Gun Control Supporters in Washington State are pushing a bill that would make leaving a firearm where a child can find it reckless endangerment. Reading the bill, which shows the context of Washington State’s reckless endangerment law, I’m not sure why something like a kid taking a gun to shoot up a school couldn’t already be covered with the existing language. I also note that the bill also raises the fee to get a permit to carry, I guess just as an extra middle finger extended in the direction of gun owners by the legislator sponsoring this bill. It’s amazing how their utter contempt for gun owners and gun ownership helps to sabotage their best unintended efforts, and unmask what they are really about.
I don’t really have too much of an issue with parents being liable for the actions of their children if they did something negligent to help facilitate their criminal behavior, but I don’t think mere possession should be a high enough standard to trigger a criminal charge. Years ago, Bitter’s mother, as a juvenile in rural Oklahoma, had to gain possession of a shotgun in order to protect herself from a home invader. The threat of a shotgun was enough to dissuade the gentlemen from further intrusion. How would gun control advocates feel about their daughter being home alone as a teenager with a home invader threatening her? Better just to give the guy whatever he wants? Call 911 and hope the cops arrive in time? My friend and sometimes co-blogger Jason, who is only a couple of years older than me, was on his trap team in high school, and used to take a shotgun to school. Farther back, there’s Justice Scalia, who spoke about lugging a slung rifle on the New York City subway system from Queens to Manhattan every day.
We were a far less violent society during the time when kids had relatively easy access to firearms. That’s a fact, and not something our opponents can debate or refute. The fact that CAP laws are even proposed is just another symptom of an ill society where no one wants to take personal  responsibility for anything, and we ask the state to step in and assume the role of responsible parent. Our opponents act like the issue of these CAP laws is just slam-dunk common sense; that you’re crazy for thinking the issue might be a bit more complicated, and it might not be so easy a tradeoff. I don’t think it is an easy tradeoff. I’d not go so far as to suggest that juveniles be issued permits, and be able to tote a Glock 19 around town, but generally speaking, for most other dangerous things, like driving, we ease kids into the responsibility when they are old enough to understand the risks. I would go as far as saying I’d like to return to a world where schools had shooting teams, and it was no big deal for a high school aged kid to lug a rifle to school on the New York subway system because there was a rifle match after school.
I think putting gun safety training back in schools might help mitigate the number of mass shootings. Guns are just tools, and demystifying them early on goes a long way towards preventing weird fetishes or power trips or whatever it is that seems to fuel our culture’s particular fascination with the “Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid” out-in-a-ball-of-glory b.s. Everyone should know how to handle a gun, and also know that picking one up doesn’t make you a man.
I also can’t help but wonder: if you leave a gun out in the open, and a child uses it for ill, and you are held liable for it…could you be held liable when a child is trained in the use of a gun, but you keep it out of her reach, and innocent people are killed with a pitchfork because of it?
I really wish that all consequences of a bill are considered, not just the ones we can immediately see!
In the case that spawned this potential law, both parents were already prohibited persons and arrest warrents have been issued for them as felons in possesion.
The fee hike isn’t just an extended middle finger toward gun owners; it’s also an attempt to ram this bill through after the cut-off dates kill non-budgetary items, and an end run around rules intended to make legislators finish critical budget items before end of session.
Lugging a gun around on the subways was nuthin’! I remember Sister Mary John supervising the 7th graders who ground up sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal to make black powder for show and tell. Then she let several classes watch as it was set off in a big pile in the front yard of the school. Take that, control freaks!