What we have here is a failure to communicate, or at least communicate honestly.

Gun owners looking for safety tips on the Web may not find what they need to know, a recent study suggests.

Most U.S. websites with information on guns do not include important guidelines on how to store guns safely and keep them out of reach of children, researchers report in the journal Injury Prevention.

“Firearm injury and death are unfortunately very common among U.S. children and adolescents,” said lead author Dr. Katherine Freundlich of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, adding that one of the contributing factors is unsafe storage of guns in the home.

Guns are common in American households, with over a third possessing at least one gun, the study team notes.

The four key storage guidelines to keep children and teens safe from guns are: (1) keeping guns locked up and (2) unloaded, (3) keeping bullets locked up and (4) in a separate location from the guns, according to the researchers.

I’d like to have my attorney address Dr. Freundlich’s claims.

If you wanted to know about the “safe storage of guns” and wanted to have the same four-part guidelines the academics wants, you simply search for that phrase and click on the very first link.

But despite the bloviating from academics who probably can’t tell a magazine from a clip and the very careful industry guidelines likely written by attorneys, there is only one actual key storage guideline, and that is keeping your guns locked up when not in use or under or direct control.

Period. That’s it.

The rest of their advice is what my attorney, Vinny Gambini, just said it was in the video above.

If your guns are properly stored in a locking cabinet or a safe, then the condition of the weapon and location of the ammunition is utterly irrelevant.

If you listen to actual firearms self-defense experts who have kids in the home (instead of these researchers who know nothing about firearms or self-defense) they’ll likely tell you that they keep their self-defense firearms in some sort of a gun cabinet or safe with either a keypad or biometric quick release, and they keep them loaded.

I specifically want to address this false claim.

“Firearm injury and death are unfortunately very common among U.S. children and adolescents.”

Again, Vinny said it best.

Here in reality, we know that Dr. Freundlich is intentionally and dishonestly conflating firearm accidents due to safe storage with gang violence without indicating she’s changing the subject. Firearms injury and death are indeed “very common” if you’re selling narcotics and battling for turf in Chicago, or engaged in some other sort of violent criminal activity.

Here in reality, where we’re not concerned with misleading people to obtain grants as some people apparently are, we know that injuries and deaths from firearms accidents are at an all time low and declining every year (PDF).

Here in reality, we also know that the best way to keep children safe around guns is to educate them.

It’s sad that academics are more concerned with pushing half-truths and lies than they are educating children, but that’s just how far the academy has fallen.