Reply #139: I keep tripping on those goddamned stone tablets [View All]

[iverglas]

Proper safety training would prevent many more accidents than all the loaded chamber and magazine disconnect safeties in the world.

Training does not prevent ANYTHING. People's behaviour determines outcomes. People who have had training are indeed often less likely to engage in risky behaviours. But there is absolutely no impediment to people who have had training engaging in risky behaviours, and they very much can and do.

And here we go again: no, there is nothing safe about training a 13-yr-old sufficiently in the use of firearms that he would have known these various things about the firearm in question.


First of all, chamber loaded or no, you are NEVER to point a firearm at any object that you are {not} prepared to destroy. A loaded chamber indicator may work against this basic rule of safety as the implication is that if the chamber is empty, you are somehow able to treat the firearm with less respect than if it were loaded.

It's a fucking inanimate object. I don't treat inanimate objects with "respect". What sane person would?

"You are NEVER to ..." doesn't cut much ice with me, I'm afraid.

You are never to speed. You are never to jaywalk. You are never to turn the hot water on first. You are never to leave prescription drugs or cigarette lighters where children can access them. You, aged 3 or 6 or 9, are never to play with prescription drugs or cigarette lighters. Or guns.

PEOPLE DO ALL THOSE THINGS despite how many times their parents and public service ads tell them not to. And the entire world knows that people do those and many other stupid things.

So in this strange modern society of ours, we take steps, and require that manufacturers of products use by people take steps, to reduce risks.

My prescription drugs can be opened, and my cigarette lighter can be lit, by children making casual attempts. Where speeding is particularly risky, there are bumps in the road or stop signs or other interferences. Where jaywalking is particularly risky, there are fences between sidewalk and roadway. Things like that.

I find childproof lids on prescription drugs to be a really annoying thing that wastes my time. And I have a callous on my thumb now because of the force it takes to strike a light. If I were to behave like gun militants, I'd be lobbying and agitating to have those features removed from stuff that I have a right to own and use.

Children who get access to prescription drugs and cigarette lighters are entitled to protection from harm that could have been prevented by keeping the drugs or lighters away from them (not that there are many guaranteed barriers to much of anything in our world) -- but children who get access to guns aren't?

Okay.