http://www.federalwaymirror.com/opinion/lawmakers-exploit-child-gun-tragedies-firearms-lawyer/
Anti-gun groups and politicians regularly exploit accidents involving children and guns. For example, anti-gun state Senator Adam Kline (D-37) and two other state Senators were primed and ready to propose new legislation (SB 6628)immediately following the incident in which a nine-year old boy recently brought a gun to a Bremerton elementary school. The gun accidentally discharged resulting in another student suffering serious gunshot wounds. Saul Alinsky was the Chicago radical that urged his fellow Socialists to exploit every crisis in order to advance the cause of total government control.
Unfortunately, subsequent events have transpired since the tragedy in Bremerton that seem to indicate that parents are leaving guns around where their kids can find them. While people all over the state were still discussing the Bremerton school incident, an off-duty Marysville police Officer parked his van near Stanwood City Hall.
The officer’s son, left alone in the vehicle, found the officer’s gun in the glove compartment and shot his 7-year-old sister. The girl died from her injuries. So much for the idea that law enforcement officers are more trustworthy when it comes to firearms responsibility!
To make things worse, a 3-year-old boy fatally shot himself with a gun he found in the family car while his family stopped for gas in Tacoma. The mom’s boyfriend put a pistol under the seat of the car and got out to pump gas while the mom went into the convenience store, leaving the boy and his baby sister in the car. The boy climbed out of his child seat, fished out the gun from under the seat and shot himself in the head.
Whenever episodes of gun mayhem get play in the media, Sen. Kline usually finds his way into the news. In the past, he has proposed new state laws prohibiting certain kinds of rifles that he thinks are too much like military weapons.
Despite the fact that the Founding Fathers exhorted Americans that preparing Americans to use militarily useful weapons was their objective when drafting the Second Amendment, Adam Kline wants to ban guns that seem scary; i.e., most guns- if the truth be known.
Kline’s newly proposed SB 6628 would now provide new language to the existing RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT statute making it a crime to let a child obtain access to a loaded firearm. The trouble is that prosecutors already utilize Washington State’s RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT statute to prosecute folks that leave guns in places where children are likely to get hold of them. The “new” provision contains no new penalties and is apparently window dressing to make Kline look like he is doing something about a problem that may not even exist.
While fatal firearm accidents are at an all-time low, poisoning, suffocation and choking on small objects cause many more accidental deaths to children than firearms. In fact, about one accidental firearm death of a child each year is typical in our state, according to state health statistics gathered between 2007 and 2010.
The biggest question about the recent spate of gun accidents is why folks obtain concealed pistol licenses and then leave their guns behind when going about in public. That one time that you are outside your vehicle pumping gas could just be the time that you need the weapon.
But even if you never need to protect yourself or your family, the best way to keep a pistol out of reach of children is to have it on your person. Otherwise, it should be unloaded and properly stored.
A Seattle anti-gun advocacy group is placing signs on buses to persuade Seattle residents and commuters that gun ownership is more dangerous to family members or loved ones than it will be to a predatory criminal. The Washington State Supreme Court has consistently championed firearms rights and the right to self-defense is deeply engrained in our state’s laws, including numerous case law precedents. Adam Kline, on the other hand, is reportedly a former radical and still seems to favor governmental solutions over individual responsibility.
I am constantly amazed when I hear the children of the Sixties railing against gun ownership. These are often the very folks that went around U.S. campuses inveighing against capitalism and chanting, “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun!” Chairman Mao, the tyrant that cheerfully murdered over 60 million of his fellow Chinese citizens, coined that catchy little dictum.
After he marched across China and took control, the first thing Mao did was ban guns, depriving the people under his control from possessing the means to defend themselves against numerous Maoist purges. But, notwithstanding the fact that all tyrants ban possession of firearms by their own citizens, lock up your guns when you are not using them! And keep firearms out of the hands of unsupervised children.
The Law Office of Mark Knapp PLLC 