Conversely, if you simply left your handgun on the seat of your convertible, your insurance company may pay out a settlement and then Jack up your rates.
You are aware that no system is 100% and there are professional burglars that are able to circumvent many systems and safes. They tend to hit a community several times then move on to another area.
Would you punish a gun owner that was victimized by such a thief? If my security system gets hacked and I get no notice of intrusion, would you have me prosecuted. And for what specific crime?
There is no crime. There is no mens rea.
But a law could be passed providing a cause of action to sue for civil liability. If that happens, being a victim of theft or having your security system hacked would clearly mitigate against any liability.
“Nothing is 100% safe therefore we shouldn’t take any steps to protect our guns at all” isn’t a very reasonable position.
I would punish a homeowner with no fence around his pool when the neighborhood kid falls in and drowns. I would not punish a homeowner with a sufficiently high fence if the local pole vaulting champion leaps over his fence and drowns. Same logic here.
No, Babale posted about prosecuting such a person.
Depending on the severity of the violation, it could be criminal or civil.
What is not reasonable are your previous assertions that a gun owner be prosecuted if their gun is stolen even if it was secured in a safe.
Yeah, but you guys are talking past each other. Criminally negligent conduct is plainly different than having a home that is broken into, or a security system that is hacked. I simply do not agree that a person would be considered criminally negligent, or even civilly liable, if their nominally secure cabin in the woods was raided while they were away. Even if they didn’t check the cabin for a few months - that’s not unreasonable behavior.
I assume you aren’t intentionally misrepresenting what I said but that you just forgot instead, so here’s a reminder. I said a gun owner should be prosecuted if their gun is stolen and used in a crime from a safe located in a cabin they hadn’t been to in 6 months whose status they are completely blind to.
Being unaware of the status of your deadly weapon for months at a time is entirely unreasonable.
Their own cite includes talk of taking reasonable care. Securing a weapon in a safe is certainly taking reasonable care. No need to be checking on it every other day. That’s why people have safes. So they can secure things in it and not worry about it.
But Babale does not like people owning guns, legally or otherwise. So nothing they post here about this issue is going to be reasonable.
Tens of thousands of folks own second homes and cabins up north. Most of them leave firearms in them for months at a time. And they do know their status: secured in a strong box or safe.
Yes, that’s the current situation. The current situation is also that there are millions of illegal firearms in the US and way, way more gun deaths than other developed nations.
Until they get to their cabin and learn they were wrong for the last 6 months.