Tag Archives: safe storage

More Illegaller In Georgia

Reports indicate that Georgia Dim-ocrats are planning some interesting gun control bills for the next session. I have questions.

Spoiler: Rep Sandra Scott is a Dim-ocrat, from the Atlanta area (District 76). Yes, you can expect stupidity.

Georgia Democrats Plan Gun Control Push in Legislature’s Next Session
Lawmakers plan to introduce bills similar to House bills 962 and 971, which did not advance during this year’s session and would require owners to report lost or stolen firearms and require firearm dealers to furnish gun locks in all retail firearm sales.

Right off, I see a problem. The previous HB 971 (also sponsored by Scott), which this new legislation would seemingly mirror, was rather more than a requirement that firearms dealer provide locks. It was a “secure storage” requirement for gun owners. I’ve noted that other attempts at “safe storage” (i.e.- useless for defense) laws have been fairly carefully written since Heller (2008), which tossed the requirement that firearms be “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.” The cleverer laws impose liability on a gun owner if an unauthorized person accesses and misuses a firearm. Scott’s 971 would have made “improper” storage a misdemeanor criminal offense whether or not a firearm is accessed, much less if it’s used.

This year’s Bruen ruling also comes into play with this unsafe storage requirement. In that case, the Supreme Court decided that gun control laws must be evaluated, not under intermediate scrutiny (“does it serve a perceived governmental need”) or strict scrutiny (“does it even work”), but under a general historical tradition test that begins with a presumption that Second Amendment rights must be protected.

How exactly does Scott justify so-called “secure storage” of firearms and mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms with BRUEN? A few quick searches don’t reveal any general historical tradition of requiring that firearms be stored in an unusable state.

From there, Scott descends into sheer stupidity, or lunacy; you decide.

State Rep. Sandra Scott, D-Rex, said lawmakers are also eying legislation that would prevent Glock owners from turning the guns into automatic weapons.

26 U.S. Code § 5861(a) and 18 U.S. Code § 922(a)(4)make it a felony for any unlicensed person to manufacture (or convert) a machinegun. The Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 prohibited virtually all manufacture or transfer of mew machineguns. Georgia Code § 16-11-122 and § 16-11-123 likewise already ban possession of machineguns not federally licensed and taxed. Thus, it is, and has been for decades, unlawful for Glock, or any other firearm, owners to covert their firearms into machineguns.

What is the purpose of a new, redundant law outlawing that which is already outlawed, eh, Scott?

She did know this, right? Perhaps her proposed bill will address the issue of criminals who are already ignoring Georgia and federal law.

Ready for more legislative dumbassery?

“We really need to be trying to come up with a way that will restrict kids from being able to go in and purchase weapons…”

“Go in and purchase” suggests that she is speaking of “kids” (minors) purchasing firearms in gun stores. Raise your hands if you see the issue here.

18 U.S. Code § 922 makes it unlawful, a felony, for those under 18 to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer (and makes it a crime for a dealer to make such a sale). How did Scott miss that? It isn’t something new.

Georgia Code § 16-11-132 makes it unlawful for minor to even possess handguns, with certain exceptions for specified sporting activities under supervision, another long standing restriction that seems to have escaped the Dim-wit’s notice.

I brought these issues to Rep. Scott’s attention. To her credit, and unlike most pols, she actually replied.

Thanks for the information. I will have the legislation reviewed because I am concerned..

It seems to me that the proper time to “review” proposed legislation is before it’s filed or publicly announced, not after people publicly ridicule her ignorance. So forgive me if I think she’s more “concerned” with being outed as a fool (too late!), rather than constitutionality and redundancy.

Sadly, Scott appears to be running unopposed in her solidly Dim district; so there’s no opponent to tip off as to her legislative incompetence.

 

If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in my tip jar. I could really use the money, what with ISP bills, site hosting and SSL certificate, new 2021 model hip, and general life expenses.Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

An Active Imagination

This sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

Locking Up Guns Could Reduce Teen And Childhood Firearm Deaths By A Third
Most US households with children do not safely store firearms in the way the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends: locked up and unloaded. If parents simply locked up all their guns, then up to a third of gun suicides and accidental deaths among children and teens could be avoided, researchers estimate in a new study.

Cut by a third. I think we need to take a look at the study, Association of Increased Safe Household Firearm Storage With Firearm Suicide and Unintentional Death Among US Youths, itself instead of taking channel 13’s word for it.

This modeling study using Monte Carlo simulation estimated that 6% to 32% of youth firearm deaths (by suicide and unintentional firearm injury) could be prevented, depending on the probability that an intervention motivates adults who currently do not lock all household firearms to instead lock all guns in their home.

So the researchers actually came up with an oddly wide range of 6% to 32% (which is less than a third). So far, so good. That would be nice to know. How did they do that?

DESIGN, SETTING, and PARTICIPANTS: A modeling study using Monte Carlo simulation of youth firearm suicide and unintentional firearm mortality in 2015. A simulated US national sample of firearm-owning households where youth reside was derived using nationally representative rates of firearm ownership and storage and population data from the US Census to test a hypothetical intervention, safe storage of firearms in the home, on youth accidental death and suicide.

This wasn’t even a dubious “synthetic control” (make up imaginary states by selectively combining real states) study. Simulation. They didn’t use real data. They made it up. Then they applied “hypothetical intervention” to their imaginary data.

For the record, you can stop right there. The “study” is meaningless. But the fact that their “youth” includes 18 and 19 year old adults would have told you that anyway.

I also found it amusing that they created their imaginary country using firearms numbers and storage methods gathered in the National Firearms survey, in which 45% of selectees declined to participate, leaving only those stupid enough to tell strangers how many guns they have and how they’re stored, if even if they are locked up.

Then there is this:

we assumed that all deaths resulted from firearms kept in homes where youth resided.

Invalid assumption, which even the most cursory web search could have told them. Even The Trace admits that 1 in 5 youth suicides are committed with guns not kept in the person’s home.

I could go about things like them doing a study about 0-19 year olds but using data from studies on 0-17, or that gun-owning adults (18, 19) need only unlock their safely stored gun and do the deed. Instead, let me explain how they could have come to meaningful conclusions.

At least a dozen states have so-called “safe storage” laws. For each state, graph the unintentional firearms death rate per 100,000 for people 0-17, for the period of 1999 to 2017 (years chosen because their readily available in WISQARS).

Then graph the firearms suicide rates for the same group and period.

Now identify the point in time when the safe storage law went into effect in each state.

Note the trend. Did the rate increase or decrease abruptly? Did the pre-law trend simply continue? Are there other discontinuities in the trend at other points in time which you can correlate to some known event (such as a sudden increase during a period of high unemployment)?

Compare the trends of the states. Did each state experience the same trend (more likely to be a correlation with the storage law), or do the differ significantly?

We have 30-something states without “safe storage” laws. Pick a dozen of those, preferably states with otherwise similar demographics as one of the “safe” states; the idea being to minimize the effect of non-safe storage factors.

Graph the same data for the same period, and analyze for the same trends.

How do the “unsafe” trends compare to the “safe” trends?

Now you have data to support a real conclusion.

But wait! There’s more.

Run another set of state by state graphs; this time for number and rate of firearms-related murders. We want to see if locking up one’s security had any negative effects. Saving one kid at the expense of 2-3 murder victims is expensive.

If you really want to be comprehensive, graph home burglaries and violent crime rates for the same period. Did locking up security embolden burglars and rapists?

But real data might not give you the results you want.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with ISP and web host bills. And the rabbits need feed. Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

Incentive

Governments have a habit of throwing money at problems…

…unless it might go to honest folks. Like honest, noncriminal gun owners.

So they’ll pay criminals to “behave,” but punish gun owners for not “behaving.” I’ve got a better idea.

Just those three Danegeld cities would account for some $6 million a year in extortion payments. That would buy more than 105,000 of these little gun safes, and handguns are the preferred firearm of choice — small, concealable, easily disposed of — for criminals.

Instead of criminalizing theft victims, and paying off the predators, how about incentivizing guns owners to secure unattended weapons?

Michael Bloomberg spent $20 million just on Nevada’s 2016 background check initiative, only to see it fail when it turned out his toadies wrote an unenforceable proposition. He could have spent the same money on 350,000 gun safes — for more than 10% of the state’s population –, and actually accomplished something.

For that matter, $20 million would provide excellent bounty payments for would-be victims who take out the criminal who attempted to prey upon them. A two-fer: incentivizing defense and elimination of criminal predators.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills.

paypal_btn_donateCC_LG


Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail