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Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

Of course it is. All violent crime is down.

That has nothing to do with the fact that kids are still accidentally getting shot.

I propose a new law; if a child (under 18) is found in possession of a gun the gun owner is fined $50,000. If the gun's ownership cannot be established, the parents or legal guardians are fined $50,000 instead.

People might be a little more serious about locking up their guns and not letting their kids play with them.

Dumb parents never seemed to be scared of their kids accidentally shooting each other but and one of them dies, maybe they'd be scared of them accidentally shooting each other and owing $50,000.

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What a silly law. Why don't we fine people $50,000 every time they do anything irresponsible or dangerous. Surely that would make our society safe and responsible!

Seriously, no one is going to pay heed to this law because how would you ever get caught? No one thinks their kid is going to get into their guns, if they did they would do something to prevent it. I can't believe you actually suggest that someone would care more about a $50,000 fine than if their kid shot themself or someone else.

I don't own any guns now, but some of my earliest and fondest memories are of shooting guns with my dad. I think it started when I was seven... I was never allowed to use guns on my own, only with strict supervision with safety gear etc.

If the government was really worried about children getting into guns, they wouldn't set up a bunch of pointless fines, they would start an educational campaign (maybe even get the NRA involved) reminding people that if they have guns they should secure them and teach their children the dangers of guns etc.

Honestly its not that hard, get a cheap gun safe, lock your guns up, keep the key on your key chain. Be an actual parent and educate your children. Problem solved.

Exactly. I grew up with guns in the house. My dad would take us out shooting all the time. But as a kid, I would never even think of going into my dad's room without permission. And if I did venture in there, I certainly would not have touched the rifle he kept under the bed or the .357 he kept in the sock drawer. It was called respect. Respect for authority. Respect for the fire arms. Respect. We have a lack of that these days.

Indeed; my father started taking all of us out hunting at age 3, and if we wanted to go dove hunting at age 10 (it's a safe type where he could and would be right next to us in the beginning), started teaching me how to shoot ~ 1st grade, and I was allowed to use firearms without supervision before 18. Not a lot before 18, but such a proposed law ... well, it totally ignores rural realities, e.g. "Kill that cottonmouth NOW!"

And kids are getting killed accidentally via a number of other methods that don't garner the anti-gun media's attention:

Selected Causes of Death, Ages 0-19, per 100,000 Population (2007) Cause Number of Deaths Mortality Rate Unintentional Injury 11,560 14.0 Motor Vehicle 6,683 8.1 Drowning 1,056 1.3 Fire/Burn 544 0.7 Poisoning 972 1.2 Suffocation/Strangulation 1,263 1.5 Firearm 138 0.2 Homicide 3,345 4.1 Firearm 2,186 2.7 Suicide 1,665 2.0 Firearm 683 0.8 Suffocation/Strangulation 739 0.9 Poisoning 133 0.2

Now this is 6 year old data. But accidental death by firearm isn't the danger that it would appear, compared to other threats.

http://www.childdeathreview.org/nationalchildmortalitydata.h...

Yeah and all those other problems probably have solutions that could reduce the numbers too. Such as having much more stringent driving tests in the US.

Firearms are still responsible for 3,007 out of the 16570 non-natural deaths listed. Or 18%. That's not insignificant.

The solution is not to throw up your hands in the air and say "Oh well there's a bunch of reasons why kids die. Let's not bother doing anything."

I'm not throwing up my hands. I'm pointing to facts. And you're conflating suicides with accidental deaths and homicides. Curiously, the link I posted only breaks out homicides via firearms. According to the CDC, firearms constitute around 84% of the weapons used in homicides for ages 5-19 in 2005. The previous study has it at 65%, so it dropped 19% in two years.

If child/young adult safety is truly the goal, then there are far bigger fish to fry than controlling firearms.

>People might be a little more serious about locking up their guns and not letting their kids play with them.

People are serious about not letting their kids play with guns.

You make it seem like this happens a lot.

In 2007 there were 122 children killed accidentally by firearm.

Sugar breakfast cereal is a far greater danger to kids than guns.

I'm not sure you understand how common a diversion target practice (even shooting tin cans) and small-game hunting is for rural American youths.

The Boy Scouts even have separate Rifle Shooting and Shotgun Shooting merit badges.

Yes and I got both of them.

But giving them up is a small price to pay for fewer dead kids.

I don't see a rational weighing of costs and benefits here.

In particular, you should examine the risk of other activities that you consider acceptable for children, like swimming or going on a car trip to visit relatives in another state.

And you should also consider how many lives would reasonably be saved by your law, which might not work out as perfectly as you think.

Similar policies have worked brilliantly with alcohol and tobacco, or so I hear.

This is an awfully wrong approach. As with things like Alcohol, if you teach your children how to operate and act responsibly, they get into less trouble with it as an adult.

If you stilt their growth and don't allow them to touch a gun until they're 18, they won't have developed enough to handle it themselves without supervision.

Wait are you advocating we lower the drinking age to produce more responsible drinkers?

I think you'll find most irresponsible drinkers started before 21 anyway.

"I think you'll find most irresponsible drinkers started before 21 anyway."

Drinking illegally at 18 years old might lead to different outcomes than drinking legally at the same age.

Starting before 21 legally != Starting before 21 illegally

You'd be surprised how much of a difference it makes when you remove the rebelliousness and allure of doing something illegally. You see this time and time again with parents sheltering their children from certain activities or harsh realities.

It's not across-the-board illegal for a child to possess a gun in the US, although it varies by state.

Age-based gun restrictions are usually about non-parents selling or giving guns to minors, or carrying in public without adult supervision.

Firearms accidents are not a common cause of death; according to the CDC they amount to about 1% of all accidental deaths of young people.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf

I would suggest we focus on swimming pools, which are a far bigger threat to children, before we focus on gun accidents.

Suffice to say that 99.9% of all parents value their children's lives more than any amount of money or even their own life, so a fine is a trivial persuader. That other 0.1% can't comprehend safety nor would have $50K to lose.

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