Sorry about that! Worked for me…
I’m not really arguing. I’m stating an actual fact that getting kids to memorize “Stop, don’t touch. Run away and tell a grown-up.” is a far worse option than the large variety of safe storage methods in existence. The NRA wants you to believe otherwise. Hell, the courses don’t even actually work.(PDF).
Cable locks, trigger locks, lock boxes and safes might have issues, but they at least have the potential to keep guns out of a kid’s hand. Are you arguing that Eddie Eagle is safer than trigger locks?
It’s a fundamentally different outlook on what guns are. ‘Fudds’ as you derogatorily call them view firearms as tools. They are necessary implements with which to procure food, protect crops and protect and/or euthanise livestock. They are more familiar with what guns actually do and what they don’t. As such, they are able to objectively see the need for regulation. Why would you want people to have unsafe tools? Why would you want people to have tools that don’t do the job correctly? It doesn’t make sense to them. To them, a gun is no different than a circular saw. Of course, people should have a right to own a circular saw, but should they have a right to own a circular saw attached to a drone that spins around at high speeds randomly ejecting saw blades? Doesn’t make much sense to them.
They see these suburban and urban gun owners running around through the woods pretending to be Rambo and to them it’s simply a dangerous situation. They’re using tools unfit for the job that provide the capability for serious injury to the user and the people around them and to them that’s simply stupidity. Of course they reason that the government has the right to regulate stupidity. If you’re taking a semi-automatic .223 with a 30 round clip into the woods to shoot a deer, you’re nuts. It’s an undersized round and it encourages sloppy and dangerous follow-up shots. It’s all nice and all that you think that you and your drinking buddies are going to use your ARs for when the gubmint comes for you, but in the real world, you’re putting other hunters in danger and you’re torturing the animals you’re hunting for the sake of what is essentially a useless right. We’re well-aware of what a bunch of people who rise against a modern military with small arms look like - corpses. So guns rights activists are making the woods more dangerous basically for the right to pretend to be soldiers on weekends at a target range. To us, that’s just dumb.
Once the FBI finds something besides legal membership dues, let’s talk.
I dont think you get the point, The EE program isn’t just for if you find a gun at home. It’s for kids who find a gun on the street, at a playground, the mall etc, perhaps where “safe storage” practices might not have been employed by a criminal ditching a potential murder weapon. In those cases, teaching kids not to touch guns they find sure seems prudent to me. It’s about the situation at the moment not whether the “adult” took care of the gun properly.
“Good” is in the eye of the beholder.
They are the front organization for the arms dealers of America, and their job is to use propaganda and political pressure to create a society where there are as many guns sold as humanly possible. How one feels about that determines whether or not the NRA does anything “good”. .
Where I end up. All my kids are educated in gun safety. The safe only works until the kids find themselves in a situation where they find or need to handle a gun.
In that case, gun safety is quite a bit more important than the safe.
If you don’t own guns your kids will likely never be trained in gun safety. Sometimes that may be detrimental, even unsafe.
I think both have their place. For example, someone who owns a pool would be wise to put a fence around it, but that only secures the one body of water. Their kids would also benefit from swimming lessons in case they encounter other bodies of water that are not secured. Eddie Eagle is like swimming lessons.
I completely agree with everything you said in this post.
The problem is that the NRA uses the education aspect as a tool to fight against laws regarding the safe storage aspect, i.e. the laws requiring a fence around the pool. Since the claim was that it was a “good”, I completely disagree that the Eddie Eagle program is a anything but a smokescreen.
You want the swimming lessons and the fence, awesome. You put together subpar swimming lessons as an excuse to fight fence regulations, not so good.
The Eddie Eagle programming that I’ve watched has clearly been developed with young children in mind. How many five year olds should we be training to properly shoot and otherwise handle guns?
Again, I’ve never said that gun education isn’t important for some people. I’m simply stating that it doesn’t eliminate the need for proper storage. The NRA seems to disagree with me.
Your post presumes that shooting animals is the only legitimate use of guns. I am unapologetic for saying that on mercifully rare occasions, shooting someone dead is the right thing to do- or more commonly being credibly prepared to shoot someone dead. Firearms are the best possible deterrent against violent attack, and the best possible way to stop violent attack if deterrence fails.
Actually you are not correct, many studies have shown that the best form of deterrence is the certainty of being apprehended, and you may be surprised to know that the length of sentence itself is not as great a deterrent as you might imagine.
Personal experience of criminals - which merely amounts to anecdotes on my part - seems to confirm this but please bear in mind that I have been in contact with hundreds of offenders. I have had exchanges with prisoners who have stated that they would change their offence of choice based upon the next potential conviction if caught again but its noteworthy that they do not state they are going to give up on offending.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Deterrence-in-Criminal-Justice.pdf
Given that the NRA sells gun safes, I’m thinking that this is at best an oversimplification. (NOTE: I’m not in any way endorsing that merchandise, just pointing out that the NRA sells it on one of their websites.)
Yes, the NRA is about making money. Any way it can.
Does the NRA post articles promoting the use of those safes over guns at the ready on/in bedstands and under pillows?
Genuine question: would it be fair to say that they sell gun safes to those who want them while opposing legislation that would **require **gun safes?
That is probably fair but it also aligns with most republican/libertarian ideals so it makes sense.
The requirement of anything that takes choice away is bad. Which is why the onus is on those who want such legislation to provide the evidence that taking away said choice/freedoms is a greater benefit to the general public.
So far, they haven’t convinced enough folks that it is.
Again, I’m saying that my problem is with the fact that they tout education while opposing storage laws, and in fact, use said education as the argument for why they fight the storage laws.
The key words I have an issue with are “Rather than…”
A truly good (and isn’t that the point of this thread?) NRA quote would be more like:
Yes, the NRA was in favor of what we would call Mild Gun control. They also support the environment.
I do want to point out that one reason for the NRA was getting surplus M1 rifles for their members (started out with Krags , then Springfields). The Garand today would be considered a “assault weapon” under some laws, and it is semi-auto. Any law that would ban the Garand would have had fierce fighting from the NRA.
But these AR15 clones with bayonet lugs, suppressors, etc would be a pass.
However, it also became clear to the members that the "gun grabbers’ wouldnt settle for anything but a comprehensive gun ban, such as in SF, DC, Chicago, where the attempt was made to ban all handguns. HCI strongly pushed for a ban on all handguns. "The Cincinnati Revolt’ was a reaction to this.
Well, not quite, the fudds want semi-auto shotguns and rifles, not to mention handguns. But yes, they scorn the “survivalist nuts” with arsenals of AR15s, AK$&, 100 round magazines and the like.
Yes, the "gun grabbers’ were their own worst enemy. More or less the created the modern NRA and other 2nd Ad groups. They forced SCOTUS to do Heller, where up to then more or less the court has passed on gun control laws.
Hardly. They got taken in by that women, just like the GOP did. They weren’t “funded” in any significant way:"…$2,512.85 in contributions and membership dues “from people associated with Russian addresses” or known Russian nationals living in the United States from 2015 to the present."
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/11/nra-russia-money-guns-516804
That’s like $500 a year. Peanuts.