An actress identifies the real problem in tragic firearms accidents — a lack of gun safety — and is promptly hammered on social media. Here’s the story:

On June 10 Battlestar Galactica actress Katee Sackhoff tweeted about gun safety and countered a follower’s pro-gun control tweet–as a result she lost half of her Twitter followers–or about 100,000 people.

Sackhoff’s original gun safety tweet was in response to a story CNN carried about a 4-year old Arizona boy who fatally shot his father by accident. The boy apparently found a handgun lying in a home he and his father were visiting, picked it up and pulled the trigger.

Sackhoff tweeted: “Please practice gun safety! This is horrible!”

After this, one of Sackhoff’s followers tweeted for more and more gun control. The actress responded: “Never going to happen in the U.S. Proper gun safety is a necessity though.”

As Reason.com reports, after a couple of hours Sackhoff had lost approximately 100,000 followers, but she did not give in. Instead she tweeted: “Well I guess just learned talking about #GunSafety inspires a massive debate. Pro-gun or Anti-gun SAFETY should be unanimous!”

It’s certainly refreshing (and exceedingly rare) to find someone in Hollywood who’s unafraid to speak publicly about gun issues in a sensible manner. She’s absolutely correct here — increased gun control would do little to ameliorate firearms accidents. In fact, more anti-gun measures would likely make matters worse by creating a stigma around guns that stifles efforts to educate the public about proper safety measures.

Most traveling in Hollywood social circles don’t think that way, though, to which Sackhoff’s Twitter beatdown attests. But we should give her props for her courage in standing up for gun rights and gun safety.