Locking guns won't do anything to save lives

[Wendell]

...gun control advocates always want to use laws to force their solutions on others. Since the Santa Fe killer apparently took his father’s guns, a number of gun control advocates have proposed to hold parents like him criminally liable; any gun owner would face criminal charges for leaving his gun unlocked or failing to keep it under his immediate possession... Gun control advocates claim that gunlocks will also reduce children’s accidental gun deaths. Unfortunately, the problem is more complicated. Mandating that people lock up their guns can have unintended consequences.
http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/...-to-save-lives

[SAWBONES]

Gun control advocates always want to make new laws or use existing laws which result in only the discomfiture of or interference with honest people who are not inclined to commit criminal acts.

The fact that their ideas and recommendations accomplish nothing in regard to reducing crime or increasing safety seems to matter to them not at all.

They are either incapable of clear thinking on these issues or unwilling for such.

[Totem Polar]

Seems sort of like mandating more electric cars... doesn’t really effect pollution; just shoves it off in another source direction or to another area.

Locking guns away would certainly cut down on accidental shootings, but not enough to offset some random folks getting killed in their homes for lack of tools to defend themselves.

"The cobra effect occurs when an attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse,[1][2] as a type of unintended consequence. The term is used to illustrate the causes of incorrect stimulation in economy and politics."

[RevolverRob]

I've become really irritated about these discussions with colleagues now (I don't usually partake in them).

But I like to start with facts.

1) Number of people killed annually in the US (including suicides) "by guns" (~31,000 in 2016)
2) Number of people killed in car crashes. (~37,500 in 2016)
3) Number of people killed by heart disease. (~630,000 in 2016)
4) Number of people killed by strokes. (~140,000 in 2016)
5) Number of drug overdose deaths (~64,000 in 2016)

All stats by CDC or NHTSA.

And once you look at those stats the discussions of people dying "by guns" are pretty irrelevant. It's not enough to make a significant difference (literally). Even if you eliminated every gun, you wouldn't eliminate the totality of those 31,000 deaths "by guns", because fully 50% of them are suicides and 40% of that total is gang-related violence. So, we're going to inconvenience 80,000,000 legal gun owners to prevent ~3,000 deaths.

[GardoneVT]

...gun control advocates always want to use laws to force their solutions on others. Since the Santa Fe killer apparently took his father’s guns, a number of gun control advocates have proposed to hold parents like him criminally liable; any gun owner would face criminal charges for leaving his gun unlocked or failing to keep it under his immediate possession... Gun control advocates claim that gunlocks will also reduce children’s accidental gun deaths. Unfortunately, the problem is more complicated. Mandating that people lock up their guns can have unintended consequences.
http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/...-to-save-lives

I’d have to disagree with the notion locking up guns encourages criminal activity. For one ,most of the states which enact mandatory firearm lock laws are ones with a prexisting high crime rate like Illinois ,CA and so forth. Further the states used in the quoted analysis had varying time periods where the laws applied; finally no mechanism was used to determine if people who lock up guns would do so anyways regardless of the law.

This will be a contrarian perspective- but on the subject of mandatory locks on weapons not immediately being handled I wholeheartedly agree with. Want to leave guns in your home and in your car? Cool. But lock that shit up,because the last thing any of us need is a thug(s) getting a gun from a home/car break in because someone was too negligent to secure their weapon.
When LEOs and military members leave weapons unsecured and they’re stolen accordingly, the universal reaction is “omg what a moron”; so why is it OK for Joe Public to do the same thing by leaving an unsecured weapon in their vehicle?

[RevolverRob]

I’d have to disagree with the notion locking up guns encourages criminal activity. For one ,most of the states which enact mandatory firearm lock laws are ones with a prexisting high crime rate like Illinois ,CA and so forth.

Just for the record - Illinois does not have a mandatory firearm lock law (or mandatory storage container law). It has a law that specifically penalizes a firearm owner who does not secure their weapon and a minor under the age of 14 gains access to it and causes death or serious bodily injury with said firearm. So, in this realm if you have kids or regularly have kids in your house, it's best to have the weapon stored securely. But there is no law that specifically states it must be secured.

[NH Shooter]

Getting rid of guns will only prevent people from killing each other with guns;

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/...-here-are.html

FWIW, all of my firearms remain in a safe when not in use.

[Joe in PNG]

There's a common misconception that if you take away the tools, you take away the ability to do bad with the tools.
Ban weapons, and humans won't murder. Ban speech against the government, and people won't commit treason, and so on.

Which is stupid- humans are good at improvising. Just look at pretty much any prison.

[GardoneVT]

Just for the record - Illinois does not have a mandatory firearm lock law (or mandatory storage container law). It has a law that specifically penalizes a firearm owner who does not secure their weapon and a minor under the age of 14 gains access to it and causes death or serious bodily injury with said firearm. So, in this realm if you have kids or regularly have kids in your house, it's best to have the weapon stored securely. But there is no law that specifically states it must be secured.

At the state level yes. Remember that some IL municipalities have home rule gun laws that are stricter then the state standard.

That said it’s academic; the point is that I doubt criminal conduct is directly affected by firearm security laws. It’s the accidental transfer of functional firearms to crooks after a burglary that I’m concerned with.

[RevolverRob]

At the state level yes. Remember that some IL municipalities have home rule gun laws that are stricter then the state standard.

That said it’s academic; the point is that I doubt criminal conduct is directly affected by firearm security laws. It’s the accidental transfer of functional firearms to crooks after a burglary that I’m concerned with.

With the passage of the IL Concealed Carry legislation, state level preemption came on for all handguns. Though municipalities can pass home rule regs on long-guns, virtually all existing home rule regs contained clauses about handguns, making them invalid until such time as they pass new ones or amend old ones. Which, by and large, hasn’t occurred since 2014.

That said, I concur with your point and keep my guns locked up and stored when not in my possession. I even use one of the little gunvault cases for my car (for instances such as the post-office). And I take it in with me at destinations while traveling for secure storage there.