bearingarms.com By Tom Knighton
I refuse to call any law that requires you to lock your guns up a “safe storage law.” It’s nothing of the sort, despite all the claims proponents want to throw at people. It’s not “safe” because it doesn’t account for literally anything else except what some lawmakers think is absolutely vital.
You see, a gun that’s locked up when you need it may well not be available in time for you to use it. If you have your guns for self-defense purposes, then you have a problem.
Yes, I think guns should be secured when not in use, but mandatory storage laws determine what “in use” means and don’t care what you think.
And why is that a problem? Well, a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, responding to a story someone wrote about the time they almost had to use a firearm, talks about why.
The author described his struggle with the Smith & Wesson internal locking system on his gun. This mechanism was the result of a consent agreement between the company and President Bill Clinton’s Justice Department. First included in weapons manufactured in 2001, the system is an internal trigger lock controlled by a very small key inserted in the side of the revolver.
Though intended to make guns safer, the locks fail the test no matter how one views guns. For those who believe guns can play an important role in self-defense, the locks mean delay and lack of emergency access. By the time the author retrieved the key and his glasses and found adequate lighting to defeat the lock, a “real” bad guy could have easily beaten the author to death with any convenient blunt object.
From the perspective of gun-control advocates, trigger locks save lives. But that’s if and only if they cannot be defeated by unauthorized users. I am an experienced revolversmith. I can defeat the system without a key in under 10 minutes, if I’m working carefully. A less careful criminal in a hurry would need only $5 or a small screwdriver and three minutes to accomplish the same feat. Keys are available online at the low rate of two for $9.99, no proof of permit required. And the lock is simple enough that a smart, motivated 10-year-old could find the gun and a parent’s key ring, and unlock the firearm. Fortunately, Smith & Wesson does ship every revolver with a separate cable and padlock. Parents who use these additional security measures will find that their firearm is safer and less accessible to children than if they merely relied on the internal locking system…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (bearingarms.com)
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