I do not have a gun safe at this time as there is only my wife and me in the house and didn’t have any guns when we had kids in the house. I am considering one to store extra guns if someone breaks into our home. If someone visits our home, rare these days, I put them in the trunk of my car.
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Stephen,
here’s the deal…I know you’re trying to find a solution to what you see as a problem and I absolutely support that…but I need you to stop and really think about this for a second.
- You want to ignore our 4th Amendment right which states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. You can’t "force people to allow Police to search their homes and gun safe without erasing our constitutional rights. - Who exactly will be “searching our gun safe?” Police have 1 job. to collect evidence for the DA to prosecute…period. Their whole job is to secure evidence against you. don’t get me wrong, I love police…and many try to help where they can but their entire job is to “uphold the law” and in doing so, their first and foremost duty is to collect evidence of any crime. SOOOOOOOO, how sure are you that you are 100% legal? Do you know all the laws pertaining to firearms that may or may not apply to you? When you invite an officer into your home and they see something non-firearm related that is not permitted…are you ready to accept that you go to jail while it gets resolved? How sure are you that you are adhering to the current laws?
- Who will allocate resources to going door to door to check gun safes? I ask because clearly you have no idea the workload police already have so adding one more thing to their plate is simply naive. Police already are spread thin enough…so who will go door to door and have the authority to “require” gun owners to comply? What happens when someone says no? Those of us who value the constitution and know our rights…we are Law Abiding but certainly don’t want to open our doors to our home or our gun safes to scrutiny and skepticism. While I am certainly law abiding…if someone showed up at my door looking to check my safe, I’d happily tell him where to shove it and I have absolute certainty that there’s nothing in my safe that is illegal. I am just a constitutionalist and know my rights.
- how do you enforce such a law? You state it has to happen, but do you know how much it will cost, the manpower required, additional resources required and the negative impact it would have overall? Have you really thought this through or are you just blinding living in your fantasy thinking this sounds lovely on paper and never actually took the time to really comprehend the full picture?
My issue with a lot of people is they come up with an idea and think their job is done. Problem is, they rarely consider the pro’s and the con’s, consider the costs, consider the impact, and really think it through to realize their idea is “F#$King stupid!” Not to say your idea is such…but it is. If we were to use a marathon analogy…you got to mile marker 1 and gave up. You didn’t even get to the second mile and certainly didn’t reach the finish line. Why? because you feel that bypassing our constitutional rights to prevent illegal search and seizure, right to prevent us from implicating ourselves in a crime is somehow unimportant.
Case in point. One example of why you DON’T invite investigators (aka Police) to “check out your home/safe” is:
This guy tried to do the right thing and unfortunately wasn’t aware he broke some ambiguous law and ended up screwing himself. You’d like us to all open ourselves and our families up to that? How very considerate of you.
UK Firearms Inspections DO NOT APPLY in the US because the UK doesn’t have a constitution that protects their right to bare arms. Quoting some nonsensical information on the UK’s method simply doesn’t apply. I’d wager you’ve never been outside the US and certainly never lived outside the US because most people who live sheltered lives that I know tend to have opinions like yours. I have…and England is about 100,000 square miles. To put that into perspective…California is about 164,000 square miles. So, the entire country could fit in a single state here in the US. Think about that for a second. The issues of their entire country are about the same as a single state in our country. Kinda of pathetic that you try and compare such a tiny place to our ENTIRE COUNTRY isn’t it? Not to mention that the UK resides on an island while we are nestled in between Canada and Mexico and our continent is connected to South America and all their lovely issues as well…or did you forget that we keep gettin immigrants from Venezuela and El Salvador every year?
I guess my last point is quite simply, why should I give a rat’s behind how my neighbor feel’s about MY firearms? At what point did our country go from, we are all free to live our lives to, we need to make our neighbors happy no matter how we feel? I don’t like golf. In fact, I absolutely hate golf. Should I push to have all golf shut down and all golf courses closed because I don’t like it? Should everyone say screw the people who love golf because I don’t like it? Why are firearms any different? I’m tired of placating the butt hurt idiots out there who don’t like guns. Life is what it is…it doesn’t cater to everyone and everyone can’t always get what they want. We all live the lives we want and have to accept that others will live their lives as they see fit. I can no sooner dictate how others should live than you or some anti-gun douche can dictate how I live. Why do you want to placate and make everyone happy? You can’t!!
Lastly, F#$K piece of mind. Grow thicker skin and stop thinking the world revolves around your rear. It’s time we stop pampering everyone and once again remind people that we ALL have a right to live as we choose. If you want to bend over and “receive it” from everyone, that’s your business…but stop thinking the rest of us should also.
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Wait a minute, while they are there keeping you safe from yourself and preventing gun accidents they can:
Check your computer and phone to make sure you are not viewing child pornography
Audit your financial records to make sure you are fiscally responsible.
Check under your sink for improperly stored draino, bleach, and other cleaners which could be toxic.
Verify no unsecured tide pods on the washing machine (we know what dumb arse kids do with them now days)
Anyone else care to add to list of lunacy???
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That’s the thing. What ‘safe storage’ means could vary wildly from one residence to the next. Having a uniform code could make some firearms owners less safe.
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What would it solve? Most would resist. Many would not share all that they have. Many can be hidden or in alternate locations, so they’d know what they know now…for a lot more $ to pay people to perform this task. And…no one wants others to know where their firearms are.
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Are you sure about that?
This is one of the dumbest ideas I have heard. LMFAO, the police are going to inspect my gun(s) and tell me if they need to be cleaned?
As stated, 4th Amendment.
Well, also the 2A.
How I store my gun(s) is my own dang bidness.
“Safety” is relevant. Some say their stuff is secure in a locked home or room. Some might put their guns in a locked cabinet, some a safe, some a safe room… All of those things can be broken into, some easier than others. When you require citizens to secure their stuff so a criminal can’t get it, you are opening a big can of worms. Think shield vs sword.
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As did the mother of the Sandyhook shooter.
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The least safe option. Under your mattress would be a better option, if you are just trying to hide them. A safe is no better than the locks on your doors. An illegal act is just that, does it matter how many locks are compromised during such an illegal act?
How does inspecting serial numbers make anything “safer”? Is it to ensure no one broke into your safe, stole your gun, and replaced it with an identical model so you couldn’t tell?
Are you proposing they functionally test all after market changes to ensure they were installed and function “safely”?
I just picked out a couple of specific items to ask about, but honestly I don’t perceive anything on this list making any of us “safer”.
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Apparently he does not want them going door-to-door, but selecting only those that are “registered” firearm owners, as those would be the only ones on the “list”. It would likely be ruled, similarly to the 2005 SCOTUS ruling, that if the police went to a felon’s home and found improperly secured firearms, or just firearms, that their rights under, this time, the 4th Amendment were abrogated, and the police would then be required to only search legal firearm owners’ homes.
The bigger question is, if they expected to find x number of firearms and found, x+y firearms or x-y firearms, what would the result of that be? I suspect that I am not unusual in that I have “unregistered” firearms, those that have no known ownership connection to me, such as those given by friends and family, one that is well over 100 years old, too.
I further wonder what benefit there is to a search done once every five years? Even if it were a daily search, if someone were doing something illegal, they would learn quickly, as drug dealers have, to leave their stash, or in the case of firearm owners, cache of firearms, elsewhere.
He claims he is a firearm owner, but believes that it is not a Natural or God-given right, but a privilege bestowed upon us by our government. I wonder how the American Revolution would have gone, if they just turned in all the arms and powder as the Brits demanded. The events of that day, when the Brits marched on Lexington and Concord, were illegal acts, including the murder of many Brit soldiers and officers.
It is difficult to imagine that someone can be as naive as he is. If he truly is, he should begin his quest for knowledge by reading the Federalist papers, and other speeches and writings of our Founding Fathers. Quite enlightening, and sadly, the issues they contended with, we now are today.
These “gun control” posts of his are rather trite, and no different than we have seen by those that are deemed trolls. He claims he isn’t and claims he is a firearm owner, but that is what they all claim in a pathetic attempt to make idiots believe they know what they are commenting about. However, this site, though public, is mostly used by those that have strong knowledge, or seeking such, about firearms, related laws, etc., and believe so firmly in our inalienable, Natural Rights, that we believe in our RKBA and our Natural Right to self-defense. These rights, as Jefferson stated, pre-exist government and the Law of Man.
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My thoughts, exactly.
I do not propose barring people from other countries from this forum; I just often wonder why they are here. It is evident that the concepts that we take for granted are far alien to them.
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Your concerns are valid. Accidental deaths are tragic and some people do not store or handle their firearms in a way that will prevent these. But I wish that instead of finding more ways for our constitutional rights to be violated that you would think of other solutions. Laws rarely solve problems and it is not the job of the police to keep us safe. Their job is to find and stop criminals let’s not distract them from it.
I’m all in though if you want to push for easily accessed, voluntary educational programs and media campaigns to stop these tragedies.
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Like, in schools, for children to be educated how to handle guns safely? I am sure kids would enjoy it, people who grew up in the 1950s-60s attest to that.
I already see some educators and superintendents blowing a vessel.
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Those educators need to decide if they truly care about the safety of the children under their charge or if they would rather allow more accidental deaths because of their own uneducated fears.
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Just a side note if you have a machine gun and the Federal license for it they will come and inspect.
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Surely, you have statistics or studies that are public that we can use to see if it has merit? You are making a broad assertion that has very little logic attached, so if it works (somehow) in some other country I personally would actually be rather curious to see if what they did actually had an impact and if it did how might that be translated here.
Since you didn’t answer it the first time (I can only assume on purpose because you answered the other Qs in my post), I’ll ask again…
Did you know that they do this in NYC?
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What gives that impression?
I can go into all the legal reasons this is a bad idea, and the illegality of this in regards to our rights as outlined by the founders. There is also the fallacy that what someone defines as “safe” storage will lead to less accidents.
I grew up in a household, and played with friends who’s houses had guns, and not a single one was locked in any way, shape or form. It is about teaching your children right and educating them about guns. What needs to happen is that an NRA-designed firearms education program needs to be taught in schools. Sex ed is taught in schools, so why not firearms education? There will be people who object, but there are parents who object to sex ed too. That is the broad idea that can be hammered out, but @Stephen116, when you are trying to prevent firearms accidents, it is important to know exactly how firearm deaths break down. Here is a good video explaining the break-down. We all agree with you in that we all want safety, but trusting the government to keep us safe is not a good option.
And here is an article on the data as well:
So, to be clear, you are talking about violating the US constitution for less than 500 deaths a year. Yes, they are tragic, and yes, they are preventable, but, if you are going to take on the responsibility of a firearm, then you have a personal responsibility to ensure that it is stored safely. It is not the government’s job to be responsible for us, the people.
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