Being in the house IS "locked up". The crime of breaking in and stealing the gun is where the problem starts.

I love guns, love shooting them, love holding them, just love them. But I don't love to have them in my house, the responsibility is to great a burden for me. I have more important things to worry about.

Unless your house has no windows and is built like Fort Knox, it is not locked up. There's also the hot new GF who you might have staying the weekend, the guy who comes to measure for carpets, the bug exterminator. Anybody could spread the word you have guns laying around, and a broken window later they are gone. Criminals don't obey laws, right?

Most people won't lose it but really angry, isolated people might react poorly to spending hours sighting on and shooting swarms of geeks. Seems like the deal now with games is it's OK to slaughter zombies cause they're not people.

To a guy like Lanza, I could imagine he might see the general public as zombies. Buncha people he doesn't like and can't relate to.

When you assume....

By definition, the weapon is not in your control if you don't have the ability to take it into your hands. It may be in a controlled environment....

Would you leave the cash equivalent of your gun lying on the kitchen table when you are not home?

I know I don't.... not expecting to get broken into and burglarized, but it has happened, so I don't make it easy in case it happens again.

Locking up your weapon when you are not home is not protecting the criminal, it's protecting everyone else.

I forget what country, maybe S. Africa but I was reading that while gun safes were widespread there was a problem with gang home invasions where they would hold the residents captive and use various sorts of coercion to force them to open the safe to get at the guns.

Fort knox huh. So the police state is at home? Gun safes are not impenetrable.

How about the death penalty for stealing one of these weapons of doom? It puts the responsibility at the feet of the criminals instead of creating more criminals for owning the weapons.


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When we characterize each other as illogical, insane and unsafe it is easier to ignore each other.

That's why I like to call it safer storage - safer than leaving them lying around all over the place. Anyone who doesn't see this an acceptable start is deluding themselves. And, the delusional can always find reasons to maintain their status quo.

For example....

When we characterize each other as illogical, insane and unsafe it is easier to ignore each other.

They aren't "weapons of doom" until they are used to kill innocent people. The goal is to keep them from becoming weapons of doom in the hands of the wrong people, as well as removing the opportunity for government representatives and others to call them such.

That is correct.

- Peter

Clearly, ole Ben was living in a different era.

We did just that here in Canada and I don't think we're suffering for it, excpt it's not temporary - it's part of our culture. It's no secret that Canadians value safety as much as freedom but given a choice they'll take safety first. Both by being and having a sense of safety, we've become free by that virtue.
There's no violent gun culture here. We trust the police to take of things and we know that we won't encounter an armed drunk or anyone else with a bad temper. This soceity as a whole is law abiding and peaceful. Who wouldn't want that for themselves and their family?

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mobileweb/2012/10/14/gun-crime-canada_n_1964750.html

"OTTAWA - Crimes involving guns cost Canadians more than $3 billion a year, suggests an internal Justice Department study that may stoke the gun-control debate."


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If we wanted what Canada has to offer, I'm sure that we would have taken it years ago, and you'd be enjoying the same freedoms we have here in the US. We decided that Hockey was so bad that we didn't even have a season for it this year.

Old Ben had his words right...To most of us int he US, our liberty, our freedoms are much more important than perceived safety.