CJ: believe it or not I tend to agree about the Glocks. I even wrote about it here. No thumb safety + light trigger pull = dangerous. If I buy a Glock I’ll install a New York trigger to give it a heavier trigger pull.

Gee, my old boss told me the rule was “when in doubt, empty the magazine.”

Look. Nobody expected committed protectors of the Second Amendment and gun enthusiasts to boot to buy in to most of this stuff. I also agree that some people will use this as a back door to get some measure of “gun control” (an extremely elusive term).

However, I don’t think the approach should be dismissed out of hand. I grew up in a family that owned over numerous handguns and rifles but never hunted. Dad subscribed to “Guns & Ammo” and “American Rifleman” magazine for ten years (Now it’s “Golf Digest”). He sent me an NRA decal every year I was in college and grad school. I appreciate how much guns mean to a lot of people.

However, the main thing I’m interested in is not collecting or hunting or marksmanship. I am interested in guns (or conceivably other arms) as one option for defending oneself against whomever we need defending against. I think a holistic, non-confrontational approach to the “problems” of our gun culture might actually lead to more gun ownership, not less.

The only gun I own is a 16 gauge Remington wingmaster that my grandfather used as a squirrel gun. However many of my women friends and family (including my wife) own S&W .38s. Why? Because they were all single women when they purchased the guns traveling to and living in areas with relatively high assault and rape rates. My wife to be carried her gun illegally in Chicago and San Fransisco. So did my friend who was a Special Ed teacher in Knoxburg. Most of these women took self-defense classes as well. All of them said their biggest fear was that an intruder or attacker might get the gun from them and use it against them. They would have given anything to have some sort of technology that prevented anyone but them (or other authorized users) from firing the pistol.

Hell – the detectives on Law & Order would love that little feature, it would sure make determining who the prime suspect was a lot easier.

I think we need to have an open, honest discussion about gun ownership and gun safety in this country. I would give anything for their to be a moderate or even “liberal” alternative to the NRA. Right now they are the only game in town and it’s a zero-sum conflict between them and the “let’s be like England” types.

If we did this right, we might see an increase in responsible gun ownership and even carrying permits in the Blue States.

It’s a longshot, but I think people are tired of the oversimplification of the issues.

That’s simply unacceptable, and I suspect that such things would become MORE likely if the gun had an external “loaded/unloaded” indicator. And I betcha some fool would look at the indicator and misread it, and we’d STILL have people shooting each other by “accident.”

Now, making a gun that doesn’t go off when you drop it is one thing. Gun manufacturers are (and I agree, should be) doing things like that—for example, Ruger’s new single-action revolvers have a transfer bar, so you can carry them with a round “under the hammer.”

As for Glocks, the way I understand it is that they are safe in the sense that they won’t go off if you drop them. However, they do go off when you pull the trigger, which you’d think would be a feature, not a bug, for somebody who’s liable to get into a gunfight.

Finally, as for making guns “less likely to be used in a crime,” well…I suspect that’ll happen the day after phasers are invented, making guns obsolete.

And in 99.9% of the cases where a cop’s glock just “went off” it was the cops fault. I don’t say 100% merely because it is possible that mechanical devices fail but I know of no case where the cop’s gun just went off all by itself (i know of one case where a poorly designed holster had a protrusion that hit the trigger). In damn near every case, Mr. Cop should have kept his finger off the trigger. Hence the need for training in gun safety.

No gun is made to be fingerprint resistant. Most modern guns have grooves or a checkered pattern to make them easier to maintain a grip (a real safety feature to keep it from slipping from your hand) that isn’t conducive to catching prints but the gun is not made to be print resistant. You’ve probably been reading up over at some anti-gun site to come up with that one.

And I agree making them safer is a good thing. If by ‘them’ you mean people. A chamber indicator has never saved a life that gun safety wouldn’t have saved.

And BTW your site feed doesn’t seem to be updating.

This message coming to you from the far right (which, apparently, is where I generally reside).

I have to take a second here… I’m about to partially agree with lobbygow and Manish and I’m not sure I can do it…

Okay, what’s wrong with legislating ways to make guns safer? Or with making it harder for criminals to use guns for crimes and get away with it?

For instance… thousands, perhaps millions, of police officers use Glocks. But at just about every television station I’ve been at, we’ve investigated safety problems with Glocks firing when they shouldn’t, or being so easy to fire that the slightest mistake could cause it to fire. Can’t it be made safer? Or should our cops use a safer gun?

I’ve never researched the subject, so I’m just throwing this out there as an example. I won’t even get into the “fingerprint-resistent” gun because I know gun owners like shiny grips…

Bottom line: Finding ways to make guns safer, and less likely to be used in a crime is a good thing, whether gun owners like it or not.

SU: A lot of poor people may not be buying new cars, but they are buying progressively newer used cars which incorporate more and more safety features. As I see it, as long as there is a healthy market for used firearms, it mitigates the backdoor gun control argument within reason.

Les..I’m seeing 11,348 firearm related deaths on the link you gave.

But, yeah, I’m mystified why so many Democrats hang on to the gun issue when it’s so obviously a losing issue. A majority of U.S. households own guns, and there’s a large block of single-isse voters who only vote for pro-gun candidates.

But the fact is if you establish these measures as a matter of law, it will be used to infringe the right to arms by any variety of overzeaolous folks.

And treating guns like cars is a bit silly. A car, at the end of the day, is not designed to fire a bullet and do damage to something. There is no magic bullet other than basic gun safety in the sense that you teach people how to handle guns.

And the public may buy it. Hell, the public bought the lie that the assault weaposn ban affected machine guns. That, however, doesn’t make it true or right.

Yeah, just like requiring air bags, seat belts and emission controls put cars out of reach of the poor.

I certainly don’t blame them. My dad was a gun enthusiast for years before he discovered golf . We went to the shooting range nearly every week, and gun shows were a frequent weekend destination when I was a kid (let me tell you they were a lot more free wheeling in the 70s and early 80s)

BUT… Your average person won’t view this approach as an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms. The guns will be just as lethal against an intruder. They just might not be as cool.

Just wait and see.

I guess looking in the chamber isn’t good enough?

Follow up on Gun Safety
|By SayUncle|

In the comments to this post where I stated that gun safety was a code word for gun control [...]