More Unneccessary Gun Laws
A law proposed in Kalifornia wants to mandate a loaded chamber indicator on all handguns (claiming it will reduce accidental shootings) and a safety feature that ensures the gun won’t fire when the magazine is removed.
I think safeties are dangerous on handguns, personally. I think they are false senses of security. You should always point a gun in a safe direction. Period. A safety may incline folks to point them wherever because, hey, the safety is on. Also, folks who shoot in competition are required to keep their sites trained on a target while reloading (if the slide locks back and the gun is incapable of firing, they lose points) so the magazine thing would render pistols inneffective for competition. That, and if you ever need your gun, it’d be nice if it was capable of firing without a magazine.
August 27th, 2003 at 7:38 am
Isn’t this rather akin to arguing that seat belts cost lives because they give drivers a false sense of security?
August 27th, 2003 at 9:03 am
Not at all. A sealt belt doesn’t make you more inclined to drive recklessly. But I’ve seen plenty of folks with guns not paying attention to where the barrel is pointed because the safety is on.
August 27th, 2003 at 9:56 am
Those people are called idiots, and most of them would likely be careless with the gun even without the safety.
August 27th, 2003 at 9:57 am
Besides which, your evidence is purely anecdotal. It does nothing to prove that people are more likely to be careless with a gun simply because it has a safety catch.
August 27th, 2003 at 10:04 am
It is based entirely on observation. Since there is no scientific study i know of involving accidental discharges, i can concede your point. But it is still a theory.
August 27th, 2003 at 10:10 am
These sorts of laws might make sense if the gun industry were more like the automobile industry, but they’re very different.
For one thing, the gun industry is a tiny fraction of the size of the automotive industry. Sales are on the order of one or two hundred million a year as I recall, versus billions for the car industry. Re-tooling a design for California sales isn’t economical for most gunmakers.
The other difference is the rate of change. The Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver dates to the 1800s, but is still popular today. Browning’s 1911 Colt .45 auto is still popular. Gun makers don’t re-tool their assembly lines every few years like carmakers do. They make a design and perfect it over the years by adjusting the alloys and tolerances.