Sorry to see you hold that view . There is no excuse to rob/burglarize/murder/rape etc etc . My HOME is secured , therefore , my guns are secured . Someone breeching my home has already committed several crimes, but apparently, in your eyes, I'M still at fault for their actions.
You don't get it. I never said, nor will you ever hear me say, that the person who stole your gun is anything but a criminal who deserves the full punishment by law. Nor will you ever hear me say it is your fault that the criminal broke laws to get into your house, nor is it your fault he's using your gun to break more laws. No gun owner should be brought up for murder on what someone else did with his stolen gun.
The fact that your gun was stolen, however, is prima facie evidence that you failed to protect a deadly weapon in your possession, and most often that failure is due to carelessness in storage and handling. If the thief brought a hacksaw to cut through the breech lock of your handgun or a blowtorch or drill to defeat your gun safe, that breach was not something you could guard against without security measures that are not financially feasible and therefore you cannot be expected to guard your guns that carefully. My whole point is that, similar to other dangerous items, regulations must be made for the safe handling, storage, and disposal of guns, including regulations regarding theft prevention. These regulations are currently informal rules that are adhered to on an honor system with no penalty for non-compliance; my only argument is that the informal rules be codified, so that everyone knows and is held to a standard of handling, storage and security that most can agree will minimize accidents and theft, and establish penalties for those who do not comply. I argue for this because obviously many are not adequately securing guns, and that lack, even in a locked home, allows bad people to do bad things with guns they should not, and otherwise would not, be able to get their hands on. I made this comparison before; a disease research center from which a terrorist manages to steal a viral agent is liable, NOT for the deaths, illnesses and other damage the viral agent causes, but for their breach of security resulting in a successful theft. They are required by law to provide a standard of security, and a theft is prima facie evidence that they did not maintain the required level of security. That research center is, in many jurisdictions, civilly liable for the whole kit and kaboodle, but let's stick to criminal law; it's more cut and dried. The level of security required of a disease center is very high; you think their only security is the front door? There are locks, alarms and sensors from the front door to the lab, because the materials under study, if allowed to escape or be stolen, will kill. Your firearms are each capable of similar damage, and if allowed to be stolen it is very likely that damage will be dealt. However, the naysayers I am angry at don't want a tenth of that protection. I am advocating that weapons not in use or of which you do not have conceivable need are kept locked. It's very simple, and advocated by practically everyone on both sides. Yet you refuse to see a need. That infuriates me.
I'm angry because not only do you not want to codify these rules, which I might understand, you don't wish to do so out of simple laziness; you don't even want to require locking just the guns you would not have the inclination to use while in your home, as much because of your belief that locking your home. You have so much as said that. You, just like all the antis who want to take guns away, are suggesting every solution except the steps we can personally take to help, and pointing the finger instead at everything you can condemn, but cannot yourself control, and THAT is why I say you are being irresponsible and undeserving of your rights.
You say that creating legally enforceable standards for gun handling and storage will eventually trickle down into everything that is dangerous. It's a fallacious slippery slope argument; you do not know the future, and cannot with even reasonable certainty say that a gun law will eventually result in your kitchen knives being banned. Knives are utility tools; they are deadly weapons, like anything that can cut, but are indispensable because they are the best tool for cutting anything. A knife designed for fighting can just as easily slice chicken (It's called the Perrin, and it's in Spyderco's catalog). A gun is also a tool, but its primary purpose is to cause damage at a distance. It is ill-suited, because of its power, the noise created, and the potential for unintentional damage even when tightly controlled, to use it anywhere other than a safe practice environment or a survival situation. These two types of deadly weapons are therefore just that; two completely different classes, and to compare them only as deadly weapons and draw a parallel for their control ignores every other use of both tools.
Like you say, hatchets, chainsaws, and other tools can also be deadly weapons. In fact, ANYTHING can be a deadly weapon. Let's ban rope because you can use it to strangle. Let's ban rat poison because it kills humans too. Let's ban combs; rake one across someone's eyes and you can blind them. Anything small enough to fit in someone's eye socket or trachea can be a deadly weapon. So too is anything that with sufficient force will penetrate the skin and tear a blood vessel. So too, anything that in sufficient quantities upsets the chemical balance of the person enough to cause death. You know, just between those three things we've covered practically every substance on the planet, including other humans. It's ridiculous, as you say, and nobody with the capacity to actually think will ever think that is reasonable. The difference however, is use. You hear that thieves stole a truckload of mothballs, and your first thought is that they f***ed up, not that they want to grind them up and make napthalene firebombs. You hear that thieves raided a gun store and you are worried about guns on the street. That's because a gun's primary purpose is to kill, whatever other useful purposes it has, and very few would think the thieves were looking to melt them down and sell them for scrap. That is the difference between a gun, explosive, or WMD-capable agent and everything else on the planet; inferred intent.
Even if logically sound, it is possible, and I'll try to find the proof, to construct a proof that 0=1, that is at least at face value mathematically and logically sound. Therefore 1=2 because 0+1 = 1+1, and so on ad infinitum. At some point there has to be a threshold of reason. There comes a point at which the logic which holds up when comparing A to B and B to C breaks down when you apply it to X, Y, or Z.
You also say that laws concerning mandatory gun storage conditions would lead to compulsory inspections of weapon storage. Why would it? Marijuana's illegal; does that mean we must submit to compulsory warrantless searches for weed just because it's been 180 days since the last one? Of course not. Alcohol is highly regulated and no one under 21 is allowed to drink. Does that mean we conduct random BAL, and for that matter, drug tests in our schools? Of course not. We are bound by the same Bill of Rights to assume that each person is following all applicable laws until we have expressible reason to think they are not, and unless we can prove they are not, they are.
