unintended consequences? firearm edition

[Tanasi]

Several of the small child sized rifles are single shot and require the shooter to cock it before it will fire or in other words it's a single action rifle. I became aware of the chipmunk when coon/possum hunting, small, lite and accurate. Kids get a kick out of reactive targets. I prefer steel as it's durable and offers a nice "ping" when hit. A friend of mine recycles spray-paint from cans that won't spray. On occasion I'll go by his shop and re-purpose a few cases as targets. Shake them up good and let fly. Another target I make to teach all aspects of marksmanship is orange golf balls. I drill a hole and then pass a boot lace and then hang several from saw horses set at various distances. With five balls per saw horse the object is to wrap the golf ball and lace around the 2x4 it's hanging from. Once all five are wrapped move to the next saw horse. Scored based up time and number of rounds used. It's a lotta fun and requires the shooter to concentrate.
A friend of mine is an Olympic shooting coach and she challenges her shooters at cutting playing cards, lighting matches (that's real hard), blowing out candles (easier than it sounds) shooting through the hole of a CD without hitting it (real hard.) I think with Olympic shooting concentration you could set one on fire and they'd never know it until they had their shot away.

[Signmaker]

It really sucks that people have a knee-jerk towards the tool when something like the OP's story happens. When a toddler died or is hospitalized because they chugged some drain cleaner, we dont push for background checks on Mr. Plumber, or training courses for Draino. We integrate houshold chemical safety into every portion of education young people receive, increasing their awareness of the danger. We also encourage access-limiting devices for areas where these tools are stored.

Why cant we have a serious, mandated firearm safety course for young kids through their school years? I mean past the current flavor of "dont ever touch the forbidden fruit, run away!". Granted, I was told never to touch burning things in kindergarten, but by early middle school I was lighting shit on fire for science class, under supervision.

Those little rifles are great for this. Instead of the kid being distracted by fumbling and struggling with a big heavy weapon, they can focus on learning fundamentals of safe marksmanship. And they do learn, I've had kids that I've instructed go out and give trigger and muzzle discipline instruction to their peers during neighborhood Nerf and water gun bouts. It takes away the tabboo allure of guns, and makes firearms something purposeful and accessable.

As far as weapon storage in the home with kids, guns should still be secured, with the method of security being appropriate to the age of the child. Combining this with early supervised exposure to safe marksmanship results in a child being far more likely to go through an adult to show off a firearm to a friend, and eliminates the urge to explore a firearm without the parent knowing.

General unlawful firearm violence in our society is a society problem, not a firearm problem, and has far more contributing factors than just the accesability to firearms. I mean lets be serious here, murder is already illegal, do you think someone interested in killing would hesitate to circumvent a background check? We need to look at preventing the desire to do harm, not the tools bad people do harm with.

Gun ownership is not just for the crazy rednecks or psychopaths. The NRA isnt a tool of the gun lobby, willing to wade through the blood and guts of babies to sell a few more units. Teaching children safe firearms use does not make you a dangerous parent. And labelling a law "common sense" usually means it's filled with feel-good restrictions that wont actually help the problem.