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+--- Thread: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others (/showthread.php?tid=161595)
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painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - Lemon Drop - 12-14-2013
From the American Academy of Pediatrics:
The absence of guns from children’s homes and communities is the most reliable and effective measure to prevent firearm-related injuries in children and adolescents.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1416
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - Spock - 12-14-2013
Doctors, what do they know. Only the NRA and their masters, the gun manufacturers, know what's best.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - Ombligo - 12-14-2013
As much as that makes logical sense, realistically it is not going to happen anytime soon. So it may be time to take a different tack that will give immediate reward.
The standard has been to demonize guns to children. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that telling a child to never do something without fully educating them is just going to fire up their imagination. Perhaps it is time to begin firearm education. Teach them the hows and whys of guns, allow them to fire a gun under safe supervision. Remove the mystique and I believe many accidents would be avoided.
Ys, adults should lock up their guns but too many do not and many never will. By teaching a child what a gun can do, I believe they will be less apt to play with one when found.
Gun education use to be the norm and the tragedies were far fewer. Will this stop every accident? of course not but neither has the fear lesson which has become the modern norm.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - Lemon Drop - 12-14-2013
I agree to a certain extent, but I think this misses the larger problem though that access to guns is the problem.
My own kids both know how to shoot rifles though neither was interested in it as a hobby, and both have NRA safety certificates from summer camp. We talked a good bit about gun safety when they were growing up but always with the realization that the best way to stay safe is to stay away from them, completely. They lost one grandparent to a handgun.
Guns are really not that difficult to operate, and they are easy to misuse, to say the least. A kid who is prone to suicide isn't going to stop because they had a gun safety class, they will avoid shooting themselves because they don't have access to a gun. Same for the kid who has criminal intent.
What I would prefer to see are very stiff and meaningful penalties for gun owners and/or parents when kids get their hands on guns. Only 20 states have such laws now. And the correlation between lax laws and gunshot deaths of children has been proven conclusively. Stricter laws, fewer deaths.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - Black - 12-14-2013
Ombligo wrote:
By teaching a child what a gun can do, I believe they will be less apt to play with one when found.
This reminds me of this old Monty Python skit...
Mr Wiggin Good morning, gentlemen. This is a twelve-story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The tenants arrive in the entrance hall here, and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort and past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these...
First City Gent Excuse me....
Mr Wiggin Hm?
First City Gent Did you say knives?
Mr Wiggin Rotating knives, yes.
Second City Gent Are you proposing to slaughter our tenants?
Mr Wiggin Does that not fit in with your plans?
First City Gent No, it does not. We asked for a simple block of flats.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - SteveG - 12-15-2013
If you have guns lying around, people, and especially kids, will use them. We have 300 million guns lying around.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - mattkime - 12-15-2013
>>Ys, adults should lock up their guns but too many do not and many never will.
welp, apparently we've simply accepted that we're going to live in a world of irresponsible gun owners.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - cbelt3 - 12-15-2013
If you own guns , secure them. If you have children , teach them safety , and secure them with at least TWO layers. It's really quite simple. Mine have trigger locks. Are in a safe . Ammo is in a lock box . Locked. In a safe.
Keys are in my desk at work.
For "home defense" I have dogs. A phone. And locks.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - Black - 12-15-2013
cbelt3 wrote:
If you own guns , secure them. If you have children , teach them safety , and secure them with at least TWO layers. It's really quite simple.
Apparently, it isn't.
Re: painfully obvious: how to keep children from shooting themselves and others - OWC Jamie - 12-15-2013
Black wrote:
[quote=cbelt3]
If you own guns , secure them. If you have children , teach them safety , and secure them with at least TWO layers. It's really quite simple.
Apparently, it isn't. Same with cars. We buckle kids in and use child approved car seats. At least most of us do.
Same with guns. Trigger locks and gun safes. Hopefully most do.
Or you can try to live in a fantasy world where there are no cars and guns and uneducated fools and drug and crime pushers.
You won't hear about those that successfully have cars and guns and no loss of life. The non-sensationalism doesn't sell Budweiser and push Geico.
Especially if you allow the press and liberal/conservative media do your thinking for you.