cruiserman
New member
First her article: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/kathleen/parker.html
I responded by complaining about her call for trigger locks, etc. I normally agree with just about all of her columns.
This is her response back:
by Kathleen Parker
March 6, 2000
Quick, somebody sell me a bridge over the Sahara before I grow a brain.
I don’t know how to explain my recent lapse in common sense. Was my body snatched by an idiot pod?
I’m talking about last week’s column where, in response to the first-grader school shooting in Michigan, I urged tough consequences for adults whose carelessness results in a child shooting someone. So far so good.
Then I apparently lost consciousness and urged trigger locks for all weapons. Who said that? Surely not I, daughter of a responsible gun collector who taught me to safely handle and shoot guns as soon as I could hold a rifle. My father must be banging his head against heaven’s gate. He taught me better.
Among his more valuable lessons was the lawyerly advice that an unenforceable law is a bad law. Passing laws making trigger locks mandatory is about as useful as a law requiring daily showering. You can force gun dealers to sell them, but you can’t force gun owners to use them.
Thanks to readers who managed to remain rational in the wake of the terrible Michigan incident that claimed the life of six-year-old Kayla Rolland, I’ve been born again. To the one Colorado reader who agreed with my first knee-jerk response, sorry. The Sahara Bridge Builders Association wants you, too.
The better solution to this and the other gun tragedies is to make the consequences for irresponsible gun ownership so severe that such accidents become rarer than sensible government. Responsible gun ownership might include the use of trigger locks – I’d like to think so – but a law mandating them is little more than a political pacifier.
Irresponsible gun owners aren’t going to use trigger locks; responsible gun owners aren’t going to leave handguns lying on the floor, as was the case in the Michigan shooting.
The child who took a stolen .32 semiautomatic to school and killed Kayla was living in a crack house where trigger locks were as unlikely as, well, a well-balanced meal. Or even a bed.
The boy slept on a couch in the living room of a run-down house inhabited by the boy’s uncle, Sir Marcus Winfrey, 21, and another 19-year-old man, Jamelle James. The shooter’s mother had left the child and his eight-year-old brother with the uncle about two weeks ago when she was evicted from her nearby home. The boy’s father is in prison.
It is unlikely to ridiculous to suppose that someone who traffics in drugs and steals (or accepts stolen) guns is going to take the extra step of attaching trigger locks. You can picture the thought process: “Boy, this crack sure smacks good. But, whoa, I forgot to lock the trigger on that piece I stole yesterday. What am I thinking?”
“Thinking” is the operative word here, and I’ve got a turtle’s lead on the low-life who left a child to play with a lethal weapon. Thinking beyond the immediate wish to make the world a nicer place for children brings us to only one reasonable conclusion: Make the adults pay for the crime committed by the child.
Prosecutors are heading in that direction. In Michigan, police arrested James and charged him with involuntary manslaughter. The shooter’s mother has been accused of neglect.
Trigger locks are a good idea. They’re also readily available and cost as little as $10. I can’t imagine why anyone with young children in the house wouldn’t use them. But passing a law insisting on their use will be as effective as laws insisting that people not steal or use drugs. Or that they be good parents.
I responded by complaining about her call for trigger locks, etc. I normally agree with just about all of her columns.
This is her response back:
by Kathleen Parker
March 6, 2000
Quick, somebody sell me a bridge over the Sahara before I grow a brain.
I don’t know how to explain my recent lapse in common sense. Was my body snatched by an idiot pod?
I’m talking about last week’s column where, in response to the first-grader school shooting in Michigan, I urged tough consequences for adults whose carelessness results in a child shooting someone. So far so good.
Then I apparently lost consciousness and urged trigger locks for all weapons. Who said that? Surely not I, daughter of a responsible gun collector who taught me to safely handle and shoot guns as soon as I could hold a rifle. My father must be banging his head against heaven’s gate. He taught me better.
Among his more valuable lessons was the lawyerly advice that an unenforceable law is a bad law. Passing laws making trigger locks mandatory is about as useful as a law requiring daily showering. You can force gun dealers to sell them, but you can’t force gun owners to use them.
Thanks to readers who managed to remain rational in the wake of the terrible Michigan incident that claimed the life of six-year-old Kayla Rolland, I’ve been born again. To the one Colorado reader who agreed with my first knee-jerk response, sorry. The Sahara Bridge Builders Association wants you, too.
The better solution to this and the other gun tragedies is to make the consequences for irresponsible gun ownership so severe that such accidents become rarer than sensible government. Responsible gun ownership might include the use of trigger locks – I’d like to think so – but a law mandating them is little more than a political pacifier.
Irresponsible gun owners aren’t going to use trigger locks; responsible gun owners aren’t going to leave handguns lying on the floor, as was the case in the Michigan shooting.
The child who took a stolen .32 semiautomatic to school and killed Kayla was living in a crack house where trigger locks were as unlikely as, well, a well-balanced meal. Or even a bed.
The boy slept on a couch in the living room of a run-down house inhabited by the boy’s uncle, Sir Marcus Winfrey, 21, and another 19-year-old man, Jamelle James. The shooter’s mother had left the child and his eight-year-old brother with the uncle about two weeks ago when she was evicted from her nearby home. The boy’s father is in prison.
It is unlikely to ridiculous to suppose that someone who traffics in drugs and steals (or accepts stolen) guns is going to take the extra step of attaching trigger locks. You can picture the thought process: “Boy, this crack sure smacks good. But, whoa, I forgot to lock the trigger on that piece I stole yesterday. What am I thinking?”
“Thinking” is the operative word here, and I’ve got a turtle’s lead on the low-life who left a child to play with a lethal weapon. Thinking beyond the immediate wish to make the world a nicer place for children brings us to only one reasonable conclusion: Make the adults pay for the crime committed by the child.
Prosecutors are heading in that direction. In Michigan, police arrested James and charged him with involuntary manslaughter. The shooter’s mother has been accused of neglect.
Trigger locks are a good idea. They’re also readily available and cost as little as $10. I can’t imagine why anyone with young children in the house wouldn’t use them. But passing a law insisting on their use will be as effective as laws insisting that people not steal or use drugs. Or that they be good parents.