There are few things I trust less than Mexican water and gas station sushi, and one of those things is academia talking about the phrase “gun safety.”

Far too often, the leftist tilt of academia is so pronounced that it looks practically horizontal. And we’ve all heard the phrase “gun safety” thrown around by anti-gunners who know damn good and well that “gun control” won’t sell, so they use “gun safety” to lull you into a false sense of security.

However, it seems the University of Michigan is oblivious to this as it launched a new “gun safety” website.

FACTS is a group based at the University comprised of over 30 researchers and doctors from across the U.S. committed to eliminating youth injuries and deaths from firearms, while respecting federal and state laws that entitle individuals to gun ownership. According to FACTS, over 41,000 children or youth are injured or killed by firearms each year.

Rebecca Cunningham, FACTS principal investigator and professor of emergency medicine, explained that despite the frequency of adolescent injury or death from firearms, data or research on this issue is often difficult to find. The FACTS website was created to prompt new discussion on firearm safety and to store research in a single database to make it easier for other researchers and, essentially, all members of the community to quickly find facts on this topic.

“Five years ago, there were probably twelve senior researchers in the country who had any knowledge on firearm injuries specifically — that’s not enough,” Cunningham said. “We need to get the field of research really going again on this.”

Cunningham believes research on firearm safety has been hindered because of the highly politicized nature of the topic. She explained that a fatal reason why the rate of youth injuries and deaths from firearms continues to increase in the nation is because the issue is continuously looked at as a gun control debate and not a public health issue.

“This is a gun safety issue, not a gun control issue,” Cunningham said. “We fully respect the rights of Americans to have their Second Amendment rights.”

We’ve heard that last bit before, haven’t we?

However, it looks like Cunningham means it.

Cunningham compared gun safety to car safety by explaining that researchers have been able to reduce the number of driving fatalities without reducing the number of cars on the road. She believes that distinguishing between gun safety and gun control is key to preventing future youth firearm deaths and injuries.

“Using the word gun control frames it as a control thing — it sets it up all wrong,” Cunningham said. “It’s a gun safety issue, the same way we talk about pool safety, the same way we talk about hot water safety, the same way we talk about burn, fire safety.”

A quick look at the website itself found that it contains a lot of data, but one bite-sized chunk contains some statistics about the prevalence of unsecured firearms, followed by the kind of advice the NRA has given out for years. Of special interest to me, is that they don’t universally demand that all firearms be locked up or broken down. Instead, they only suggest doing so if your child plays in the same area where the guns are.

To me, that’s a promising note.

However, I don’t expect that to last. Later in the story, there’s mention of using “technology” to make guns safer. That’s shorthand for so-called “smart guns” that often don’t work, aren’t viable, and, if they became viable, would stop law-abiding citizens from being able to purchase more traditional firearms in some states.

This site will be one to watch with a certain degree of trepidation.

If it’s just about gun safety as you or I think of it, so much the better. My question is, how long until it starts advocating for various flavors of gun control?