I came across an entry in the Tacoma News Tribune blog section with an example of an irate voicemail they received:

“99% of what you print is full of %$#!. But, this opinion on firearms is totally stupid and ignorant. The statistics are ^%#!. The CDC is a socialist and communist organization - just like you guys. You can shove it up your *#%@. I’m not giving you my guns now or any time!”

Apparently the incoherent caller was upset by this editorial on gun lock legislation. I wonder why they picked this specific call to hilight the issue? I would imagine that they have quite a collection of colorful comments on a wide variety of subjects that they could have picked from. It is too bad that this called has fulfilled their view of gun owners so I will do my best to counter-balance his hysterics.

The TNT editorial claims that the gun lock legislation will do something to prevent the firearm related deaths of children from 5 to 14 years old. While their claim that 10% of the deaths are from firearms is close, it doesn’t give us an accurate picture. The CDC has a nice website where you can query the mortality statistics based on various criteria. It ends up that in 2003 there were 3249 deaths of children from 5 to 14 and 324 of those were firearm related. This gives us 9.9% firearm related deaths.

But why didn’t they include 0-4 year olds? Once a kid can walk they get into everything, so I see no reason to exclude them. The numbers for 0-14 are 6,734 deaths, of which 380 are firearms related; giving us a rate of 5.6%. Now which number sounds more dire? Which one do you pick when writing an editorial to further your agenda? It is tragic when a child dies, for any reason, but 5.9% isn’t too bad when you look at how many guns we have in the United States, and how guns have been demonized by the anti-gun groups. If you believed everything spewed out by Handgun Control and the Brady Bunch you would think that all 6734 of those kids had been killed by ‘gun violence’. These numbers have been declining over the years without the ‘help’ of gun lock laws. Why waste time on something that won’t do any good? Because it makes them ‘feel good’.

Gun laws don’t stop accidents, or crime. It has been shown repeatedly that they have little or no measurable effect and yet they keep coming back, trying for more. The ‘assault weapon ban’ expired and nothing happened. 48 states now have the right to carry concealed weapons and the predicted bloodbath has yet to happen. Even the CDC has discovered this.

Gun lock laws are just another ‘feel good’ time-wasting effort by congress. Gun manufacturers have been shipping locks with their guns for years so their efforts are not going to change reality in the least How many laws do they waste their time and our money on with similar results? Too many.

Instead of emotional Knee-Jerking from Washington DC why don’t we apply a couple of very good tests for laws like these. The first is the Jews in the Attic Test which asks the simple question - “Will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death?” While legislating gun locks may not seem like a good application for this question I ask you this. How long does it take you to get your gun, your key, unlock the lock, load and be ready?

The second is another from Joe Huffman, ‘Just One Question‘ which asks “Can you demonstrate just one time, one place, throughout all of human history, where restricting the access of handheld weapons to the average person made them safer?“.