In article . com, " wrote:

I think a federal law should be created, all guns MUST have trigger
locks in place at all times.

I'll tell you what -- you first. Put trigger locks on all your guns, then put
a sign in your front yard advising all and sundry that you have them in place.
Hope nobody ever breaks into your house.

So a kid gets a unsecured gun and shoots someone, the gun owner should
do 5 years mandatory sentence and lose everything.

Why only five?

soon things would be much safer, no more crying grandpas on tv about
their grandchild going to jail after using their gun to kill a
neighbor kid by accident.

Oddly enough, this wasn't really much of a problem forty, or a hundred, years
ago, when gun ownership was more common and widespread.

altogether preventable

Most easily preventable by education. The National Rifle Association is a
leader in this area, with their "Eddie the Eagle" safety program for
elementary-school kids. Eddie Eagle says, if you see a gun --
1) STOP! Don't touch it!
2) Leave the area.
3) Tell an adult.

As soon as my kids were old enough to understand, I made sure to tell them
that the guns are not toys, and never to be touched unsupervised -- and *also*
told them that *whenever* they got curious about how the guns worked, or
wanted to see or hold or touch one, all they needed to do was ask, and I'd get
one out of the [locked] cabinet so we could look at it *together*. That takes
the mystery out of it, and most of the allure of forbidden fruit, too. Once or
twice a year, they'd ask to look at them, and I always stopped whatever I was
doing to show them. My youngest (now nearly 16) still asks to look at the
handguns from time to time.

I further made a point of telling them that the guns on TV are not real guns,
and the guns in my cabinet *are* real guns, and real guns make things real
dead. I made sure they understood the difference, too, by taking them hunting
with me. Conveniently, where we lived at the time, we had a hay field right
outside the house, jamb full of rabbits. And they saw at a very early age
(like 3 or 4 years) that it's not like Elmer Fudd shooting Bugs Bunny: when
Dad shoots a rabbit, it's *dead*. It doesn't laugh, or jump up and ask "what's
up, Doc?". It's dead. It just lays there. And we pick it up, take it back to
the house, clean it, cut it up, cook it, and eat it.

It's all about education.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.