-Caveat Lector-
>From www.cato.org
> June 1, 1999
>
> Loaded Guns Can Be Good for Kids
>
> by Dave Kopel and Eugene Volokh
>
>
> Dave Kopel teaches law at New York University Law School, and Eugene
> Volokh teaches at UCLA Law School.
>
> At the behest of President Clinton and gun control lobbyist Sarah
> Brady, the Senate recently voted to require that every firearm be sold
> with a lock. The next step is to require that all guns be locked up in
> the home -- as is currently required in Washington, D.C., and in
> Canada, whose gun laws President Clinton has fulsomely praised. This
> next step will likely be taken when there is another horrible gun
> crime that (like the Littleton massacre) couldn't possibly have been
> prevented by a trigger lock. That crime will give the Republican
> congressional leadership another opportunity to make concessions that
> will immediately prompt the Democrats to escalate their demands for
> further concessions.
>
> Are gun locks, as President Clinton says, a "no brainer"? Yes, indeed.
> The lock-up-the-guns proposal is great -- as long as one doesn't think
> about it carefully.
>
> Contrary to the impression created by sensationalist media, fatal
> firearms accidents involving children are far from common. In the
> United States, about half of all homes contain guns; the total gun
> supply is about 240 million, and there are tens of millions of
> children in the country. Yet according to the National Safety Council,
> in 1995 there were about 30 fatal gun deaths of kids aged 0 to 4 and
> fewer than 40 of kids aged 5 to 9. This shows that, even without
> legislation from Washington, the overwhelming majority of families
> with firearms already knows how to act responsibly.
>
> Any parent knows that a single child's death is unspeakably tragic.
> Yet the number of toddlers who die from gun accidents is smaller than
> the number who die from drowning in buckets. And it's much lower than
> the 500 who die in swimming pools.
>
> More generally, the total number of fatal accidents involving kids
> aged 0 to 14 in 1995 was 6,500, and fatal firearms accidents accounted
> for just 3 percent of the total. Yet the president is not scoring
> political points inveighing against bucket manufacturers, or demanding
> federal laws against unfenced pools on private property. Politics, not
> saving children's lives, is the foundation of the current anti-gun
> campaign.
>
> But doesn't it make sense to require parents to keep guns locked if it
> will save even one child's life? Unfortunately, the analysis can't be
> that simple, because such a restriction will not only save lives; it
> would also cost lives.
>
> President Clinton -- and Liddy Dole at a recent speech at Yale --
> compare gun locks to "child-proof" safety caps on medicine bottles.
> It's a good comparison, because the safety caps increased accidental
> deaths, and gun locks would do the same.
>
> According to research by Harvard's Kip Viscusi, the federal mandate
> about safety caps on medicine bottles made people more careless about
> storing medicine out of the reach of children. No cap can be really
> "child proof" (any bottle can be broken with a hammer), but careless
> parents left medicine bottles where children could get them, children
> defeated the "child-proof" caps and poisoning deaths increased.
>
> Similarly, mandatory gun locks would encourage parents to stop being
> careful to keep loaded guns out of the reach of small children.
>
> Even worse, many kinds of gun locks (such as locks that fit on the
> trigger), could cause accidents for both children and adults. A modern
> firearm won't discharge if it is dropped accidentally; but if the
> firearm has a trigger lock on it, the firearm often does discharge.
> That's why lock manufacturers warn consumers never to use the lock on
> a loaded gun. Mandatory use of locks could thus undo 50 years of
> improvements in firearms design that have helped reduce gun accidents
> by more than 75 percent. In addition to increasing gun accidents,
> mandatory locks would likely increase deaths from crime. Guns are used
> quite commonly in self-defense; estimates of defensive gun uses per
> year range from 110,000 (National Crime Victimization Survey) to 1.5
> million to 2.5 million or more (studies by criminologists Gary Kleck
> and Philip Cook). A very large majority of defensive uses simply
> involve display of the firearm (without a shot being fired), followed
> by the criminal's hasty retreat. Nobody knows what the exact count is
> or how many of those uses save the lives of kids or other innocents.
>
> Nor does anyone know how many of those defensive uses would have been
> frustrated by potential crime victims having to fumble with trigger
> locks or safes -- perhaps in the dark while an intruder advanced
> toward a child's room. But we do know what happens in countries like
> Canada where the laws require that firearms be locked up: the burglary
> rate is significantly higher than in the United States. U.S. burglars
> almost always avoid occupied homes, for fear of being shot. But
> Canadian burglars are three times more likely than American burglars
> to break into a home when people are there. From the Canadian
> burglar's viewpoint, a "hot burglary" (victims present) is often
> superior, since the alarm system will be turned off and there will be
> wallets and purses to grab.
>
> Of course many burglaries of occupied homes turn into assaults or
> rapes perpetrated against the victim, and some turn into murders.
>
> You might wonder how President Clinton and Mrs. Brady account for all
> this extra danger caused by gun lock laws. The answer is that they
> don't care, because they do not support defensive gun use (except by
> government employees, such as the president's bodyguards).
>
> Although President Clinton claims that his gun control proposals won't
> cause too much trouble for hunters or target shooters (true), he does
> not claim that his laws won't substantially interfere with defensive
> gun use. Mrs. Brady told the Tampa Tribune in 1993, "To me, the only
> legitimate reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting
> purposes." If a person morally opposes defensive force, then making it
> impossible for innocent people to defend themselves counts as
> progress.
>
> If a family with small children lives in a safe neighborhood, then
> keeping the guns locked up may indeed be the safest choice. But if a
> family must live in a dangerous neighborhood, and if the parents have
> taught gun safety to responsible older children, then having the gun
> ready for immediate protection might be safer. Parents, not members of
> Congress, are best suited to make these kinds of decisions.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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