A responsible gun owner doesn’t leave a firearm where children can access it, with some exceptions. Those are on a case-by-case basis and are typically the exceptions, not the rule. We all know what responsibility looks like, but when laws step in, they remove responsibility from the equation. It becomes about compliance.
And, for parents who live in states with mandatory storage laws, life is more difficult than it needs to be.
But even laws that don’t go quite that far might create problems, such as a bill under consideration in Ohio, where its author says it not a mandatory storage bill.
And, technically, it’s not.
Any bill that restricts gun owners in any way is usually a hard sell in the Ohio Legislature. But a Democratic state lawmaker is pushing forward with a bill he said will promote firearm safety without putting a storage mandate on gun owners. The bill is named “Amya’s Law”, in honor of an 11-year-old Columbus girl who died after an accidental shooting in December.
Rep. Darnell Brewer (D-Cleveland) said his bill is not a typical safe storage bill.
“This bill does not create a storage mandate. It does not restrict lawful self-defense. It does not penalize gun ownership,” Brewer said. “Instead, it upholds accountability only when a minor gains access to a neglected stored firearm and harm results.”
Brewer said if a gun is left out and a child gets hold of it and hurts someone, the owner could face up to a fourth-degree felony. The bill also includes a $250 nonrefundable income tax credit for gun sales, lockboxes and trigger locks, as well as a sales tax exemption for gun safety devices.
Now, I like the tax credit idea, because that’s usually a much easier sell than anything else, and this bill doesn’t penalize parents who determine that their child is mature enough to access a gun for self-defense. If a kid uses a firearm in such a way, there’s no punishment. That’s a good thing.
But I’m never going to be comfortable with a bill that penalizes parents for the actions of their child. I’ve known too many parents who did everything the best they could, raised several kids who turned out great, then somehow got one who did everything they could to screw up their lives, despite Mom and Dad’s best efforts. Their being penalized for anything, including shoplifting, strikes me as morally wrong.
It’s one thing if you know your kid is talking about a school shooting and you buy him a gun, like what happened here in Georgia–that’s being a criminal moron and manslaughter charges should apply, in my book, not something like this.
Many of the questions are really going to revolve around how it’s determined if a parent allowed access. There’s a big difference between “Here’s my gun if you ever need to shoot someone” and putting a locked gun in the closet and Junior snagging your keys off the coffee table to access it.
Then again, this is Ohio, which hasn’t exactly been tripping over itself to pass gun control of any kind. Since they wouldn’t back Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s bills after the shooting in Dayton, I doubt they’ll pass this.
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