Newsroom
04/30/2001
Cease Fire
Newark Star-Ledger
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The seemingly endless acts of violence in our nation's' schools have left Americans even more concerned about the safety of their children in the place where they spend most waking hours of the day. But it remains to be seen whether we're willing to respond to that concern in a way that does more than raise public anxiety. Our country has long suffered a polarized debate over guns marked by the false choice of crime control and personal safety on the one side and personal freedom on the other. Where listening and good faith efforts at compromise are desperately needed, rhetoric and rancor have been easy - and destructive - substitutes. The frustrations of that debate do not compare to the suffering of the victims of gun violence and their families. It's long overdue that we bridge the ideological divide and create effective models for compromise -- so that our childrens' safety is no longer compromised. A new, more thoughtful approach might well yield the most important dividend of all: it could save lives. Attorney General Ashcroft has reiterated that he believes every gun in the country should be equipped with a trigger lock -- and that President Bush would like to see these locks distributed rapidly around the nation as they were in Texas. The basis for compromise exists. We propose that we begin to repair the frayed edges of dialogue by starting from that goal we all agree on – safety -- and taking the first step not just of distributing gun locks, but of ensuring the safety of these protective devices more and more parents are turning to as a way to keep their children safe. In 43% of households with children, there is a gun in the home. 10,000 times each year, a child picks up and fires a loaded gun, resulting in about 800 deaths. Most parents recognize the dangers of mixing firearms with young, curious children, and they take common sense precautions to make sure their children do not have access to guns -- which is precisely why, increasingly, many parents are relying on safety devices like gunlocks to provide an extra measure of protection if one of their children gets a hold of a gun. Police departments are handing out free gunlocks, and President Bush has talked about expanding these programs on a national scale. Today there's a disconnect between the promises of gun locks and their ability to meet protect us: the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently found that in too many cases, gunlocks fail to perform as they should. When the CPSC tested 32 gunlocks from 10 different manufacturers they found that most, representing a cross-section of the industry, could be opened without using a key. Some could be opened with no more than a paper clip, a pair of tweezers or even a whack on the side of a table. One model still allowed the gun to be fired with the gunlock installed over the trigger. Today's gun-locks are often not the deterrent a parent can count on to keep their children safe. Hundreds of thousands of parents may be living with a false sense of security. In a gun debate too often polarized, today's new false choice would be to either abandon gun locks and insist again on gun control efforts opposed by many in Congress, or merely invoke personal responsibility and hope that the market will eventually deliver gun locks that work. The truth is, we can do better – we can embrace a nonideological solution that helps to protect children today and gives hope that tomorrow we can create a new consensus on gun issues. We need a national safety standard to ensure gunlocks will in fact prevent a child from gaining access to a firearm. Unlike other safety devices such as smoke alarms or fire extinguishers, gunlocks do not have to meet any government or industry testing requirements. There are a dozen safety standards to protect a child from a dangerous toy, but there is not a single safety standard for a gunlock. As a result, parents cannot be sure the gunlock they are using will really work - and that must change. Bipartisan legislation in the Senate -- the Kerry-DeWine bill -- would give the CPSC expedited authority to set a mandatory safety standard for all gunlocks sold or distributed in the United States. A mandatory standard would have the force of law and would allow the CPSC to fine companies that fail to meet the standard and allow the government to stop substandard gunlocks from coming into the United States. It would be a common sense first step in a new debate on safety, not guns or the second amendment. Gunlock are not substitutes for responsible parenting, and no gunlock should be the only method of keeping a weapon away from a child. But parents should be able to rely on a safety device like a gunlock as their last line of defense. A mandatory safety standard for gun locks isn't glamorous or ideological -- not the front page news of gun politics - but it would help ensure that the failure of a gunlock in the hand of a child is not front-page news in the future. Making gun locks safe – and making them widely available – is one answer we should all be able to support.
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