At the behest of President Clinton and gun control lobbyist Sarah Brady, the Senate recently voted to require that every firearm be sold with a lock. Contrary to the impression created by sensationalist media, fatal firearms accidents involving children are far from common. Yet according to the National Safety Council, there were about 30 fatal gun deaths in 1995 among kids age 0 to 4, and less than 40 for kids 5 to 9. This shows that even without legislation from Washington, the overwhelming majority of families with firearms already know how to act responsibly.
Any parent knows that a single child's death is unspeakably tragic.
Yet the number of toddlers who die from gun accidents is fewer than the number who die from drowning in buckets. And it's much lower than the 500 who die in swimming pools. More generally, the total number of fatal accidents involving kids 0 to 14 in 1995 was 6,500, and fatal firearms accidents accounted for just 3 percent of the total. Yet the President is not scoring political points inveighing against bucket manufacturers, or demanding federal laws against unfenced pools in private homes. Politics, not saving children's lives, is the foundation of the current anti-gun campaign.