Solutions from Multiple Dimensions for Gun Deaths and Injuries @spockosbrain

Kentucky lawmakers suggested solution to Tuesday’s school shooting in Kentucky? More guns. In schools.

There are multiple problems with guns. We need multiple solutions. I’m a big believer in multiple strategies in multiple venues carried out by multiple groups at the same time.  We need to think and act in multi-dimensions over time. I see it as playing three dimensional chess with multiple opponents over years.

This week the focus is on school shooting because it’s in the headlines. As horrific is they are, mass shootings comprise fewer than 2 percent of gun deaths. In the Trace newsletter they note:

Meanwhile, there is one common denominator in many school shootings and the more numerous gun accidents and suicides that receive little public attention: Kids who pull a trigger, in whatever circumstance, often get the weapon from a parent or other adult who left it unsecured.

Yesterday, Trace staffers Mike Spies and Sean Campbell helped a consortium of public radio stations in the Ohio Valley research a segment on child access prevention laws, which are designed to hold grownups accountable for failing to keep their firearms out of young hands. Research has indicated that the laws, if enforced (a big if), can reduce child gun deaths.

Last winter, disgusted by the shooting of children in his community, state Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, sponsored a “child access prevention” bill in the Kentucky General Assembly. 

Neal’s bill — modeled after similar laws that have passed in 18 states and the District of Columbia, with some success, studies suggest — would have made it a crime to “recklessly” store guns in a manner that lets minors have unintended access to them.

Improper firearm storage would have been a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $250 fine. The charge would have risen to a Class A misdemeanor if a minor subsequently used the gun to hurt or kill someone.

Neal said he’s a gun owner himself, but it’s not asking too much for parents to use either a gun safe or a gun lock to keep their kids from harm.

“The statistics for unintentional shootings are staggering and avoidable,” he said. “Studies show that most children know where parents keep their guns, and many have accessed those guns when their parents were not around or the weapon was unattended or unsecured. This is a problem that cries out for common-sense action to protect our children.”

Neal’s bill died for lack of action in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Why don’t these laws pass?  I can site a number of reasons, including the power of the NRA gun lobby, but the Dorsey Cheves story is important beyond the horrible statistics because it describes the attitudes of many people toward guns in their homes.

The story shows how people’s behaviors with guns lead to dead and injured children.

“The norm in Kentucky is to keep guns in the home, and a lot of people don’t think it’s abnormal to keep them out around their children,” Dr. Susan Pollack, a pediatrician at Kentucky Children’s Hospital and director of the Pediatric and Adolescent Injury Program at the Kentucky Injury and Prevention Research Center.

In a recent poll, 12 percent of Kentucky parents admitted they keep at least one loaded, unsecured firearm at home with their underage children.

Parents told police they kept loaded guns at home “for safety” and “to protect my family.” The majority stored their guns in their bedroom closets, mistakenly assuming their kids never looked in their closets. In a couple of cases, parents said they usually locked their guns in a cabinet, but they failed to this one time, or else their kids apparently discovered the keys. Otherwise, nobody reported using gun safes or gun locks.

Corbin Wiederholt, 9 months, was fatally shot in the head by his 5-year-old brother, who found his grandfather’s loaded .22-caliber revolver at his home in Elmo, Missouri, on January 19, 2015. When the gun went off, the older boy, who retrieved it from a locked cabinet, said to his mother, 26-year-old Alexis Wiederholt, “I’m sorry, Mom. I shot Corbin.” Wiederholt said she didn’t know her father kept a loaded gun in his home. “I told the boys they weren’t supposed to be in my bedroom where I keep the gun cabinet,” Porter said. “But like I said, boys will be boys.”

I’ve actually watched the hearings where gun laws are discussed, passed or blocked. It’s astonishing to watch the feeble constructs used to oppose some gun laws. Laws that could saves the lives of children.