Many decades ago, there were many incidents of very small children getting into medicine cabinets and overdosing on medications because they thought the pills were like candy. So in 1970 they developed those child-resistant caps for medicine bottles that every medicine bottle has today. So you can see where I'm going with this. Someone should design a special gun with a child-resistant feature, for parents to be able to have if they have a small child in the house, and they are concerned that their child might accidentally find it. It's not always realistic to have all of them locked away. In certain situations, the parents might want to keep one on hand, easily accessible at a moment's notice, in their bedroom, in case there is an intruder. I believe this is a great way that could help reduce accidental deaths of children.
This is called a "trigger lock", an item easily obtainable by anyone who wants one. Note that they are only for use on an unloaded gun.
Doesn't having an unloaded gun 'readily accessible' defeat the purpose of having it readily available?
I fully disagree, it is the parents job to keep the children safe by taking steps to do so and not by demanding special guns be produced.
It’s not rocked science to do a responsible job keeping your toddlers safe. Then long before they reach the age they begin to wonder out unsupervised, you begin the process of educating them in gun safety. It’s one of the life survival skills, like learning how to cross a street, learning to swim, and countless other you are responsible for imparting to your offspring as they grow rather than abdicating that task to the state that, more often than not, certain life skills not only shouldn’t be taught but are tantamount to child endangerment if taught. The state’s method, traumatize the child if they are seen acting in their curiosity to learn a ‘banned’ life skill in the thought it will in BF Skinner thinking, keep a child from wanting to engage in curious thinking beyond what is prescribed. Used to be if you had children you assumed a good deal of the responsibility to prepare them for surviving in life. Now, it’s have children and pass them off to the state to be indoctrinated.
Yea I grew up in a house that had guns and ammo all over the place. I never saw them as anything special or a toy to be played with or something fascinating. Maybe it is because I also shot them under supervision as a child too. IDK.
How about some child-resistant safety switch on the gun itself, that would be a little bit tricky and not intuitive to "turn on", but would be very quick and easy for the adult if they knew the trick.
How big of a problem do you think accidental gun deaths are annually among children? More than drown in pools? Die in falls? Suffocate? Is this an out of control problem?
Two problems with that one it raise's the cost of a firearm, second the anti's would demand all existing firearms either be modified to work the same way of be surrendered as ultra-unsafe devices now that the technology exist to make them safe. And truly in the end it will not slow down the anti's it will actually embolden them as they have been demanding such a device be installed in firearms for years not and seeing it happen will be taken as a victory not a compromise. However in closing it's really unneeded, the two greatest causes of deaths of children are drownings and poisonings from household chemicals and due to that most states require protective fences around pools and child resistant caps, but chiildren are still dying because of those two reasons, the true answer to the problem is parental responsibility, not feel good gadgets.
No it's not...yet there are many examples where it seems it is rocket science to some. And no, my comment does not mean I'm for a child-resistant feature put on all guns.
I think the type of thing I am proposing would have some specific advantages over the types of things you are mentioning that are already in existence.
99.999% of responsible parents will have figured something out already. It's what parents too - safeguard their children from a multitude of dangers in the home, many way less obvious than gun safety. Irresponsible parents won't invest in a special gun feature, or much else to keep the kids safe.
I agree. By age 9, I knew how to safely handle a firearm. I taught my 5 children firearm safety starting at age 7. Parents now think that taking Elmer Fudd's gun away makes their kids safer.
