TODAY’S WORRY
What is the fascination with the guns here in the U.S? Do we actually believe we are a vigilante society and the only way to protect ourselves is by owning a gun and keeping it readily available? Apparently so, because on Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives voted to overturn a recently enacted law requiring safety trigger locks on all hand guns sold in the United States to prevent children from accidently (or purposefully) firing them.
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This was such a small potatoes law that even the gun aficionados were surprised by the vote. They figured that having to buy an inexpensive trigger lock when purchasing a gun was no big deal. What kind of enforcement could there be? So you throw away the lock and in the meantime you’ve made the gun control fanatics happy. But such is government these days especially in the House.
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I looked up some of the arguments against having a trigger lock. One is that you need to have your gun always at the ready. Another is to cite that firearms are involved in 1.5% of accidental fatalities. That’s way behind motor vehicle accidents, poisoning, drowning or even suffocating on an ingested object. It makes it seem that the approximately 300 children killed last year are just an aberration.
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Of course, then there are the un-accidental deaths. Like suicide for instance. In the last 25 years nearly 40,000 youths have committed suicide by using a gun. States that had child access prevention laws had a significantly smaller number of these deaths. And unlike taking pills or other methods, suicide attempts by gun are nearly always fatal.
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For some reason, even common sense measures are an anathema to gun enthusiasts. Surely the writers of the Constitution didn’t want loaded guns falling into the hands of children.
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