"HeyBub" wrote in message
...

We may be talking past each other.

It happens, especially when two such world-class orators really get cooking.

I've never locked up my guns but, by the same token, I took my son to the
range when he was about five years old.

A friend of mine suffered a burglary some years back and lost a bunch of
guns. I was shocked when I visited him awhile later and saw guns literally
laying around his garage where they had been since his last hunting trip
months earlier (they at least had trigger locks). A slow-witted teenager
with a screwdriver could have opened that garage and taken off with a
hunting rifle or two without working up a sweat. I'm not worried about
*you* or your son, but burglars, or some idiot friend of a child--that's
another story. And it's such a little thing, a few hundred bucks gets you a
lockup that only a skilled burglar is going to be able to pop--it's peace of
mind if nothing else.

He learned at an early age the power and capacity of a firearm to inflict
great harm, just as he learned how to cross a street. As a consequence of
this training, he never got hit by a car in an intersection nor did he
unintentionally ever shoot anybody.

As you have pointed out, kids get hit crossing the street among other
things, so we can be quite sure there are parents out there doing a poor
job. I like the idea of such parents having their firearms locked up, it's
one small improvement in the odds.

I agree that negligence often leads to tragedy. The fact that gun is
involved in the negligence is, to my mind, irrelevant.

But that's a distinction in search of a purpose. Guns, power tools,
corrosive or poisonous cleaning products, swimming pools--you name it--the
issue isn't the specific vector for injury, it's the negligence. There are
simple, non-burdensome precautions we can take to reduce the likelihood of
nasty accidents, like not leaving dangerous items where kids can get their
hands on them. If your five year old son's friends had been coming over to
his birthday party in the back yard, you wouldn't have left a bottle of
bleach and cordless circular saw and a loaded gun kicking around, would you?

The fact that some children will die from a gunshot is no more a
reason to ban guns than children drowning is a sufficient reason to
ban swimming pools.

Can you quote me saying anything about banning guns? No? Then where
did this fly ball come from?

I apologize. The statement wasn't directed at you; it was more of a
universal truth that I blurt out from time to time (often to the
consternation of fellow passengers on the bus).

That wouldn't be the day-pass bus from Big Springs State Hospital, would it?