Anti-gunners like to call it "safe storage," but the fact that it mandates something that may actually make things more dangerous for some people means it's not all that safe.

The term "mandatory storage" is far more accurate.

And, to be honest, it's a terrible idea. While I support people securing their guns when not in use, most laws don't really account for "in use" the same way you or I might, particularly with regard to self-defense.

Believe me, when you hear the loud noise in the middle of the night, you don't want to have to fool with keys or a combination in order to get your firearm.

Despite all of this, a North Carolina Democrat is calling for a mandatory storage law.

A North Carolina lawmaker is calling for safe storage laws to keep guns out of the hands of children. In a partisan Judiciary Committee hearing this week, U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC) testified something needs to be done to save American lives.

“In North Carolina, guns are now the leading cause of injury or death for children surpassing car accidents and one of the reasons for this tragedy is the lack of safe storage across the country,” said Ross, who represents the 2nd District, most of which is in Wake County.

I haven't seen North Carolina-specific data, but based on the national statistics that state basically the same thing, I can say with confidence that firearms are not the leading cause of death for children.

The statistics used to back up that claim lump 18- and 19-year-olds as "children" and then ignore anyone under the age of one. As a result, the statistics are heavily skewed toward those who are likely to be healthy yet may also be more likely to engage in criminal behavior.

When you look at the actual causes for actual children, you see that firearms are actually fairly low on the list. Sure, it's still far too high, but it's not remotely that high.

And, honestly, it can't be.

According to Everytown, an organization with a vested interest in overstating firearm-related fatalities, 2022 saw 370 unintentional shootings by children. While I'm sure suicides by firearms among kids is significantly higher than that, it would require legions of kids being killed in intentional homicides to come close to eclipsing things like car accidents, and that's just not happening.

Moving on...

Speaking in a partisan hearing in Philadelphia this week, Ross cited the October 2022, Hedingham neighborhood mass shooting in Raleigh as an example.

“The shooter was a 15-year-old that took a firearm that he used to kill five people from his family home, and it was left unsecured,” she said.

Children having access to guns is something she said she would like to see changed. Nationally, Ross says 70 percent of school shootings are committed by children who have access to unsecured guns in their home.

Show your work.

No, seriously, people keep making this claim, but they don't have any hard and fast data to back it up. What they have are estimates at most, and how accurate they are depends primarily on how you define "school shooting."

If you're talking about mass shootings in schools, then maybe.

However, those aren't particularly common despite the hysteria claiming otherwise. What's more, that's not how people tend to refer to school shootings. They include any shooting within a school, and a lot of those are going to be gang-related or what I'd call gang-adjacent, where the shooter wasn't actually in a gang, but was influenced by gang culture.

These kids aren't getting guns from their parents' nightstands. They're getting them illegally from black market sources.

"But Raleigh..."

Yeah, that kid got an unsecured firearm.

There are other examples of kids accessing guns and protecting themselves or their families from home invaders. Those are kids who likely would have been killed under mandatory storage laws.

See, when you're going to address a problem, you need to think about the other side for a moment. If it's constitutional--this isn't, but I digress--then you have to look at whether the lives saved would be greater than the lives lost, and while kids with guns in schools make headlines, kids who pull guns on home invaders and scare them off rarely do.

And then there's that whole constitutionality thing, which this isn't. Look at the history, text, and tradition and find any evidence that personal firearms were to be locked up, useless, during the time of the Founding Fathers.

Go on. I dare ya.

So no, this shouldn't happen. Luckily, I don't see Congress tripping over itself to do this, either.