We are generally gun owners. There are some who defend the Second Amendment and don’t own guns, but most of us do. It’s really fine either way, to be honest.

However, since most of us also oppose mandatory storage laws as well, I figured we need to talk a bit.

You see, I oppose those laws because they take away our ability to make decisions for ourselves. We know what meets our needs and what doesn’t and these laws remove our ability to make determinations of what will work for us.

But if we want to prevent stuff like that from happening, we need to do something about stuff like this:

n 8-year-old girl was killed Tuesday when she and her 10-year-old brother found a gun while they were home alone in the middle of the day instead of at school, Detroit’s police chief said.

The shooting happened around 11:50 a.m. Tuesday (Sept. 13) in the 8800 block of Heyden Road, according to Detroit police.

Officials said the children were at home without any adults when one of them found an unsecured gun. The weapon was fired, and the girl’s neck and shoulder were injured, authorities said.

It’s unclear which child fired the weapon.

“This is tragic,” Detroit police Chief James White said. “I’ve got an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old in a house with an unsecured weapon. I’ve got kids that should be in school, so it shouldn’t have happened. The gun shouldn’t have been left there. They shouldn’t even be there to have the gun left there. They should be in class.”

Now, let’s be clear, folks. There’s a lot of wrong in this particular story.

Two kids were home alone instead of in school–that’s one point–and were left in the house, alone, with an unsecured firearm.

I’ll also point out that if parents are so irresponsible to leave two kids at home alone during the school day and to leave a gun unsecured, it’s unlikely they’d adhere to a mandatory storage law, either.

Yet that won’t make a bit of difference to those who will use things like this to justify them.

From what we can see, it appears that we have a parent or parents who are completely and totally irresponsible. If it hadn’t been something like this, it would only have been a matter of time before something else tragic happened. At least, that’s my guess.

The truth of the matter is that even a cable lock like those that come with guns could have prevented this incident. Those aren’t good as anti-theft mechanisms, but they do work well enough to keep curious hands from getting hurt.

We talk about responsible gun owners, but it’s the irresponsible ones like this that screw everything up. An eight-year-old girl is dead because of that irresponsibility, for crying out loud. She shouldn’t be.

She should be at school each day, making friends and learning stuff.

Instead, there’s going to be a funeral for her because no one bothered to secure a freaking firearm despite being inclined to leave their kids at home alone all freaking day long.

If I sound mad, it’s because I am.

The truth is that I’ve known too many good people who struggle to have children, who desperately want to provide a good life for a kid, and pass along the teachings that they learned from their parents. Meanwhile, those people are childless or pay an insane amount of money to get help from science and here we have a parent (or parents) who didn’t care enough to make sure their kid was safe from a gun in the house.

You bet I’m mad.