Good People Who Care. The Gates' pet political project, Initiative 676, would require handgun owners to take state-approved safety training and to purchase a government license, which must be renewed every five years by a new public bureaucracy. The proposed law would also mandate trigger locks for all handguns sold, delivered, loaned or otherwise transferred. Thanks, but no thanks.
Every accidental shooting is a tragedy.
But the premise that kids are dying from handguns in epidemic numbers is false. According to the National Safety Council, a nonprofit public-service organization that collects injury and accident data, fatal firearms accidents have been occuring less frequently than they used to. Since 1975, the number has fallen by 55 percent, even though the number of privately owned firearms has doubled since then. Today, children are far less likely to die from a gun accident than they are from a car accident, fire or drowning. Supporters of I-676 insist that mandating the purchase of trigger locks will reduce the number of accidental gun deaths even further.