Gun storage safety
So, Vanderbilt equates safe storage with locked up, tied to a rock and thrown in a river:
Many parents who own firearms do not keep them locked up, nor do they keep the bullets locked away separately, according to a new survey conducted by a Vanderbilt University Medical Center researcher and her team.
Well, why would they? Assuming that people have weapons for self-defense, they probably have a desire to have one at the ready. I do. All of my weapons save two are locked up in a safe. One is locked in the glove box of my truck. The other is in the house, in a location that little people cannot see, nor can they get access to. And I even have one of those wall safes with the push buttons for when company comes over. More:
More than 3,700 parents across the country were surveyed for the research. While fewer parents reported having a firearm in the home than in previous studies (23.3 percent as compared with 35 percent), 49 percent reported the firearm was not locked up and 20 percent said the bullets were not locked away separately.
Well, we gun owners tend to lie about guns in the home when some schmuck asks us to do a survey.
Only a third of the parents in the survey reported their firearms were stored according to recommendations from safety experts.
Sorry but to any gun owner out there, don’t listen to safety experts. Listen to gun experts if you want real advice that will save your life and the lives of others. Safety experts will typically tell you not to have a gun (see?), which is not conducive to safety but more political posturing. So, take it with a grain of salt. Anti-gun hacks like Matthew Miller are not safety experts. They are hacks. Take your gun advice from someone like Col. Cooper or Massad Ayoob. Or your local firearms instructor.
More (with snarky remarky):
The survey also found that:
Parents who were raised with firearms in the home were less likely to store firearms safely. (again, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means)
When families had older children, they didn’t store their long guns — such as rifles — as safely as families with children just 2 to 5 years old. (because at that point, I hope the kids are out shooting)
Owners is rural areas, even if they owned guns for recreation, stored their weapons as unsafely as people in urban areas.
June 5th, 2007 at 9:50 am
[…] does a good fisking of gun safety “experts” and tell us: Sorry but to any gun owner out there, don’t […]
June 5th, 2007 at 10:17 am
I wonder if these “safety experts” store their kitchen “assault knives” safely…you know, locked up lest someone get angry and assault another with an easily accessible knife. You know, knives cause crime just like guns don’t they?
Oh yes, if we listened to these self-appointed expets, we would all be unarmed victims and therefore safe..ah-huh. And if they really ahd their way, the hired guns of governemnt would force us all to be safe like that. It worked for Stalin, Hitler, Mao…
June 5th, 2007 at 10:20 am
That’s funny right there….
Via Sayuncle, I was directed to this wonderful piec ……
June 5th, 2007 at 10:40 am
The best way to make guns safe for kids is to teach the kids gun safety, but there’s a few years before they’re old enough to learn and 100% follow the rules that need to be covered somehow. Putting the guns up high is not a complete solution – my little sisters and my own kids climbed like monkeys starting when they were two years old, and no top shelf was safe. I was living on an Air Force Base in that period, with much better policing than almost any civilian neighborhood so I didn’t feel the need to have a gun handy at night. I hate to tell you to trigger-lock your home defense gun, but you need something that actually is kid-proof until they’re about 5. Maybe you should practice removing the trigger lock or a gun safe in your bedroom in the dark?
Gun safes do two things: Provide some protection for valuable guns in a house fire (if it’s not too hot nor burns too long), and make a thief do several more minutes work (which is too much work for many of them).
June 5th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Where would we be without academia and its helpful research projects?
Someone needs to give this Vandy U. “medical researcher” the comparative assessment of fatalities caused by medical malpractice vs. those caused by firearms.
I see it from time to time, and it is fairly telling in that you are at greater risk in a hospital than at the shooting range.
June 5th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Well, I don’t know how they define safe storage. But people who keep their goodies in safes make me happy. Happy, because most guns on the streets around here come from residential burglaries. What people do with them when they’re home, I could care less, leave them on the coffee table if you want.
Personally, I have a bedside safe for my home defense gun. It’s locked when I’m away and open when I’m home. Fortunately I don’t have rugrats to worry about.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Chris,
I suppose the “academic” types would retort that hospitals, though presenting danger, help and save more than they hurt.
Then one could reply—that’s a good point, just as guns in the hands of tens of millions of peaceable, law-abiding citizens thwart crime and save many more lives than crime and accidents with guns.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
As soon as I see “bullets” I know that they know nothing about firearms and stop reading. Jack.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Good point, Jack…and funny too.
My wife still occasionally inquires about a handy self-defense weapon: “does that gun have any bullets in it?”
Sometimes I reply: “there’s nothing more useless than an unloaded gun.”
If married, you are probably aware that wives often don’t readily submit to education and instruction from husbands
June 5th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Another sure proof of ignorance is using the word “heat” in reference to a gun.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
If married, you are probably aware that wives often don’t readily submit to education and instruction from husbands
Which isn’t an issue on this topic when one marries a woman who has used a handgun to defend herself.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Gotta a good, right-thinking woman there, triticale.
But generally women are more suseptible to the emotive sludge of pervasive anti-gun propaganda…thinking that guns=danger and no guns=safety…the exact oppostie of reality.