shooterx10
Member
- Joined
- May 8, 2003
- Messages
- 159
Since there have been some complaints about using the word "anti-gun scumbag," I'll use "anti-gun scumperson!" 
America's strongest handgun safety law, thanks to California
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/30/EDGKK217721.DTL
Despite the recall madness, the work of California's government goes on, and sometimes our government actually does good things.
Last week, it did something of national significance. Gov. Gray Davis signed a law that requires new semiautomatic handgun models sold in California to have either a clear loaded-chamber indicator or a magazine disconnect safety by 2006 ... and to have both safety devices by 2007.
This is the strongest legislation for safe-gun design in the country, and because California is such a large market, this law will change the design of semiautomatic handguns sold in America.
If this sensible law had been in effect a decade ago, hundreds of unintentional gun deaths would have been prevented in California and across the nation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are almost 18,000 nonfatal unintentional gun injuries each year; many of these could also be prevented with safer gun designs.
My beloved son Kenzo's death is one of those that would have been prevented. Kenzo died because the design of a gun tricked a boy. One Sunday afternoon in 1994, Kenzo was at a friend's house when his friend decided to show him his father's gun. Without telling Kenzo what he was doing, the boy went to his father's bedroom, got a gun and took out the clip that had bullets in it. Thinking the gun was unloaded, he went back to his bedroom and pulled the trigger. The bullet still in the chamber penetrated Kenzo's heart, killing him.
This boy had been to the shooting range with his father and had shot this Beretta handgun. If it had had a clear and prominent loaded-chamber indicator, he would have seen it and learned how to tell when a bullet is still in the chamber.
Tragedies like my son's happen over and over and over. Most days in America someone dies because someone does not know a bullet is in the chamber of a gun. Often the victim is an experienced gun user. If a cheap disposable camera can tell you when it is loaded, surely a handgun should indicate when there is a bullet in the chamber.
Effective designs for loaded-chamber indicators and magazine disconnect safety devices have been available for many decades. A 1991 U.S. Government Accounting Office study in 10 cities found that chamber loaded indicators alone would prevent 23 percent of unintentional shooting deaths. If that rate holds nationally, this one device alone would save almost 200 of the 800 or so unintentional gun deaths that occur every year. Recent research at Johns- Hopkins University confirmed the GAO study.
Yet 12 years after that study, most semiautomatics still do not have load indicators. And few have magazine-disconnect safety devices, even though foreseeable and preventable deaths occur again and again because users assume that by removing the magazine they have unloaded the gun.
Though firearms have been exempt from consumer product safety regulation, until now gunmakers could be forced to be responsible through lawsuits brought by victims of gun violence such as myself. Now, many victims could potentially lose even this ability to hold gunmakers accountable. The U.S. Congress is considering a bill (S659) that could grant gunmakers and dealers limited immunity from many lawsuits, not only for selling guns that are defectively designed, such as the Beretta, but also for negligent gun distribution, such as shipping truckloads of guns to the 1 percent of gun dealers who sell more than half of all guns used in crimes (according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco), and who knowingly sell large batches of guns to gun traffickers.
With regard to guns, this federal bill could simply eliminate the rights of the states to enforce their own product-liability laws in court. It could also take away the rights of judges and juries to hear the particular facts of a case and decide whether the law has been broken.
As it tries to avoid the legal consequences of gun industry negligence, the gun lobby's suggested solution is to encourage gun users to get training, as if training or safe gun design is an either/or choice. That's like saying we should either train drivers or have seat belts and air bags. But their false reasoning is even worse than that, because the design itself often tricks users into killing someone. Even if mandatory training, which the NRA opposes, were required for every gun buyer, we could never realistically train everyone before they touch a gun.
Aside from Davis, the other heroes in passing the new California safe design law are the Million Mom March chapters throughout California, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and state Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena, whose son was also killed in an unintentional shooting. He patiently shepherded this bill through the legislature, facing down a barrage of falsehoods from the gun lobby.
The individuals whose lives will be saved will never know who they are. But as a parent who lost his son because the design of a gun tricked a boy, I hope we all recognize that when our government pays attention to how it can prevent senseless injuries, it does good things that make us all safer. But when it helps the gun industry avoid civil justice, it makes us all less safe.
Griffin Dix is program director of Physicians for a Violence-free Society (www.pvs.org).
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
You can email this anti-gun scumperson at: [email protected]
Here is the link.
America's strongest handgun safety law, thanks to California
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/30/EDGKK217721.DTL
Despite the recall madness, the work of California's government goes on, and sometimes our government actually does good things.
Last week, it did something of national significance. Gov. Gray Davis signed a law that requires new semiautomatic handgun models sold in California to have either a clear loaded-chamber indicator or a magazine disconnect safety by 2006 ... and to have both safety devices by 2007.
This is the strongest legislation for safe-gun design in the country, and because California is such a large market, this law will change the design of semiautomatic handguns sold in America.
If this sensible law had been in effect a decade ago, hundreds of unintentional gun deaths would have been prevented in California and across the nation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are almost 18,000 nonfatal unintentional gun injuries each year; many of these could also be prevented with safer gun designs.
My beloved son Kenzo's death is one of those that would have been prevented. Kenzo died because the design of a gun tricked a boy. One Sunday afternoon in 1994, Kenzo was at a friend's house when his friend decided to show him his father's gun. Without telling Kenzo what he was doing, the boy went to his father's bedroom, got a gun and took out the clip that had bullets in it. Thinking the gun was unloaded, he went back to his bedroom and pulled the trigger. The bullet still in the chamber penetrated Kenzo's heart, killing him.
This boy had been to the shooting range with his father and had shot this Beretta handgun. If it had had a clear and prominent loaded-chamber indicator, he would have seen it and learned how to tell when a bullet is still in the chamber.
Tragedies like my son's happen over and over and over. Most days in America someone dies because someone does not know a bullet is in the chamber of a gun. Often the victim is an experienced gun user. If a cheap disposable camera can tell you when it is loaded, surely a handgun should indicate when there is a bullet in the chamber.
Effective designs for loaded-chamber indicators and magazine disconnect safety devices have been available for many decades. A 1991 U.S. Government Accounting Office study in 10 cities found that chamber loaded indicators alone would prevent 23 percent of unintentional shooting deaths. If that rate holds nationally, this one device alone would save almost 200 of the 800 or so unintentional gun deaths that occur every year. Recent research at Johns- Hopkins University confirmed the GAO study.
Yet 12 years after that study, most semiautomatics still do not have load indicators. And few have magazine-disconnect safety devices, even though foreseeable and preventable deaths occur again and again because users assume that by removing the magazine they have unloaded the gun.
Though firearms have been exempt from consumer product safety regulation, until now gunmakers could be forced to be responsible through lawsuits brought by victims of gun violence such as myself. Now, many victims could potentially lose even this ability to hold gunmakers accountable. The U.S. Congress is considering a bill (S659) that could grant gunmakers and dealers limited immunity from many lawsuits, not only for selling guns that are defectively designed, such as the Beretta, but also for negligent gun distribution, such as shipping truckloads of guns to the 1 percent of gun dealers who sell more than half of all guns used in crimes (according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco), and who knowingly sell large batches of guns to gun traffickers.
With regard to guns, this federal bill could simply eliminate the rights of the states to enforce their own product-liability laws in court. It could also take away the rights of judges and juries to hear the particular facts of a case and decide whether the law has been broken.
As it tries to avoid the legal consequences of gun industry negligence, the gun lobby's suggested solution is to encourage gun users to get training, as if training or safe gun design is an either/or choice. That's like saying we should either train drivers or have seat belts and air bags. But their false reasoning is even worse than that, because the design itself often tricks users into killing someone. Even if mandatory training, which the NRA opposes, were required for every gun buyer, we could never realistically train everyone before they touch a gun.
Aside from Davis, the other heroes in passing the new California safe design law are the Million Mom March chapters throughout California, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and state Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena, whose son was also killed in an unintentional shooting. He patiently shepherded this bill through the legislature, facing down a barrage of falsehoods from the gun lobby.
The individuals whose lives will be saved will never know who they are. But as a parent who lost his son because the design of a gun tricked a boy, I hope we all recognize that when our government pays attention to how it can prevent senseless injuries, it does good things that make us all safer. But when it helps the gun industry avoid civil justice, it makes us all less safe.
Griffin Dix is program director of Physicians for a Violence-free Society (www.pvs.org).
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
You can email this anti-gun scumperson at: [email protected]
Here is the link.
