This mind-blowing bit of advice was dished out to convention-goers at the NRA’s annual crazyfest over the weekend which is increasingly indistinguishable from CPAC.
via ThinkProgress
PINCUS: How about putting a quick-access safe in your kids’ room? [...]
How about putting a gun in a safe in your kids room? Good idea or bad idea?
We have an emotional pushback to that. Here’s my position on this. If you’re worried that your kid is going to try to break into the safe that is in their bedroom with a gun in it, you have bigger problems than home defense. If you think that the kid who’s going to try to break into the safe because it’s in their room isn’t sneaking into your room to try to break into stuff, you’re naive and you have bigger problems than this. So let’s settle that issue and think about it. In the middle of the night, if I’m in the bathroom or getting a glass of water or in the bedroom or watching TV in the living room, if that alarm goes off and the glass breaks and the dog starts barking, what’s the instinct that most people are going to have, in regards to, “am I going to run across the house to get the gun, or am I going to run over here to help the screaming kid?” And if I’m going to go to the kid anyway, and I have an extra gun and an extra safe, why not put it in their closet?
Why not mount one of these in the closet behind a towel, or wherever you want, and out of sight, out of mind kind of thing, as age appropriate they should know it’s there. And just like they know there’s a gun staged in your room or a gun staged in the kitchen, or wherever it is, they should know they don’t touch that one either. [...]
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with staging the gun where you’re most likely to barricade.
Everyone knows if you tell a kid not to touch something, they never will, right? Of course.
While we’re discussing this fantastical home-invasion scenario, why not put a gun in every single room? How about in the crib? How about in the toy box? Why not? After all, you never know where you’ll be in the house when the boogeyman comes to get you. You may even be on the toilet. You should probably “stage” a gun in the bathroom, too.
Beyond his paranoid fantasies, I’d like to point out that the man on the stage is not just giving questionable advice, he’s also selling something. He wants you to buy a gun safe. And while it’s preferable that you store your gun in a safe if you do own one, his motivations are obviously not the promotion of your personal safety, otherwise he wouldn’t be advocating that you store a gun in every nook and cranny of your home, including your kids’ room.
Behind the sloganeering and constitutional ballyhooing, the NRA’s primary role is not a political but an economic one. They’re used car salesmen and they have a deal for you that just may (in the fantastical, unlikely scenario they’ve provided) save your life.