I can't think of anything else in my home as dangerous as a gun that I might need to get to at a moment's notice or my life might be at stake. However, I have no problem with laws that would make it a crime not to secure dangerous poisons from the reach of small hands.
So the question wasn't directed to you, but I gather your answer to the question I asked is "no"?
Pretty much. Not that I'm horrified at the thought, in abstract, but more in the implementation.
For example: ATV deaths run around 800-900 a year, more than the # of accidental gun discharges. I don't have current numbers, but the # of ATVs in the US runs around 10MM, and the number of guns is over 200MM. Somebody else posted that 1/6 of households have guns; I think we can stipulate that less than 1/6 of households have ATVs. From that, I conclude that it is extremely likely that having an ATV in the home is more dangerous than having a gun in the home. And that ignores injuries. I don't have the data on that; I'm willing to agree that guns might pose more danger here, but I'm going to guess that a close investigation would show that ATV cause more injuries (say, requiring a trip to the ER as a definition).
We don't require licensing and testing for ATVs. We don't require a proven security plan for storing the keys. Etc.
Think of the cost of implementing a program for over 200MM firearms. At
best, you save just over 600 lives a year, if that program somehow stopped every ND. Note it would not have saved this toddler - the firearm in question was kept in a secure place, etc.
It just doesn't seem like the best use of limited resources. Sure, you can make it 'pay for itself' with license fees or whatever, but there are second order effects - do you want to pay somebody to go into homes inspecting for firearms safes, or do you want to pay that same person to perform some other safety function - such as teach defensive driving.
Legality is a different issue. You can make it a law, say, that you need to have loaded guns in gun safes if there is a child under the age of X in the house. That would give you another means to prosecute in the case of a ND fatality. But that is open to a lot of debate - can I carry in a holster, can I shoot a gun on my own property, etc. It's doable, just complicated, and to me would be a better use of resources, while still getting the message out about gun safety.
None of my thinking is based on the 2nd amendment, it's more what would I like, ignoring the 2nd amendment. I.e., I'm not saying the 2nd amendment says I can have a gun, so no rules prohibiting it. Also, everything I'm saying here is based solely on safe handling of firearms - criminal activity is way beyond the scope of the OP.
And it's based on the recognition that
we are really bad at accessing risks. ND from a gun is just not a very high risk compared to other things we face all the time. It's somewhat higher than X, lower than Y, but we have tons of laws about guns and more being proposed all the time.
Pools have far more deaths per year than guns, per household owning guns/pools. So far as I know there is no licensing program in effect to prove you know how to run a pool. There's probably zoning requirement in some towns requiring a fence, I don't know. I know wunky's (my SO) father has a backyard pool - no fence around it, so there was certainly no zoning in that VA county at the time of installation. I think he is taking a significantly higher risk than I am with my pistol and no pool. I don't feel the urge to press congress to enact new, tougher laws on the issue. He is responsible about it.
edited to add: he has a fence around the property - people can't wander in off the street, but there's nothing stopping his nieces from wandering out the back door and into the pool except vigilance.
