My answer, to someone who would come up and ask me about this (inspired by another SDMB poster):
Nosy Neighbor: I’m sorry, but I really need to know - do you have guns in your house?
Me: Maybe. Do you moan out loud when you masturbate?
Nosy Neighbor: What the hell???
Me: I’m terribly sorry, I thought we were both supposed to be sticking our noses into each other’s business…
One could also insist that if they are so concerned about the presence of guns within their neighbor’s houses, that the questioner/concerned individual could take a proactive lead on the safety front by immediately erecting a tasteful sign up in their yard, stating:
But that would be unlikely to happen. I have never in my life seen a proponent of gun control/gun banning advertise that fact on their home. I cannot imagine why…
[sub]Yes, I’m being a bad and difficult girl tonight.[/sub]
Am I suddenly required to see the world through Kimstu’s eyes? Please. I’ve been in enough Gun Threads to know that some people tout Canada as “land of the gun-crime-free, thanks to our Gun Control”. Given the past rhetoric that has been posted in such debates, I think my assumption has a strong basis in experience.
I don’t know why you’ve suddenly chosen to increase your Stubborness Level a hundredfold recently. If Barbarian didn’t mean to compare guns to cars, he can trot along and respond to my request for clarification. Yeesh.
I was simply pointing out that guns in Canada must now be registered.
Are they allowed in public? Well, you can hunt with them in appropriate areas, fire them on shooting ranges, and I’m not really sure where else they’re allowed. I know it’s a regular thing on Vancouver Island to get drunk on New Year’s eve then go outside and fire your gun into the ground and try not to shoot your toes off. I don’t know how legal that is, though.
Is Canada the gun-crime-free land? Well, there are estimates that 3 million firearms are in the country, concentrated in rural areas. (Our pop. is roughly 30 million, for comparison purposes.)
Crimes with guns are very rare. Here in the Vancouver area (1.5 million people), since Friday the 6th, there have been 2 drive-by shootings (the same house both times, strangely), one man shot in the head of his driveway (and then he walked out of hospital), and one man shot in the leg at work.
As a news producer, I can tell you this in incredibly high-- the far end of the bell curve. Normally there are four shooting incidents in 60 days-- not 4.
The general sentiment in favour of gun registration is to keep cops and family members safe. It’s hoped that by knowing if a household contains a gun, cops will be better prepared should they need to enter that home, and (more importantly) in the case of domestic disputes, reaction from cops and social service agencies will be quicker.
Does that make sense?
Ah, thank you for the clarification. I was really puzzled as to why you even mentioned cars in the first place… (which is what prompted me to believe there was to be some sort of comparison).
SPOOFE: I don’t know why you’ve suddenly chosen to increase your Stubborness Level a hundredfold recently.
Nope, this is operating at normal levels, as people like december and Weird_Al_Einstein will tell you. 
Sorry, haven’t been around. The show I recall was high school students, but unable to find a cite, I will withdraw my comments…
However, many of you guys are depending on your kids to know not to touch guns (and I don’t know about you, but I did dumb stuff my parents told me not to when I was a kid, and I was a pretty good kid), your gunshy neighbor’s kids knowing not to touch guns, and their friend Billy who hasn’t been given any gun safety other than what he gets from movies and t.v. I can give my kids all the gun saftey available, teach them the proper use of weapons and not to touch them at all, and I can have obiedient children who always do what I tell them to. I can keep my guns locked up - unloaded. But that doesn’t mean someone else’s kid won’t shoot them with someone else’s gun.
Now, I - personally - don’t stay awake at nights worrying about this - the chances that my kids will be accidentally shot are darn slim. I worry more about an accident on the swingset, a car accident, or that my kids will find God or become politicans. But parents obsess about strange things - its part of being a parent. And lots of parents obsess about guns.
Does she have a right to know. No - tell her it isn’t any of her business. Does she have a right to ask - absolutely. Should she have been considerably more polite than she was - yep! Should gun owners (and non-gun owners) have a polite way to say “MYOB” if someone asks you the same questions - yep! Plan on someone asking you this question - and think about how you want to answer it. Smart-assed answers aren’t very neighborly.
Neither is demanding that someone give you personal information.
Now, you’re comparing me to December and Weird_Al_Einstein, Kimstu?!? Foresooth, knave, I shall meet thee in the Pit!!!
(:D)
Ahhhh, Kimstu, Kimstu…how do I love the style of “argument” exhibited in the above statement…let me count the ways…
…
Well, that didn’t take long. First, Kimstu, you must know that this is not what I was arguing in that thread. How could you not? It is in fact as close as you can get to the exact opposite of what I was saying.
Second, I find it just fascinating that you would go and characterize our exchange as “a bellyfull of…ridiculousness” and not give people a link to it so that the could go see for themselves whose arguments were “ridiculous”, by a “bellyful” or whatever other amount, if they were so inclined.
Why would you refrain from doing this? Just couldn’t be bothered? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was because I cleaned your clock, polished it up, and set it on my mantelpiece.
In any case, the thread is here, for those who would like to judge this for themselves, although my exchange with Kimstu didn’t begin in earnest until the second page. Be advised, it is quite long and does meander at points.
:rolleyes: Yesssss…if I don’t agree with you, I am being “stubborn”; if you don’t agree with me then…what? Not being stubborn, no…I am sure you are…ummmm…“making a principled stand” or something like that.
Abridged from Potomac News (a local Virginia paper):
“WOODBRIDGE — An 18-year-old Woodbridge man was fatally shot Monday afternoon by his 15-year-old friend while “playing around” with a gun, Prince William police said.”
The 18 year old and two friends, ages 15 and 17, had gathered at one of the teen-agers’ homes. Police, who were called to the home shortly after 1 p.m., said the teen-agers, all from Woodbridge, were playing with a 9 mm pistol in an upstairs bedroom when it fired and shot the 18 year old in the face.
“They were just a bunch of friends playing around,” Mangan said. “The 15-year-old was handling the gun and it went off,” he said.
During an interview with police, the boys said they had several other guns in their possession and a search of their homes uncovered four other firearms. They were keeping a stash, Mangan said, although it is still not known where the teen-agers got the guns.
Mangan said the mother of one of the boys was in the house at the time of the shooting.
“They were all pretty devastated,” he said. “None of [the parents] knew they had these guns.”
The paper also noted that last year a child was shot and killed examining a gun with his brother in this same community.
Can parents really protect their children? Should they try? I hate to think of what these parents will be going through now that they know what questions they should have been asking and precautions they should have taken.
Jois
I can’t add anything more profound and witty towards the OP than others have; suffice to say, I might have been rather snippy if she’d come to my door; or I may have tried to wierd her out with “a few rifles; start running and we’ll see how good they really are”.
Uhm…do we really wanna start another GCD while one is currently underway?
Dangerosa: I think the program that you are referring to was a piece on either Dateline or 48 Hours concerning the NRA’s Eddie Eagle Program.
Note that the kids in that room with the inactivated gun were not instructed by a certified Eddie Eagle instructor, but by a staffer who had just read some of the Eddie Eagle program materials.
Jois: of course we can, and we should always try to the best of our abilities. But I don’t think that the parents in the article you cited were necessarily deficient just from the information in the article. Too little info to draw any meaningful conclusions.
Was this a good, stable family?
Were the kids into drugs, and concealing it from their parents?
Any prior history of trouble with the law?
Domestic violence?
Child abuse?
Recent downturn of grades?
Recent incidents of truancy?
The “where did they get the guns” question is one that the police are (or were) probably applying to them. Rigorously.
My father owned plenty of guns; growing up in S. Illinois, it was fairly prevalent. But we (us kids; cousins and siblings) had firearm safety drilled into us. Not lectured, in a kindly dispassionate manner.
Drilled.
I had plenty of opportunities as a kid to lay hands to my father’s guns, and never touched 'em. I knew that if I did, my parents would know, somehow, and turn into the “Avenging, Smiting Left-and-Right-Hands-of-GOD” and pull a WWF-quality tag-team smackdown upon my little ass, in front of siblings and maybe cousins, to “set an example”.
Okay, maybe not that bad. But it wouldn’t be any good, I’m here to say.
Firearms, and access to them, were a rite-of-passage to adulthood in our family, by inclusion in family hunting trips and trips to the firing range, and being allowed to hang around adults “talking guns, hunting, camping…” and all the stuff adults hang around and talk about. Otherwise, you were sort of dismissed fondly as a “child” and sent to play with “the other children.”
So yes, it is possible for involved parents to educate their kids about the perils of irresponsible handling of firearms. And they don’t even have to own guns to do so.