Keep deadly force in the house for fear on the dreaded “home invasion”. And people complain about letting gay peope raise kids. Its better for them to be raised by paranoids?
You feel justified in comparing a significant segment of American gun-owners with the preeminent Islamic terrorist organization? Or would you say that bit of rhetoric is just a bit exaggerated as well as rather steeply slanted?
Why, yes, I do, with respect to the first, and no, with respect to the second. Read the quotes in this post, which is just the tip of the iceberg about what the NRA has been doing.
And what are we supposed to infer from a phrase like “a significant segment of American gun-owners”? The Washington Post estimates about 3 million members in the NRA, which is about 1.2% of the adult population aged 18 and over. Roughly the same as the total percentage of Muslim Americans in the general population. And there seems reason to believe that many of these NRA members are a lot more moderate than the zealots of the NRA leadership. Which is exactly the point I was making about the inordinate impact that this malignant organization has on societal values and the policies of gun regulation. By distorting public information it pits itself directly against the best interests of society.
Admittedly it’s hard to quantify exactly how much the NRA has exacerbated an existing sociological malady, but there’s certainly no problem quantifying the fact that number of gun deaths in the US compared to other first-world countries far exceeds – by orders of magnitude – all the deaths caused in America by all terrorist activities combined. And the NRA is front and center in this ongoing tragedy.
Absolutely! Gays are namby-pamby liberals who are likely to teach kids things like the arts and being nice to each other. The paranoids will teach kids to kick ass and how to use assault rifles to defend themselves against evil beer cans sitting on fence posts, which they can blow into smithereens, like Real Americans. Also, how they can use the same technique against their nation’s government, like Real Patriots™.
I would argue that the description of events that spawned this very thread was a distortion: the fact that a gun safe was under discussion was elided, for example.
Is that also a type of distortion that runs counter to the best interests of society?
Let me help you since you’ve apparently missed this 2 or 3 times…
quoting Rob Pincus
“Ensure is a strong word,” he said. “So I’m going to say we have an obligation to try to prevent unauthorized access.” He added that hidden, instead of locked or secured, is a perfectly appropriate way to secure a gun.
color mine.
Does that change your opinion at all?
Well, it depends on whose ox is being gored, Bricker. I thought you knew that.
I suppose this is the key quote from the article:
I’d say that if your kid lacks the curiosity to screw around with a safe that was placed in his own damn room, you have a parenting problem and your kid has a cognitive issue. *
I don’t see any evidence of a bright line between “Hiding a gun in the kid’s room” and “Hiding the gun elsewhere in the house.” Either way the kid is highly likely to get into it.
The article goes on to note that only 39% of gun-owning families, “keep their firearms locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
But, hey, presumably some keep their guns locked, unloaded but not separate from their ammo. A pro-consumer gun organization could devote some study to such practices.
I don’t think the OP was wildly off. I’m unconvinced by Bricker’s interpretation. I do think Bricker’s point was worthy of discussion though. Also, crosspost.
- (Probably.)
No, because it conflates two separate portions of the discussion. Hiding as opposed to locking is discussed with respect to stowing weapons around the home; in the kids’ room, only a gun safe is mentioned. It’s precisely that distinction that the reporting elides.
I’m not aware of any particular expertise the American Academy of Pediatrics has on the issue of home defense. I myself keep my firearms locked and unloaded but not separate from ammunition, and thus don’t follow their guidance. This decision is based on my analysis of what might be necessary in the case of a home invasion.
No offence taken. Like I said, the only explanation is that they are changelings. They didn’t get that good behavior and lack of curiosity from their supposed parents.
ETA: And my oldest spends a lot of time with “fairies.” rimshot
Personally, I find that to be a plausible position. But to replay my broken record, a rationalistic gun safety group would walk through the cost benefit, as well as providing guidance for characteristics that might vary by neighborhood and family.
The odds of home invasion are small, but I’d want to see evidence on the harm of keeping ammo locked up with the gun itself. If I owned a firearm that is. And if the evidence didn’t really exist, such a group could sponsor a study. Ignorance isn’t in anybody’s interest but the fear mongers.
PS: dropzone: You have a gun safe in the kid’s room? 
As it happens, I was a curious but well behaved kid, so I admit I might not have screwed around with a forbidden safe if it was in my parent’s room or attic. Or not too much anyway.
Let me see if I got this thread straight.
[ul][li]A paranoid/tout for the gun industry encourages families to have lots of guns hidden throughout their house, since home invasion is right up there with cancer, heart disease, and right-wing bloviation among America’s leading causes of death.[/li][li] Some of the guns should be hidden, not locked up, to speed access for when the evildoers show up. Keep those guns loaded for faster use. (The fact that kids explore around and may handle a loaded weapon is not a major concern: if kid blows his foot off, he’s exercising his Second Amendment right.)[/li][li] Among the guns hidden for quick access, the quickest of all should be in the kids’ room — that’s where the evildoers are headed.[/li][li] Although the kids’ rooms are where we need the quick-access guns the most, the quicker the better, to pay lip service to concerns of libtard groups like the AAP, said tout/paranoid mentions a gun safe in kid’s room. (Or perhaps three gun safes, if we have three kids each with own room?)[/li][li] (I assume the family in question are right-wing opponents of minimum wage — if the price of Big Macs are forced up by the libtards, where are they going to get the money for the dozen or so guns they need? … But nevermind about that.)[/li][/ul]
Is that a fair summary so far? 
I for one am thinking that whether the guns in the kids’ rooms are in safes is the least of this family’s problems, but let’s go on.
So amid the flood of gun-nut paranoia, Bricker seizes on the crumb tossed to sanity, the ambiguous mention of a gun safe amid the myriad of hiding places Joe the Gun Nut needs for quick access to guns for his home defense. “Conflates”? No, Bricker, it is you who conflates rational human society with an only-in-America spirit-sapping paranoia.
So forget the gun safe after all, hunh? The AAP are doubtless libtards anyway. Because Hillary. And because voter fraud.
Are you sure they haven’t simply cracked the safe and been smart enough not to say anything? I, one of my brothers, and the son of the other brother, have all been known to do that. We know about it because we all told once it was irrelevant.
They don’t claim they do. However, if this is the same snark coming out of the NRA claiming that they should mind their own damn business, it must be said that the members of a profession that is dedicated to the health and well-being of children rightfully considers it their business that they see far too many children that have been victimized by gun violence. They are rightfully concerned that a child in America is nine times more likely to be shot than in any other first-world nation on earth. It’s the same reason that the medical profession in general, which actively studies the epidemiology of gun violence and considers it a public health crisis, is no friend of the NRA.
This is counter intuitive to other health risks. When I hear the phrase I think of diseases, or medical conditions.
Apart from guns, does the Academy track and study other non-medical risks?
None of this post presents any topic for debate; it’s simply strawman.
Wolfpup links to the AMA. I’ll stick with the original cite, which was to the American Academy of Pediatrics. To answer your question, “Yes”. Here’s a webpage (c) AAP, that addresses pool safety. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/at-play/Pages/Swimming-Pool-Safety.aspx
I think it’s highly appropriate for them to issue such advisories. That doesn’t imply that they are the final authority on these matters though. Likewise for my hypothetical gun enthusiast organization. Nobody is the final authority. We know this because the advice of such bodies shifts over time. That’s normal science.
I’m claiming that a pro-science, rationalistic gun enthusiast organization could have special insight into gun safety issues. Such a group would concern itself more with protecting its membership’s health and safety than protecting a point of view. Such a group wouldn’t fear research and data gathering: they would welcome it.
Is drowning “non-medical”? Car accidents? Choking? Sexual abuse by a stranger or a family member? My pediatrician certainly spent time educating me on those things and she seemed to be following established guidelines from somewhere. Gun safety seems to me to fall well within the realm of things they normally deal with. They certainly deal with the aftermath.
Such a group wouldn’t have to be a “gun enthusiast organization” and maybe they shouldn’t be in order to be impartial – maybe they should be a science-based organization instead.
The interesting thing is that the CDC is just such an organization, and the NRA is solely responsible for silencing them and scuttling their research on gun violence. It seems almost impossible to overstate the insidious impact of the NRA – what sounds like outrageous hyperbole turns out to be literal truth:
The roots of the research ban go back to 1996, when the NRA accused the public health agency of lobbying for gun control. That year, a Republican congressman stripped $2.6 million from the CDC budget, the exact amount spent on gun research the previous year. Soon the funding was restored, but designated elsewhere, and wording was inserted into the CDC’s appropriations bill that, “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
The CDC interpreted this to mean it should avoid studying guns in any fashion.
“It basically was a shot across the bow by Congress on the part of the NRA,” said Mark Rosenberg, who was director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Control and Prevention when the ban went into effect. “All federally funded research was shut down.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-cdc-still-isnt-researching-gun-violence-despite-the-ban-being-lifted-two-years-ago/
When I say, “Pro-science”, I am alluding to NRA backed curbs on scientific research and data gathering by the CDC, at least in part.
Diversity aids science. We can see that in the case of gender diversity. Similarly, gun enthusiasts will ask different questions than those who aren’t gun owners would. A good example involves the AAP’s recommendation to store ammo separately from guns. It’s backed by research. But the 2005 paper I read today looks at gun storage practices separately but not in combination. I suspect that AAP bases its advisory on the best science available. But a pro-science gun enthusiast organization would look into the advantages and disadvantages of the Bricker gun storage strategy.
Again, existing gun research isn’t soft science or junk science. But it isn’t directed at the sort of depth that rationalistic gun enthusiasts would like.
2005 paper. Look carefully and you’ll see that the multivariate aspect is limited. Which is understandable as gun storage practices are presumably correlated: I doubt whether their sample size could address my deeper question. But my skim didn’t find any part of the paper where they even acknowledged this difficulty (though I very well may have missed it). http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=200330
I know. Shame on those doctors for insinuating that kids and guns don’t mix. They’ll lose their NRA cards for sure.