by Alan M. Gottlieb
The Child Safety Issue: Key to Preserving Gun Rights
For the gun rights movement, when it comes to "child safety and
guns" legislation the easiest thing to do is nothing, or oppose it
because our enemies are for it. But to do so would be wrong.
Now that I got your attention, keep reading.
If you ignore the child safety issue nd allow our opponents to
have th4e moral high ground in this debate, it surely will aid and abet
them in their question for their ultimate goal of banning our guns.
Every time an incident where a child gets his or hand on a loaded
gun and a tragedy happens, your guns and my guns become the target. The
blame should be put on the irresponsible individual and not on us. By
taking this position we do not allow all gunowners to be painted by the
same broad brush.
Sure we could argue that the only thing that works is education.
And that programs like the NRA's Eddie the Eagle are great. But is that
all we could or should do?
I don't think so. And despite my more than 25 years of being on
the front line defending our right to keep and bear arms against every
and all attacks, some gunowners think that my supporting any form of
child safety legislation with respect to firearms is a sellout.
They remind me of the title of a book written by one of my
favorite authors, Ross Thomas, THE FOOLS IN TOWN ARE ON OUR SIDE. If you
haven't read it, you should.
We need to out-think our opponents and control the agenda and
not give them issue after issue to paint us into an isolated corner with.
Polls and focus groups show that over 8 our of every 10 Americans
support almost any kind of legislation that would keep loaded guns out of
the hands of children. That figure included 7 out of 10 gunowners.
With numbers like that, it is like handing political dynamite to
the gun-grabbers, if we don't control the playing field and become
pro-active. Here's why.
No argument for or against any piece of legislation resonates as
strongly with the American public as those dealing with the accidental
death of a child. For this reason, the emotionally evocative issue of
child safety has become the true court of public opinion in the battle to
preserve our gun rights.
The fact that the actual number of children who are killed in
gun-related accidents each year remains quite small is beside the point.
How the gun rights movement reacts to concerns about child safety will be
seen by the public as revealing our true character: are we responsible,
concerned citizens who care about our community and want preserve our
freedoms for our children, or are we "the irresponsible militia yahoos
who wear camouflage clothes to hide their extremist views" that the
gun-grabbers claim we are?
In politics perception becomes reality.
When we adopt a suspicious and adversarial tone with anyone who
voices concern about child safety, reasonable people too frequently put us
in a latter category. If the questioner has an anti-gun agenda, then our
response will just help him or her to reinforce a negatives stereotype.
Our response to the child safety issue must be serious and
pro-active, and should include support for the prosecution of gunowners
who are criminally negligent in a manner that results in the accidental
death of a child.
My approach is to support legislation that does not mandate how
or where your gun must be stored. But to hold irresponsible people
liable for their own actions. This is right in line with the gun rights
movement's philosophy of holding individuals, not inanimate objects,
responsible for harm done with firearms.
We take this approach in regard to criminal misuse of firearms.
We have always supported legislation that punishes the criminal misuse
of firearms by punishing the criminal and not gunowners. This approach
would punish those who recklessly endanger children and not gunowners in
general.
So why is there any debate on this going on in the gun rights movement?
The answer can be found in a splendid little book, "THE DEATH OF
COMMON SENSE" written by Phillip K. Howard, which points out that linking
rational, practical solutions to problem solving is increasingly
difficult in a country that has de-linked individual rights from personal
responsibility.
It only makes sense to support the prosecution of those whose
reckless behavior has resulted in an avoidable death or serious injury.
If we leap to the defense of obviously negligent gunowners, we allow our
enemies to paint all gunowners with the same broad brush.
By far the greatest benefit of supporting sensible, preferably
incentive based, safety legislation is the opportunity to show that we too
care about the well being of children. Most Americans favor responsible
gun ownership, but have a very strong view that a person who leaves a
loaded firearm unsecured on a dresser where his daughter's nine-year-old
friend can shoot herself with it deserves to be brought to justice.
A pro-active approach to the child safety issue is more than
damage control. It is about reaching out to legitimately concerned
citizens with the message that gun rights are not incompatible with
safety and responsibility. If we allow our enemies to hijack the issue
of child safety, we put ourselves on the losing side of a battle that
could decide the war.
To lose credibility on the child safety issue would be ironic
because responsible gunowners are actually more concerned about child
safety any one else. After all, we are the ones who are raising our
children in homes with guns.
The average gun-owning parent has surely spent more time
thinking about child safety than the average gun grabber. I have four
children myself, and education and safe storage of firearms both play an
important role in my home.
Gun rights organizations, most notably the NRA, have spent
millions of dollars on firearms safety education for children, because we
truly do care about the issue. Why should we reinforce the myth that we
aren't concerned by a knee-jerk defense of clearly irresponsible behavior?
Finally, there are potentially enormous tactical advantages to be
gained from supporting truly reasonable safety measures, not the least
of which is the opportunity to launch an effective preemptive strike
against draconian measures proposed by hard core anti-gunners.
While it's true that gun accidents are not an "epidemic" as the
gun-grabbers claim, safe storage legislation is an epidemic, and one we
would be wise to deal with pro-actively. Bills relating to the safe
storage of firearms have passed in a number of places in recent years,
including heavyweights California, Florida, and Texas. Some of these
bills weren't bad, but others were awful.
Bill Clinton by executive order has mandated trigger locks on
guns of all federal law enforcement officers. He has told Congress this
sets an example to mandate it for all Americans.
The city of Chicago recently passed a law mandating the use of
trigger lock, period. It doesn't matter that you have no children in
your home, keep your gun unloaded, or that you keep your firearm in a
locked box or drawer.
All handguns in the city of Chicago are supposed to be
registered. The police can now go house to house and arrest owners who
don't have mandatory trigger locks on their guns and confiscate their
firearms. This is a telling example of what can happen when gunowners
refuse to work for reasonable safe storage legislation we can live with.
By contrast, a safe storage bill that I am currently supporting
in Washington State does not mandate how a gun must be stored and applies
only to a loaded gun left where children age 15 or younger can gain
unsupervised access to it, and creates exemptions from prosecution for
gunowners who have stored their firearms responsibly.
In addition to allowing a gunowner the freedom to choose the
method of storage that best suits his or her needs for self-defense, the
bill contains additional exemptions if the child had permission to pick
up the gun or the "child" was the neighborhood delinquent who stole the
gun. also exempted is possession of a loaded gun by a child for his or
her self-defense or for legitimate uses like hunting.
Even the penalty for irresponsible gunowners is a relatively
minor misdemeanor. A gunowner can be grossly negligent in a way that
results in the death of a child and not even lose his gun rights under
this bill. Also, the bill doesn't make negligent gun storage a new
prosecutable crime. Careless gunowners can already be prosecuted under
the state's reckless endangerment and second degree manslaughter statutes.
The main argument made by pro-gun rights activists is opposition
to this legislation, despite the fact that it does not mandate how a
firearm must be stored and exempts gunowners from prosecution if loaded
firearms are stored safely from children, is the "slippery slope"
argument: "This is just a first step..." This is the same argument
abortion rights extremists use to justify partial-birth abortions. Any
restriction whatsoever is treated as the first step toward total
abolition. What they overlook, of course, is that laws that defend the
indefensible are themselves a target for the very people they most oppose.
Gunowner support for reasonable legislation like this bill forces
gun-grabber organizations to go along with legislation which they
privately believe is far too non-restrictive or be revealed in public as
the irrational extremists that they really are. Handgun Control, Inc.
refused to support the Washington State safe storage bill at first
because they wanted a far more restrictive law and were concerned that
this approach would undermine stronger proposed mandated legislation in
other states.
A broad-based coalition and media support for the bill in its
current non-mandatory storage form forced Handgun Control Inc. to also get
behind it. Let's take this opportunity to build a majority coalition in
favor of responsible gun ownership in America. If we ignore and belittle
citizens' concerns about child safety, we give the gun-grabbers an
opportunity to build a majority "safety" coalition to attack our rights.
If you don't agree with me, then point your loaded gun at your
foot and pull the trigger.
About the Author:
Alan M. Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation and
chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,
and the father of four.