Wrong. Jumping from a height or walking in front of a train are suicide methods that are just as successful as a shot from a handgun. It’s what people do in Europe and Asia, in countries where the suicide rate is higher than it is in the US.
The “government” already knows about all of my guns. I had to list make, model, and serial number on a document in order to adopt our son 2 years ago.
Every firearm I own (except one, which I will describe later) is stored, unloaded, in a locked firearm safe in a locked room. All ammunition is also locked in a separate safe in that same locked room. This also includes air rifles.
The one exception is a handgun which is stored, loaded, in a small biometric safe. If your fingerprints don’t match mine (or my wife’s) you don’t have access to that weapon.
If you come to my house and want to shoot targets or go hunting, I will inquire about your training and familiarity with firearms (hunter safety, CCW, etc.) I’ll remind you about the 4 rules of firearm safety, I’ll hand you an unloaded weapon with the action open so that you can verify it is unloaded and not ready to fire. If we’re hunting, I will inform you that if you accidentally shoot my dog, I will shoot you in the ankle. (okay, I probably won’t, but it helps to remind people about keeping their field of fire away from the hound). If you’ve had even one beer, we will not go hunting or target shooting, we can try tomorrow when I know you’re clear headed.
I don’t know how much more responsible I could be about firearm safety, and the thing is, everyone else that I know with guns follow most of these same rules! Anti-gun advocates like to picture us as drunken louts firing our machine guns wildly into the air while drooling tobacco juice, but it just ain’t so.
One of the reasons I am so careful is that I know all about kids with guns, when I was 12 I shot our family’s television with a pistol that I thought had an empty chamber. My parents kept the pistol in a box on a high shelf, kept the magazine and the ammunition in separate locations, but I found all three spots and put them all together. I could just as easily have accidentally shot another person or myself. My kids will never have the opportunity to handle firearms unsupervised.
August West, I believe every single word that you posted, and I know quite a few people with the same sense of responsibilty when it comes to their weapons. Having said that, however, I also know(and grew up amongst) hunters who purchase their 24-packs even before they pick up a fresh supply of ammo for their weekend of hunting. It’s not a black or white situation when it comes to firearm responsibility and safety, and I’d like to see a compromise that protects the rights of people like you while agressively working against the antics of others that pose a danger to themselves and others.
Czarcasm, I think one of the problems in these discussions is the tendency of folks like filmore to say ridiculous things, like
[QUOTE=filmore]
The problem is that the irrational gun owners outnumber the rational ones by 100 to 1.
[/QUOTE]
People who actually know gun owners know that these numbers are backwards. I don’t know of any reliable numbers on how many people in the US own guns. I found a survey that says that 35% live in households with guns. That would be about 100 million people in households with guns. Even if every one of the 4 million members of the NRA is a foaming at the mouth gun nut, which they are not, that would still suggest that most gun owners are not in that camp.
I spent the first 45 years of my life in Baltimore, MD, and very few of the people I knew owned guns. In 2000 I moved to a little city in southern Ohio, and now almost everyone I know owns guns. Every time any of these people has shown me one of their guns, they have carefully gone through the drill of making sure there was no ammunition in the gun, made sure I knew how to behave with a gun in my hand before handing it to me.
Of course, living in a place where hunting and gun ownership are much more prevalent than where I grew up, I have met or otherwise been exposed to people who are paranoid about the government confiscating guns. I have heard comments about burying guns in the back yard. I obviously had not encountered the story in the OP before, but I have heard things like it. The closest I have encountered to the stereotypical gun nut was the person from whom I took the concealed carry permit course. This person lived in a remote area with two firing ranges on the property, with a quarter mile long driveway that included a bridge over a stream. This person told several stories about greeting people who had driven up to their house unexpectedly with shotgun in hand.
The rest of the gun owners I know are nothing like that. A lot of the conversations I have with these folks are about how to safely keep their guns: how to store the majority, and how to safely store their home-defense weapon in such a way that is safe and usefully accessible. These people care more about keeping their guns safe and secure than anyone else.
I think the real problem we have in most of these discussions is that people who actually own guns can see that the various proposals that are brought up that would make it less likely that someone like Adam Lanza could do what he did would be ineffective against nuts and burdensome on the majority. I think, based on my experience with non-nutty gun owners, that they are willing to accept some burdens, inconveniences, and delays if those things are likely to have the desired effect on gun availability for people like Lanza. The other side of that is that we have people who want to categorize me as a nut, because I want to keep a pistol where I can reach it from my bed. I don’t want some goofball who has never had a gun in his and or a bleeding meth freak on his front porch at 2:00 AM tell me that I need to keep it in a safe with a trigger lock on it.
I misspoke there. What I should have said is that of the vocal gun supporters, the ratio seems like 100 to 1. I’m sure most real gun owners are rational, but their voice is no where to be heard. Instead, the voices I hear are yelling about how their fellow patriots need to have their guns locked and loaded with a backpack full of food.
I don’t own a gun, but a friend came over to see if I could use some of my tools to fix something on his pistol. He just handed the gun over to me. I have no gun training and he didn’t ask me anything about my history with guns. I had no idea if it was loaded or even how to check. He was a nice, normal guy, but that was a very irresponsible thing to do.
So as a responsible gun owner, start thinking of ways to prevent Lanza from getting access to guns. Bonus points if you’re willing to think of ways that are effective even though they inconvenience you. If it was the law that guns in the house need to be locked up, he couldn’t have easily taken them to school. Yes, it may be impossible to prevent him from using a cutting torch to open the safe, but let’s at least make it so that he has to do more work than taking them off the mantle.
Your example about the meth head is also relevant. What if he breaks in when you’re not there and takes your handgun? I would support you having a gun within reach of your bed, but I would like it to be secured in some fashion to prevent a criminal to be able to easily walk off with it.
All gun owners think they’re responsible gun owners–until they screw up, or someone else screws up with their guns. Adam Lanza’s mother no doubt thought she was responsible by legally purchasing her firearms and training at the shooting range. And look what happened.
Even with all the precautions you take, you’re not infallible. It just takes one forgetful moment or one angry outburst. Threatening (jokingly?) to shoot someone in the ankle if he shoots your dog makes me wonder how responsible you really are. If your dog was accidentally shot, what’s to keep the shooter from thinking he’d better get you before you get him?
Here’s another guy who no doubt considered himself a responsible gun owner, until…
On the night of Dec. 19th, an Oregon man showed up at a movie theatre to ask if anyone had found a gun that he’d lost there the night before (that’s right, he lost a gun at a movie theatre). It turned out that someone had found it.
That morning, two junior high school boys attending a movie with their class found a fully-loaded semi-auto handgun, with a round in the chamber and the safety off, on a theatre seat. Resisting the mindless impulse implanted in their brains by violent video games and movies, they refrained from killing their classmates. Instead, they told a teacher who then informed the authorities. Police said the owner of the gun had a concealed handgun license, but he failed to notify them that he’d lost the weapon. His license has been revoked and the case forwarded to the district attorney.
Just another responsible gun owner, until he did something irresponsible.
How so? He already knew it was unloaded. You were the one who took it without knowing or being able to check if it is loaded. You are the irresponsible one. If you didn’t know how to check, ask. Common sense, anytime someone hands you a gun you check to see if it is loaded. Or don’t take it.
Specifically, in your presence they are to cycle the action, lock it open, visually inspect the chamber, make eye contact with you and then hand it over.
Huh? I’m not the responsible gun owner with training. He is. He should act as a responsible gun owner. In gun owner training, do they tell you to hand guns to anyone and assume they know what to do? No wonder there’s so many gun deaths. If the attitude of gun owners is that they can hand a gun to anyone and it’s up to that person to handle it properly, they don’t deserve their guns.
What about this responsible, trained DEA agent who accidentally brought a loaded gun to a school and shot himself in the foot during a demonstration. The kicker is, before he shoots himself he’s saying how he’s the only one professional enough to handle a gun.
All the while keeping it pointed away from anything and everything you don’t want to shoot.
You really should be pleased, as an Esox lucius that all of Sigene’s guns are now in the hands (fins?) of your brethren in an icy lake somewhere ;).
As to the rest of your post, I’m not going to shoot someone for accidentally shooting my dog. As I said, I say it so that people who may not be used to shooting over dogs have an extra reminder that they need to be aware of what their muzzle is covering. So far everyone I’ve hunted with has understood that I’m joking, not everything has to be 100% serious all the time.:rolleyes:
I dispute your definition of a “responsible gun owner”. Anyone who loses a firearm in “condition one” (round chambered and the safety off) is, by any reasonable definition, not a responsible gun owner. Anyone even carrying a firearm in condition one had better be actively trying to shoot something.
Yeah I forgot that bit once. Drill sergent reminded me about it. Repeatedly. Until I puked. Good times…
Huh. Okay, then. I, on the other hand, have known people (primarily from Wisconsin) from whom I would believe the story at absolute face value, and I’d walk away from the conversation thinking “thank god he doesn’t have any guns any more…”
YMMV, of course. No insult intended towards Wisconsin residents in general, just the ones I have known and been related to.
Okay, how about this approach: Given your responsibility as a member of the bar, what would you advise a client who asked you that question? :dubious:
We know spring is arriving when dozens of people start falling through the thawing ice in the lakes. We know it’s summer by all the planes crashing while going to or from the EAA airshow in Oshkosh.
And in the case of Otis Redding you got a twofer.
(think his strongbox of cash is down there with him?) (or guns?)
That may be the answer to gun shows.
Otis died in early December. I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance the plane didn’t have to crash through the ice. And Otis wasn’t playing at Oshkosh either. 
Possibly. But I don’t think that this should be done at a federal level. It’s already not permitted for a resident of one state to buy a gun in another state under federal law. (AFAIK – and I could be wrong; and given that a person may buy a firearm in another state if the transfer takes place in the buyer’s own state through a dealer.) So if a state wishes to issue a ‘no waiting period permit’ that, like a CCW, vets the holder, then I don’t have a problem with that.
Should people be required to have a permit to buy a gun at a dealer? No.
I don’t think guns should be required to be registered. I’m not paranoid, but there are always politicians calling for confiscation. I did register my banned rifles in California back in the day, and they were not confiscated; but it’s too easy for someone to innocently miss a registration deadline and be SOL. (This happened to me. Fortunately, I was able to move the rifle out of the state when I found out that there had been another round of bannings – that I’d never heard about – and that I was a couple of years past the registration deadline.) Also, registration does not mean that authorities will return your gun if it should go missing. This also happened to me, and my little .22 was weeks away from destruction when my boneheaded roommate fessed up that he’d had it in his trunk and it had been confiscated. The LAPD made no effort to contact me, even though the pistol was registered with the DoJ.
So: Transfers through a dealer, no change. A ‘no waiting period permit’ where a background check is conducted prior to issue, or a CCW permit, would allow people like me to pursue our hobby without fears that we are a public menace. A permit to buy at gun shows? That’s more difficult. What works in L.A. or NYC will not necessarily work in Bumfuk, Wyoming.
There are no “responsible” gun owners. Only lucky ones. Keeping a firearm at home is an inherently dangerous thing to do.
Now, sometimes circumstances justify doing something dangerous to prevent something worse from happening. But we should stop creating a false dichotomy between good, responsible gun owners and bad, irresponsible ones. It would be like saying that good, responsible drivers don’t have to wear seat belts or obey speed limit laws because we can trust them to always act responsibly and not get into accidents.