At least 157 people were killed and 270 were injured last year in unintentional shootings by children, according to Everytown, an advocacy group for firearm safety.
At least 157 people were killed and 270 were injured last year in unintentional shootings by children, according to Everytown, an advocacy group for firearm safety.
This is why you should teach gun safety to kids in schools. In the US, kids are going to find guns, because some owners are going to be lazy, careless, or just tired and not thinking straight. Things like, if you find a gun, get an adult, a gun is always loaded, even if you think you unloaded it, or never, ever point a gun at something you don’t intend to shoot.
Parents should teach their kids this stuff, just like parents should be teaching their kids of sex and healthy relationships. But parents aren’t, and so schools need to step into the gap.
I never understood why firearms safety classes were done away with in schools. Nearly every middle and high school had a shooting club for most of the US’s history.
Because guns scary bad.
And I mean that seriously.
People in urban areas–which is most of the country’s population–almost exclusively experience firearms as being part of a criminal act. Most people that live in cities don’t know people that hunt, or compete in marksmanship, but they hear about murders and shootings in their city all the time. Why do you need training in firearms in schools when the only use–the only use they have consistent exposure to–is criminal?
You can look at electoral maps and see this; most of the geographical area is red/Republican/conservative (typically pro-2A), while most of the population centers where people actually live are blue/Democratic/more liberal. If you went back 50 or 100 years, you’d see more people living in rural areas, which ended up meaning that there were more people that were exposed to hunting, etc.
This is completely correct.
What’s funny is, banning guns is only going to take them away from responsible gun owners.
Gangbangers in cities are still going to have their guns. But now someone on a farm who needs it for their protection isn’t going to be allowed to have one? That’s a load of bullshit and why gun control legislation exists solely to distract useful idiots from the real problems they face.
I’m a firm believer in addressing and correcting the underlying causes of violence rather than removing the tools. For instance, Chicago had a violence intervention program a few years back, and it was having a noticeable impact on rates of violence. It was targeting at-risk kids, and helping them get their shit together. And so, predictably, the city cut the funding for it.
Roland Fryer has never been wrong it seems.
pro 2a is revisionist.
Historically the 2nd amendment was never a personal amendment like the 1st but a states rights amendment like the 10th amendment. Eg the feds cannot disarm lawful state militias.
This kind of oversimplification leaves out how corporate gun manufacturers have embarked on a decades long venture to reinterpret the 2nd amendment to basically be “you have a god given right to sell guns” and the republican policy here is simply the current pro-corporate policy. If corporations shift on this republican politicians will as well (and they have, people forget Ronald Reagan introduced gun control)
Incorrect. It was understood not only as a right, but a requirement. The people were expected to be in the militia, and they were expected to furnish their own arms. (Or course, the founders had very different ideas about who “people” were; the rules didn’t apply to women and black/indigenous people.)
slaves, immigrants, women were all barred from gun ownership legally within the life span of the founders and courts upheld these rulings. Guns rights were NEVER a personal right
Again: you’re simply wrong. Slaves, immigrants, and women were barred from all rights within the lifespan of the founders. If you extend your argument, you can say that the freedom of the press wasn’t a right either, since slaves, women, and immigrants didn’t have the right to read or publish what they wanted.
The problem with this view is that the body of the constitution already gives government the power to raise and arm and army, and to enact taxes to pay for it. There’s no need for an amendment to say that the gov’t has the right to be armed when that right was already stated. It’s redundant. You could, perhaps, argue that it’s a right that was being reserved for the states, but it doesn’t say that the states have the right to militias, it says the people. Moreover, the remaining nine amendments that form the bill of rights all concern individual rights, or individual and state rights (e.g. 10A). It would be very strange to see an amendment that not only says “people” but means “states”, and is the only amendment in the bill of rights that applies only to states.
Take, for instance, the National Firearms Act of 1934. It was originally going to be a ban on handguns, short-barreled rifles (because they were effectively handguns, and would circumvent the ban), and machine guns. It was turned into a tax because lawmakers were pretty sure that a ban couldn’t pass court review–while a tax could, since it was an enumerated power–which very strongly implies that it was recognized, even in the 1930s, as an individual right, rather than a right that existed for the gov’t.
I could probably come up with a list of references if you were interested in reading more. I would not suggest anything by Michael Bellesiles, because his historical “research” was found to be deeply flawed bordering on outright fraudulent.
Militia service was for a long time a privelege (restricted to men of certain age) and the right to bear arms was always intended to be a give and take: you could own arms but you would be legally required to show up in an emergency to help and you would be trained to do so. That was always the intention.
People would call it communism or something today but for whatever reason the arms stuck around and the militia as a community resource disappeared. Realistically the idea of personal arms without any obligation to society is a completely new fiction and that is one defined by corporate intervention.
At its core the 2nd amendment was always an exchange: You get guns but if you fail to fulfill your obligations as a gun owner you lose this privelege: This is why to this day felons can be legally barred from gun ownership. Other amendments - due process etc aren’t lost when you commit a crime.
However today I can’t tell you how many gun owners complain like whiny children over the most basic obligations like licensure, training, etc. What those obligations are were up to the states but largely the second amendment was an exchange “everyone who can fulfill this basic obligation can have guns”
Militia service wasn’t a privilege; it was a requirement. If you were within a certain age group, your were legally obligated to show up and drill. But people that were not in the militia–due to age, or other limiting factors–still owned and used military arms at the time. Even trying to make a real distinction between military arms and non-military arms is largely an exercise in futility, given that all arms in common use started as military arms.
In point of fact, state and local governments are trying to ban militias. Sure, that would make the threepers illegal, but it would also likely ban things like the John Brown Gun Club and Socialist Rifle association, which are much more actively community-focused than the far-right militia groups.
Yes, and that’s a problem, isn’t it? The prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure require the gov’t to make an argument to a court that they need to be able to search; they need probably cause to deprive you of that right in even a limited way. It seems reasonable to expect that felons–once they have served the term of their sentence–should have the same rights as other people, and that the gov’t should be required to make a case as to why they should be able to continue to deprive a person of those rights. Someone that’s stolen from their employer is probably a far lower risk for committing a violent act than someone that was convicted of battery.
Make them free to the user, covered by income taxes in much the same way that the infrastructure for voter registration is (…which, BTW, only exists because anti-immigrant political agitators stoked fears of non-citizens voting; it very much mirrors the elections fear-mongering nonsense that Trump is pushing right now). Ensure that everyone has reasonable access, which means you can’t run them only during business hours M-F. But you also can’t have a failing condition, other than simply not showing up, because otherwise I guarantee you that it will turn into literacy tests for voting. That is, if a state, county, or city is allowed to set a standard that must be met in order to exercise a right, then I promise you that some places will ensure that the standard is so high that neither Jerry Miculek nor Ben Stoeger could pass it, because they will want to effectively ban firearm ownership.
It’s almost like normalising access to guns from a young age is part of your country’s issue with shooting each other all the time.
The issue is people who feel like they have nothing to lose taking their frustration out on society.
It’s why there are other nations with comparable gun ownership rates as the US without comparable amounts of gun violence.
Congratulations, though. You’re doing what the ruling class wants: squabbling over bullshit to distract you from the real issues.
I’m not squabbling. You lot just need to stop pretending owning a gun is an inalienable right, the absence of which would see the sky fall. Absolute muppetry.
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The shootings kinda started when normalization stopped. Now they all still have access but the normalcy is gone, they’re a symbol of power not a tool.
The same people who got rid of Satan and WOKENESS from schools.
They do. Or at least they did in my daughter’s public elementary school. They get the teaching materials straight from the NRA too.
They have this whole ‘Eddie the Eagle’ thing about gun safety. And if the NRA wasn’t a thoroughly evil organization, that would be commendable.
The NRA isn’t a thoroughly evil organization. The NRA does lots of good things with education and training (albeit in a fudd-y way). What you’re thinking about it the NRA-ILA, the lobbying/legislative wing. Those are the people that are generally scum.
I think we should teach gun safety in schools because people have to rely on themselves for their own protection.
Fundamentally, yes.
I currently live in a fairly rural area. Best case scenario, cops take about 15 minutes to get to me. (Realistically, getting attacked by a bear is the most likely scenario that needs a police response.)
When I lived in Chicago–Austin, Humboldt Park, Little Village–I had to call the cops because someone was trying to kick down my front door. It took them about 30-45 minutes to show up, and then they just parked in the alley and didn’t even come check, or call me back. Literally nothing. (Come to think of it, they make have just coincidentally parked in the alley, and not been responding to the call at all.) My ex-wife called the police to report a “domestic disturbance”–implying that I was being violent towards her–and, again, it was about 30-45 minutes before they even showed up.
Cops can not protect you, and they have no legal duty to do so. If you are in a marginalized group, cops are more likely to victimize you when you need help rather than actually helping.
But of course the answer isn’t major police reforms, it’s just “buy a gun and start blasting”.
If you’re part of a marginalized group and holding a gun, they’ll kill you where you stand and there won’t even be a trial.
Then the conditions for being a gun owner are vastly too permissive and the punishments for negligence are vastly too light.
The fact that you just skipped straight over this to blame schools and parents shows that your opinions are already hopelessly compromised by pro-gun rhetoric.
Yes. That’s the only answer. Accommodate the gun fetish. Of course.
Must be hard to downvote me with one hand stroking a gun and the other down your pants.
So…don’t teach children about gun safety?
Toddlers are shooting themselves and others. So maybe education needs to start in the maternity ward?
How about, and I know, it’s crazy, but you could try not having guns in residential homes. It’s insane, I know, but there’s this really weird thing where the rest of the world manages it and their children (so bizarrely) aren’t blowing their faces off on a regular basis
Nuts, hey…
Gun control would be nice but…we are talking about in the here and now. Right now…guns are in homes. We are suggesting we should at least do everything we can to teach children those guns are dangerous. You do get that right?
Thats…basically how this comment chain is going dude.
^see toddlers
So…just gonna gloss over everything else. Remove guns all together and, until we can get to that point, we must do absolutely nothing else to at least hopefully prevent these deaths?
Totes what I said, mate, totes. A+
But yeah get rid of the guns.
That would be nice. But right now we are trying to discuss something more realistic, something that could be done now. What do you believe could honestly be done NOW? Mandatory education about firearms or a total ban?
A very small percentage of children.
There are more age groups of children than just toddlers.
I personally support laws requiring gun owners to properly store firearms.
What’re are the guns for though
For me: hunting mostly.
Talking to one right now.
(You can’t set me up like that this is entrapment.)
I agree, throw the toddlers in the fire.
Abstinence only gun safety
Just don’t let them know guns exist till they are 18, duh.
That drives me crazy too. You can look at the numbers, and see that abstinence only simply doesn’t work, that kids in abstinence-only schools have sex earlier, have riskier sexual habits, are more likely to catch and spread STIs, and have higher rates of teen pregnancy. From a simple harm reduction standpoint, you’d think people would say, wow, we can actually achieve what we say our goals are by giving kids accurate advice.
I don’t get why people want to treat issues like this instead of being pragmatic and looking at the outcomes.
Exactly…i was looking for a clever way to say that
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Must be hard to argue against something that demonstrably works. You sound like the kind of person that would also argue that abstinence is the only thing to teach kids in school, since that’s the only way to prevent pregnancy and STIs.
No other country has this problem. Is it because they teach gun safety to literal toddlers?
Yep, totally. People against guns are notorious for their backwards viewpoints. Venn diagram is so overlayed and round. Totally. Such stereotype, so common.
And yet, here you are, make the same kind of ass-backwards argument against something that has been demonstrated to work without attempting to undermine civil rights.
We often teach kids things directly as a cheaper solution to bad parenting.
I can remember lots of little songs about not eating things you find on the ground or staying away from needles/drugs. And every Canadian’s favourite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE