Oregon Sheriff’s Department Handing Out Gun Locks to Encourage Safe Storage

I don’t like so-called safe storage laws. I call them mandatory storage laws because there’s nothing inherently safe about them. Sure, they’re ideal for some families, but it also puts a lot of people in danger because they’re required to keep their guns locked up and out of reach at times when they might suddenly need them.

But I do believe in proper storage for when a gun isn’t in use. It’s just that the anti-gunners who write mandatory storage laws and I have different definitions of “not in use.”

Because I advocate for proper gun storage, though, I’m always glad to see local police being proactive in trying to encourage gun storage, which is what’s happening with on Oregon sheriff’s office.

The Benton County Sheriff’s Office says that every year, children die in shootings that could have been prevented by responsible gun security.

“In 90% of firearm-related youth suicides and unintentional shootings, the firearm came from the home of the victim or from a friend or family member,” BCSO says. “Likewise, 90% of teens who abuse pharmaceutical drugs obtain them from their home medicine cabinet or their friends.”

The office also advocates for talking to your children about what they should do if they encounter a firearm at a friend’s house or in the wild somewhere. That’s sound advice, though they also want parents to quiz the friends’ parents about guns in the house, which isn’t nearly as useful as some people might like to think.

I’m not telling people there are guns in my house, much less how they’re stored or where, but I’m a paranoid sort when it comes to things like that.

And let’s understand that gun locks aren’t ideal for a lot of things, but they are useful for keeping little hands from messing around with a gun they have no business messing around with. It won’t do much to stop burglars from stealing your guns, but it’s better than nothing even then.

We all need to do our part to keep our children from running around with guns, particularly ours. That means making sure our guns aren’t in hands that are too irresponsible to have access to them. A gun lock will do that.

Of course, Benton County is in Oregon, and most of you aren’t. That’s just math.

If you need a gun lock, reach out to your local law enforcement agencies. Many of them have gun locks for those who want them. If they don’t have them, look into the NSSF’s Project ChildSafe. Maybe a group you’re involved with could partner with the NSSF to provide those locks to parents in your area, and obviously, you’d be able to get one, too.

I will never support mandatory storage laws anywhere.

I will, however, support efforts to help parents act more responsibly with their firearms to hopefully keep them out of young, unauthorized hands. That’s what gun locks can do pretty damn well, but only if you have them and use them.

Good on the Benton County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement agencies throughout the nation to step up to help parents do just that.

Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points.

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