Why Not Regulate Guns as Seriously as Toys?

[groovedaddy]

Jared Loughner was considered too mentally unstable to attend community college. He was rejected by the Army. Yet buy a Glock handgun and a 33-round magazine? No problem.

To protect the public, we regulate cars and toys, medicines and mutual funds. So, simply as a public health matter, shouldn’t we take steps to reduce the toll from our domestic arms industry?

Look, I’m an Oregon farm boy who was given a .22 rifle for my 12th birthday. I still shoot occasionally when visiting the family farm, and I understand one appeal of guns: they’re fun.

It’s also true that city slickers sometimes exaggerate the risk of any one gun. The authors of Freakonomics noted that a home with a swimming pool is considerably more dangerous for small children than a home with a gun. They said that 1 child drowns annually for every 11,000 residential pools, but 1 child is shot dead for every 1 million-plus guns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13kristof.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

[thetonka]

1. We don't regulate who can and can not buy toys and cars

[slackmaster]

2. Because they're not toys. Nick Kristof is off the mark on this one.

They're not designed or intended to be used by children.

They are regulated, as weapons.

[dmallind]

3. not analogous

Toys are regulated to prevent lethality of expected misuse, because their intended consumers lack the ability to make rational decisions about the safety of their activities with the toy. The intended consumers of guns are strictly limited to those who are expected to have that rationality about their use - adults not proven to have criminal or mentally unstable proclivities. Worth pointing out is that toys are almost universally regulated to protect the user, not anyone the user wants to hurt with the toy. A Tonka truck could be quite lethal used as a club. Guns also are expected not to blow up in the user's hands.

[benEzra]

4. Is carrying a toy with a license or in the wrong area a felony?

Do you have to be 18 or 21 years old to buy toys?
Is any toy easily modified to work faster automatically banned by Federal law?
Do you have to pass a Federal background check to buy a toy from a toy store?
Do you have to be fingerprinted, pass an FBI and state background checks, and get a license to carry a toy on your person?
Is possession of a toy by anyone with a felony record a felony?
Does an adjudication of mental incompetence automatically bar you from so much as touching a toy?
Is there a lobby in this country seriously trying to outlaw most toys?

When you can answer those questions in the affirmative, let's talk about "regulating guns like toys." :eyes:

[Katya Mullethov]

9. Pretty much , yeah

Will it make somebody look really stupid ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rEuTwYALho

Then you're fucked

[Pancho Sanza]

5. I like how you refuted the question you posed in the title

nicely done.

[kudzu22]

6. Because guns are supposed to contain lead!

[Jenoch]

7. This is such a ludicrous

question that I am reluctant to even respond, but the obvious answer is that access to toys isn't guaranteed in the Constitution.

[beevul]

8. We need background checks on action figures now!!!

Close the hotwheels loophole!!!

For the children!!

[Endangered Specie]

10. aren't guns regulated wrt mechanical safety and construction

unsafe ones get re-called like toys and cars

[petronius]

11. You mean get rid of all gun laws that are more stringent than toy laws?

Background checks, waiting periods, CCW laws, etc? Sounds a bit drastic, but I suppose we could try it...

[pipoman]

12. Thanks,

I have looked for the stats specific to private swimming pools. I knew they had to be far more dangerous than guns given that 10 times more kids drown than are shot, but hadn't seen the actual numbers. Also ATVs, sports, and lawnmowers would be interesting stats.