Sunday, October 14, 2012

The Ten Commandments of Gun Safety

Carroll County Times

1. Treat every gun as if it were loaded;
2. Watch the muzzle, and keep your safety on until it’s time to shoot;
3. Unload your gun when it is not in use and keep the action open;
4. Be sure of your target before you pull the trigger;
5. Never point a gun at anything you don’t want to shoot;
6. Never climb a tree or fence or jump a ditch with a loaded gun;
7. Never pull a gun toward you by the muzzle;
8. Never shoot a bullet at a flat, hard surface, or at water and always be sure of a safe backstop;
9. Store guns and ammunition separately, beyond the reach of children;
10. Never mix gunpowder and alcohol.

This is not brain surgery. You don't need a brain like Stephen Hawking to understand this. This is basic common sense. Even the more commonly cited 4 Rules of Gun Safety contain no secrets. They list common-sense ideas that should go without saying, that should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.

But, unfortunately, incidents happen every day in every city which seem to indicate that some gun owners don't even have the minimum amount of good sense they'd need to operate guns safely and, to make matters worse, they have not learned and followed the Rules or the Commandments. 

That's why One Strike You're Out is so important. How else can we identify these unfit gun owners? We can't test them for common sense or basic intelligence, the NRA and gun-rights activists would never allow that. No, unfortunately, we cannot anticipate these things. But, when someone proves themselves to be in violation of the safety rules which should be obvious to anyone, they should lose their gun rights.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.


21 comments:

  1. Since this is the only right that you want people to lose when they screw up, I see your begging as a distortion of reality.

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    1. It's no more a right than your right to own a pair of scissors is.

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    2. And why is that not a right? I have the right to own property. Scissors comes in under that category. As long as I harm no innocent person with scissors, you shouldn't be able to stop me from having them.

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    3. It's not a right because the Constitution specifically says that guns are a tool of a well-regulated militia. You are trying to ignore your obligations under the well-regulated clause of the second amendment.

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    4. Notice how the independent clause of the sentence is the one that says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Not the right of the militia or the state. The people. The dependent clause creates no obligations. It's the explanation for why the amendment was seen as necessary, but that's all.

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    5. You have a right to own a pair of scissors. You do not have a Right to own a gun, in spite of the bastardization of the 2A in recent decades.

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    6. On what ground do I have a right to a pair of scissors, but not a gun? Oh, yes, you don't like guns.

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  2. Makes sense to me. There are so many morons whose IQ = caliber of firearm. I'd say we need the death penalty for accidental death with a gun.

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  3. R U Stuupid? Run Forest Run!!!

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  4. Right to life versus right to bear arms? You make the call...

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    1. Tell that to Trayvon Martin, Camp.

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    2. Fortunately, I can't. The evidence points to an angry and possibly under-the-influence teenager who attacked the resident of a neighborhood. Your side loves to defend thugs. That's one of many reasons that you're losing.

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  5. That crazy pastor, Terry Jones, is a good example of someone who shouldn't be allowed to carry a weapon, after accidentally discharging it in his car.

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  6. The issue of the product called "gun" is the drive to keep it a general consumer item without allowing society to treat it as a general consumer item.

    Any general consumer item that is found to have a danger such that accidents happen at regular rates do to peoples handling and use of the item are subject to 2 possible treatments.

    The first is to make it dummy proof. We do this with many products. If we don't find making it dummy proof a viable solution we remove it as a general consumer item and class it as a special consumer item.

    Special consumer items have restrictions as to who can own and or use it. The restrictions come in many form: age, license, training, education plus license, etc.

    Society has not been allowed to do with the gun what it naturally does with all other consumer items in order to protect its self from accidents.

    Please, I am not implying that society is ever 100 percent successful, but society is ever making life a safer experience for all.

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    1. First, I'm not in favor of making products "dummy proof." When I'm mowing my lawn, I have to hook my leg over the safety bar on the mower so I can take off my glasses and wipe my forehead. I'd much rather have an on/off switch that isn't "fail safe." I'm also tired of pill bottles requiring a child to open them. This obsession with safety that has come over so many in recent years just holds back intelligent people while doing nothing to save fools.

      But more than that, if a firearm is safe, it's no longer a firearm. For it to function correctly and in a useful manner, it has to be dangerous. Calls to make guns safe are just back-door efforts to infringe on our rights.

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    2. You have an other option Greg. You can make them a special consumer item. Society can decide there are special requirements to be completed before you get your gun. But, that might raise the right to bare arms for a well regulated militia issue. Then again, if everyone was drafted into the army, I suppose that would be a qualification met.

      With that, making products dummy proof is saving you and me money. It is protecting you and me from the dummies. It's a social service to you and me. Also, making things safer is actually promoting inteligence. It requires a very broad type of thinking and then engineering to try to capture all the dummy things a "fool" would do.

      That a gun is dummy proof does not make it any less capable of impairing or taking a life, human or otherwise.

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    3. Military service or militia service is not a requirement to exercise the right to own and carry guns. That's the ruling of the Supreme Court and the plain text of the Constitution. Your side always wants to add layers to the right, but that's not going to work in America. If we proposed restrictions and qualifications on the right to speak or to vote, millions would rise up in protest and rightly so.

      When it comes to guns, they work just fine. They function exactly as they're supposed to. Adding a bunch of gizmos just because there are fools in the world would ruin things for capable people. You want a "dummy proof" gun, but I note that you haven't defined what that would mean. You haven't shown that such a thing is technologically possible.

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    4. Greg, the militia angle is not required for you to own a gun. You can still own one. But, without the militia thing, which is anachronistic and does not exist any longer, you can't claim the 2nd Amendment as your justification.

      When people, and the Supreme Court, realize this, we should be able to get some decent gun control laws passed. The only difference to you will be that you'll have to be qualified, which right now you don't.

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    5. When we all live on Big Rock Candy Mountain, eh? It won't happen. The people won't change, and while the courts may shift their positions, legislatures won't pass the laws that you want.

      Don't bother to lie. We all know that you don't want anyone in this country to have a gun.

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