Extremism about guns violates common sense
Mary Sanchez
Who could possibly be against keeping guns out of the hands of toddlers?
Plenty of people, it would seem, if you were able to follow Hillary Clinton’s argument in last Wednesday’s presidential debate about a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment, and the vituperative reaction to it. Clinton was challenged about her opposition to the District of Columbia v. Heller decision of 2008 that struck down a law passed in Washington in 1975. For Second Amendment stalwarts, the majority opinion, written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, is darn close to holy scripture. The 5-4 decision was a broad affirmation of an individual’s right to private gun ownership for self-defense. It is huge.
Clinton said that she supported the individual’s right to own guns but disagreed with the ruling in that it didn’t support “reasonable restrictions.”
“What the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns,” Clinton said. This sent gun rights people howling. Nowhere in the law or the decision are children mentioned, they objected. But that’s a lit- tle beside the point. A federal petition filed in support of the original law did argue for its use in keeping children safe, Politifact reported soon after the debate.
“The smaller the weapon, the more likely a child can use it, and children as young as 3 years old are strong enough to fire today’s handguns,” the petition stated.
Among other restrictions, the law had called for licensed guns in the home to be unloaded and disassembled or kept with a trigger lock, for safety concerns. Granted, the safe handling of firearms wasn’t the main impetus of the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975. Preventing criminal gun violence — murders and other crimes — was the primary concern. But, knowing what we now do about gun accidents involving children, it is an entirely valid standpoint from which to criticize Heller. Nevertheless, Clinton’s argument was judged half true by Politifact. A sane point of view — that the Scalia majority on the court had overreached by quashing any sensible regulation of firearms — was lost. Reporting by The Washington Post has found about one shooting by a young child a week in America. This is likely an undercount, as many instances do not make the news unless it’s a parent or a sibling who dies. The Centers for Disease Control find that at least six children are injured in an unintentional shooting every day.
There really is no argument that such shootings shouldn’t be prevented. It’s a misnomer to call most of them “accidental.” A new national initiative announced in mid-October seeks change. The Children’s Firearm Safety Alliance is coordinating physicians, law enforcement, prosecutors, lawmakers and other advocates to look at what can be done nationally through policy work, legislation and education around gun safety. It has promoted the hashtag #NotAnAccident and propagated this disturbing tidbit: You are more likely to be shot by a U.S. toddler than by a terrorist. Keeping a loaded gun unsecured and within easy reach of a toddler ought to be considered a criminal act of negligence. A portion of the law that was struck down in Heller understood this. The right to own a gun doesn’t need to conflict with efforts to keep young children’s tiny hands away from pulling triggers.