BY DANA CRISWELL
Earlier this month we saw where gun owners in England have been forced to give up any shred of freedom they possess in the name of safety for the children. Gun storage laws in England require all firearms to be locked away and since all guns are registered in their country police now have the right to enter anyones home unannounced to inspect how their firearms are stored.
Research has proven that gun locks do not keep anyone safe and actually put everyone in greater danger because the firearm is not available for self defense when needed. But reason and facts never seem to make much difference to the anti gun crowd because safety is not really their goal. In their effort to control the behavior of gun owners and to render them helpless they do not care who else is placed in harms way.
Now Washington state anti-gun legislators are hoping to capitalize on the Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting and reintroduce failed gun storage legislation in January.
Hearldnet.com reports;
State Rep. Ruth Kagi, D-Seattle, whose district includes parts of south Snohomish County, for two years has sponsored a bill that would require that guns be safely stored, making it a crime if a person stores or leaves a loaded firearm in a place where a child under 16 could get it.
It didn’t get out of committee in 2013 and didn’t get a hearing in 2014. She said Wednesday she’ll try again in 2015. The Legislature convenes in January.
She introduced it because of a series of accidental child deaths and adolescent suicides in Washington involving guns. She thinks loss of life could be reduced with a safe-storage law.
“When I reintroduce it next session, I think the issue in Marysville will clearly add a dimension because a 15-year-old boy was able to access a gun and do tremendous harm,” she said. “If that gun had been safely stored in a lockbox, maybe this tragedy would not have happened.”
In a 2001 study by John Lott and John Whitney the effectiveness of mandatory gun safety locks was researched.
The research by Lott and Whitney found that gun safe-storage laws “have no impact on accidental gun deaths or gun suicides.”
But they also found that with the passage of safe storage laws, the “only consistent impact of safe storage laws was to raise rape, robbery, and burglary rates.” What Lott and Whitney found was that with limited access to guns in the home, crime increase. The researchers estimated that safe storage laws resulted in “3,738 more rapes, 21,000 more robberies, and 49,733 more burglaries annually” in the 15 states used for their study. They further stated that safe storage laws, “manage to produce no significant change in accidental deaths or suicides and yet still raise crime rates…”
Apparently Washington State Rep. Ruth Kagi, D-Seattle is a pro-rape, pro-robbery, pro-burglary Democrat.
As we head to the polls Tuesday don’t forget, our own Thad Cochran supported similar legislation in the U.S. Senate. So keep that in mind was you make your selections next week.
