A responsible gun owner follows the range rules:
- Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
- Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you intend to fire.
- Never point your weapon at anything you don't intend to shoot.
- Keep your weapon on safe until you intend to fire.
- I will also add: Educates children not to touch the firearm and keeps it in a safe location unreachable by children and robbers.
- A responsibile gun owner surrounds themselves with others who follow these rules and reminds others who forget.
Whoosh.
And yet again, and again and again: that's all well and good until one "accident" when one of those rules are broken, and they are suddenly declared "
not a responsible gun owner," as if it was something that they always were.
I hope you are willing to police these folks and make sure they are in compliance every day.
Look, let me make it even easier:
You've got two blokes. Both in their 50s, both "Responsible gun owners" since their teenage years when pops bought them their fist pew-pew toy.
bloke A lives his entire life, never breaking those rules until his death.
bloke B lives his entire life, well up until ~67 when he's teaching the grandkid how to fire the pew-pew out in the backyard and the kid grabs it too quickly out of his hand and it fires, kicking back because of the kid's little hands, and shoots the kid in the face. sad.
suddenly, bloke B is not a responsible gun owner. This is entirely obvious in hindsight, but it obviously helps no one. Here's the problem, and the point: from ages 13-67 for both of these blokes, you are tasked with distinguishing the responsible gun owner from the irresponsible gun owner. One is obviously irresponsible, right?
Please now craft legislation that is some sort of perfect pre-crime determinant of separating the responsible from the irresponsible gun owners.