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bdickens wrote:

Liko81 wrote:You can teach and train all you want; the problem is complacency. As people become used to handling their firearms, they lose a bit of the healthy respect they have as new gun owners. After a year, or 5 or even 10, without a negligent discharge, people say "I'm safe with a handgun, I know what to do and I can relax on the four rules". This is when NDs happen. There is very little that can be done about it; it's human nature. All that can be done is to let the accidents happen and pray to your chosen deity that nobody gets hurt. Alternately, if two responsible gun owners live together, they have the opportunity to catch each other violating the rules and keep each other honest, but in the majority of cases there's one gun owner and either an S.O. who simply tolerates them, or nobody else around.

Well, let's just eliminate training then. Since it's apparently such a waste of time and all.

I didn't say that; there's a difference between complacency and ignorance. Not knowing what's safe and unsafe is very different from not caring either way. Ignorance is not bliss; people who are interested in firearms generally want to know if they're doing it right, from the 4 rules to shooting technique to safe storage. Education is the cure for ignorance; you can be taught "this is safe, this is unsafe" and why, without having to go through the school of hard knocks. However, once you graduate from the class, nobody can force you to use that knowledge except you, and sadly, many people end up violently reinforcing their education.

Pinkycatcher wrote:Liko, the problem with your argument is that a home and a car are not included in the bill of rights so those "rights" can be infringed, but unlike those the right to own arms cannot be infringed, so it can be argued that you can't infringe on it (mind-blowing right?) and the Heller decision also said you can't force someone to keep a gun lock and/or disassembled in their home. Now you probably can force someone to sell a gun lock with a gun (which in my opinion isn't a bad idea, I sometimes use a lock for my little 10/22 if I'm going to a range and if I'm moving it)

Wrong; the right to own property, the right to free travel and the right of personal liberty (free choice) are NATURAL rights; the Framers didn't bother to enumerate them because they didn't think they had to; people understood as a matter of course that those were rights. I have the right to own property, and because I have the right to choose what property to own, I have the right NOT to own property. That applies to any tangible good or anything else of value. I CAN be forced to assume a cost over and above the cost of the property, in part by requiring that additional items be bought (i.e. insurance on your car). When I buy a new gun, it comes with a trigger lock. It's not itemized on the receipt, but you better believe the gun manufacturers bumped up the price a few bucks to pay for them and that the cost is passed to you. However, there is nothing that can be owned that would logically require the purchase of a gun. I don't need to have a gun, or to buy one at the same time or immediately after, buying any other tangible good. I have the RIGHT to, but I also have the right NOT to.

stroo wrote:I think we ought to make it a mandatory part of the 6th grade curriculm in every school. Then we also ought to mandate that everyone needs to have at least one gun in their house for home defense.

No. Just as people have the right to keep and bear arms, they also have the right NOT to keep and bear arms. The first drafts of the 2A included a "conscientious objector" clause stating that no person scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to do so. It's the same as any other property; you cannot force me to own a boat, or a car, or a house. You might encourage same by making them easy to own, and you might require that if you own one thing you must own something else (insurance for your car, smoke detectors for your home, and yes, a lock for your gun) but you cannot compel me to own a smoke detector if I live in the back of my station wagon. You cannot force me to buy liability insurance for a car I've never owned. And you cannot force me by law to own a gun.

Now, when I was an elementary school student in Austin, we had a police officer come around one day to give a lecture on firearms safety. At that age, the safest rules are "stop, don't touch, leave the area, tell an adult". However, he had an interesting demonstration; he armed a rat trap and gave it to a student, who passed it around from there. I'll tell you, I have never seen, before or since, such a quiet or respectful group of kids as when they were passing that rat trap around. And it never snapped, not once, till the officer took it back, and set it off himself intentionally by whacking it with his speech notes. The idea, of course, is that like a gun, a rat trap is dangerous, but it has to be set off, and if you handle it carefully it is as safe as if unarmed. Those kinds of lectures do some good; "stop, don't touch, leave the area, tell an adult" keeps kids from hurting themselves or others, but it also instills fear. Prefacing that with a demonstration that an inanimate object can only hurt someone who is careless with it removes a great deal of that fear and replaces it with respect.

You can teach and train all you want; the problem is complacency. As people become used to handling their firearms, they lose a bit of the healthy respect they have as new gun owners. After a year, or 5 or even 10, without a negligent discharge, people say "I'm safe with a handgun, I know what to do and I can relax on the four rules". This is when NDs happen. There is very little that can be done about it; it's human nature. All that can be done is to let the accidents happen and pray to your chosen deity that nobody gets hurt. Alternately, if two responsible gun owners live together, they have the opportunity to catch each other violating the rules and keep each other honest, but in the majority of cases there's one gun owner and either an S.O. who simply tolerates them, or nobody else around.