laklak wrote:

Griz_ wrote:Even the most liberal interpretation of the second amendment does not preclude being accountable for insuring the safety of others if you own one. Safe storage laws do not infringe upon ones right to keep and bear arms. It's possibly one of the most effective steps that could be taken to prevent accidental negligent discharges and I just don't understand why this hasn't been pushed harder.

Couldn't agree more. But, how do you enforce those regulations? You cannot override 4th Amendment rights against warrantless search, so how can you insure gun owners are actually complying with the safe storage regulations? Again, it's only after the fact that you can charge them. My understanding of Australian law is anyone owning guns is subject to search at any time, but Australia doesn't have a 4th Amendment, and frankly I can't see many By Gawd Merikans lettin' them Po Po into their house without a fight.

Thommo wrote:I'm going out on a limb and saying that children have access to the interior of a car more often than to the interior of a lockbox. Whether that be parents placing their child in a car (which tends not to happen with lockboxes) or because the keys are left conveniently on a hook in the hall (which tends not to happen with lockboxes).

I'd hazard a guess that cars are broken into and/or stolen more frequently too.

Honestly I'd question the judgement of someone who consistently tossed their mobile phone on their car seat and left it there in plain view through the window of the car, and a mobile phone isn't a lethal weapon that needs to be treated with appropriate respect.

People will put up smoke detectors to protect their homes from fires, but won't keep guns locked away from children, a new study says.

In a study of 286 parents visiting emergency rooms in North Carolina, researchers found 99 percent of the households reported having at least one smoke detector, while only 57 percent said they locked away guns in a place where kids could not get access them.

"This surprised me," says Dr. Tamera Coyne-Beasley, a pediatrician at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine and senior author of the study. "I [thought] people who exercised good general safety habits would also probably have good firearm safety habits as well."

The results of the study on injury prevention practices among North Carolina parents were reported today at the Ambulatory Pediatric Association meeting in Baltimore, Md.

Bullets vs. Household Cleaners

Coyne-Beasley and her colleagues at the UNC School of Public Health also found that 36 percent of the gun-owning families "admitted" to storing their guns loaded and 45 percent said they don't use gun locks when storing them.

That further contrasts with the 72 percent of families that said they cap unused electrical outlets to protect young kids from being electrocuted and another 72 percent that store poisonous household substances out of reach of their kids.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117480&page=1

A RAND Corporation study showed that about 1.4 million households (with an estimated 2.6 million children) had firearms stored unlocked and either loaded or with ammunition nearby.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/10/gun_accidents_why_are_parents_who_leave_loaded_weapons_lying_around_never.html

laklak wrote:

Teague wrote:
You have way too much of a blase attitude over there towards guns. To even think that a nation of people have a right to lethal weapons is fucking insane without any laws to protect the people from themselves.

Absolutely not. As I said in the post above, we are constrained by our Constitution and out current interpretation of it. People outside the U.S. do not understand that it is the bedrock underlying our entire society, and we are not going to ignore it simply because it was written 200 years ago by old, white slaveholders. It is the basis for ALL our laws, and we have a clearly defined methodology for both interpreting and modifying it.

We are not going to outlaw private possession, and even If some President or another managed to pack SCOTUS with anti-gunners and they actually DID outlaw it, that vast majority of the population would refuse to comply. You've really no idea how ingrained the ownership of weapons is in our society, nor how ready one hell of a lot of people are to pull the trigger in defense of that right.

The only way to protect the lumpen from themselves is to impose such horrific penalties on the misuse of firearms that even Cletus and Billy Joe Jim Bob are forced take notice.

Griz_ wrote:Even the most liberal interpretation of the second amendment does not preclude being accountable for insuring the safety of others if you own one. Safe storage laws do not infringe upon ones right to keep and bear arms. It's possibly one of the most effective steps that could be taken to prevent accidental negligent discharges and I just don't understand why this hasn't been pushed harder.

Couldn't agree more. But, how do you enforce those regulations? You cannot override 4th Amendment rights against warrantless search, so how can you insure gun owners are actually complying with the safe storage regulations? Again, it's only after the fact that you can charge them. My understanding of Australian law is anyone owning guns is subject to search at any time, but Australia doesn't have a 4th Amendment, and frankly I can't see many By Gawd Merikans lettin' them Po Po into their house without a fight.

Griz_ wrote:

laklak wrote:

Griz_ wrote:Even the most liberal interpretation of the second amendment does not preclude being accountable for insuring the safety of others if you own one. Safe storage laws do not infringe upon ones right to keep and bear arms. It's possibly one of the most effective steps that could be taken to prevent accidental negligent discharges and I just don't understand why this hasn't been pushed harder.

Couldn't agree more. But, how do you enforce those regulations? You cannot override 4th Amendment rights against warrantless search, so how can you insure gun owners are actually complying with the safe storage regulations? Again, it's only after the fact that you can charge them. My understanding of Australian law is anyone owning guns is subject to search at any time, but Australia doesn't have a 4th Amendment, and frankly I can't see many By Gawd Merikans lettin' them Po Po into their house without a fight.

Pretty much the same way safe storage laws are enforced in Canada. Yes, charges are laid after an event but also can be laid if in the course of a legal search of a domicile, vehicle etc, an improperly stored firearm is discovered. The sentence can be up to two years. But the police are not breaking doors down up here looking for improperly stored firearms and would have a nearly impossible legal hurdle obtaining a search warrant for that purpose, but they do discover them during legal searches for other purposes. Up here, legal gun owners are pretty careful about safe storage. Sure, illegal gun owners don't much care about it (they have bigger problems if caught) but legal responsible gun owners do seem to be the cause of a lot of so-called accidents in the US. There really is a culture of safe storage up here among legal gun owners and I credit safe storage laws with that. Equally important is the Canadian Firearms Safety Course which is mandatory and it's heavy emphasis on safety but that's not going to happen in the US as it would likely to be found to violate the 2nd amendment. Safe storage laws however might pass the Constitutional test IMO.

laklak wrote:My understanding of Australian law is anyone owning guns is subject to search at any time, but Australia doesn't have a 4th Amendment, and frankly I can't see many By Gawd Merikans lettin' them Po Po into their house without a fight.

OlivierK wrote:

laklak wrote:My understanding of Australian law is anyone owning guns is subject to search at any time, but Australia doesn't have a 4th Amendment, and frankly I can't see many By Gawd Merikans lettin' them Po Po into their house without a fight.

Your understanding is correct.

We do have laws against warrantless searches, but gun safe inspections are exempt from them.

I recall similar arguments being made, both here and in the US, about the privacy implications of random breath testing of drivers. How does that work there with regards to the 4th?

(Answered my own question a little about that: http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/argum ... amendment/ )

Neither of those rationales are implicated here, he maintains: once a suspected drunk driver has been arrested, his breath does not pose any danger to the arresting officers, and he can’t change or otherwise destroy the alcohol content of his blood.

Onyx8 wrote:I still don't get that, there's bears here and I don't keep a gun handy for them. We have cougars and wolves too and I still go out unarmed into the woods all the time, never felt the need for a weapon.

Onyx8 wrote:I still don't get that, there's bears here and I don't keep a gun handy for them. We have cougars and wolves too and I still go out unarmed into the woods all the time, never felt the need for a weapon.