Away from Bearing Arms, I’ve been on a bit of a crusade to protect children lately. I’ve always felt it was important, but things just sort of kicked me in the posterior in that regard, and I’ve been working toward that effort.
And really, I’m about protecting kids here. I’ve advocated for hardening our schools and arming teachers and staff members so they can deal with school shootings far faster than the police can.
I tell people to lock their guns up and to educate their children on firearm safety and responsibility.
Kids matter to me.
So, you can imagine how angry I get when I see editorials that try to equate caring about kids with gun control, as if there’s no other way. That’s what I ran into in a piece out of South Carolina earlier.
In fact, that’s the finding of an important new study published this month in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics. The study found those gun-related deaths have climbed the least in states that passed laws aimed at reducing child gun deaths, and they increased the most in states that did the opposite: encouraging more people to arm themselves.
That might not seem surprising, but it’s important from a public policy perspective, because S.C. lawmakers — and we suspect lawmakers in the 29 other “most permissive” states — refuse to acknowledge that their laws could possibly make our state more dangerous for anyone, and certainly not for the children they try so hard to protect from so many things besides guns.
Researchers looked at deaths before and after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision making it more difficult for states to pass gun laws — a pivot point that coincided with a significant uptick in gun liberalization laws. They found states that loosened gun laws since 2010 recorded 19,000 pediatric firearm deaths — a 63 percent increase over the 12,000 that would have been expected based on pre-2010 trends. In the states that passed laws to enhance firearm safety, there was a statistically insignificant decline in pediatric deaths compared to what had been expected. (A middle category of states showed a modest increase in deaths.)
It’s important to note that we’re not talking about outlawing guns or taking guns away from law-abiding citizens. Although the researchers didn’t identify the specific laws they used to categorize states as “most permissive,” “permissive” or “strict,” they created a composite based on policy scorecards from Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center, which advocate for secure storage laws and other policies that reduce child access to guns, along with waiting periods to purchase guns and training and background checks to carry guns in public.
The editorial board did acknowledge that the study shows correlation and not necessarily causation, which makes them at least somewhat more responsible than just about every single other journalistic entity that wasn’t expressly pro-gun or right-leaning on some level who has talked about the study.
However, they also argue that something like a mandatory storage law doesn’t interfere with anyone’s right to own a gun, which, while true, is disingenuous, too. It may not keep me from buying a gun, but it can keep me from accessing it should I need it. Especially as some of those laws are ramped up in other states.
What bothers me, though, is that they’re still acting like the only way to protect children is to enact gun control, and their inability to understand the issues with this study just makes it more insulting. Especially as the problems with it are rather obvious.
This is just a continuation of the idea that if you don’t support gun control, you don’t care about addressing violence, accidents, child safety, or what have you.
That’s nonsense, and it’s insulting.
First, laws like mandatory storage laws aren’t necessary. For one thing, as we’ve seen in recent years, parents can be prosecuted when a child accesses a gun and commits some kind of illegal act. A storage law won’t change that, except to dictate how people have to secure it, with no regard for any other factors. We’ve seen too many cases of kids getting guns in mandatory storage states to believe such laws really do anything except make it harder for law-abiding folks.
Second, there are other ways to accomplish the goal that don’t interfere with how someone intends to use their firearms. Tax credits for gun safes and other storage devices, for example, encourage proper storage without mandating anything. Educational efforts do as well. Couple those together, and you have a powerful tool that isn’t restrictive in the least.
Especially as allowing any level of gun control isn’t ever going to be the end of it. The moment it happens, anti-gunners immediately start looking at how to leverage that in order to take even more.
I don’t believe gun control works to keep children safe. I believe responsible gun ownership does, and no law can mandate that.
Saying that failure to support gun control means you don’t care about kids is offensive to someone who cares more about protecting children, and not just from nebulous threats no one can quantify.
But hey, offending people is a one-way street, isn’t it?
Read the full article here
