Gun owners should not pay for the crimes of teens

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Review: Texas rarely prosecutes adults when kids access guns

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – A review finds Texas rarely prosecutes people who fail to secure their guns from children.

Gun owners can be charged with a misdemeanor in Texas if they fail to secure their firearms or leave them in a place that a child can access.

The Austin American-Statesman (http://atxne.ws/1I3zIB8 ) reported Friday that the child access prevention, or CAP, law is rarely applied in Texas.

Texas Department of Public Safety figures show that authorities have arrested more than 200 people accused of making a firearm accessible to a child in Texas since 1995, when that section of the penal code was enacted, with only 61 convictions.

Johns Hopkins University Professor Jon Vernick said studies show CAP laws are linked to fewer accidental deaths among children and even fewer suicides among teens.

Source: AP

Kids do lots of things, they steal their parents’ car, they play with matches, they get into fights, they break the rules. Even if you home school them, you can’t watch them 24/7. No one can. So why should a father be prosecuted because a minor found an unsecured gun?

When I wrote Guns and Kids Do Mix, I showed 5 stories of minors who used their family’s guns to save themselves and others.

In Switzerland, gun ownership is even more common:

Traveling around by car or rain, you see shooting ranges everywhere. If there’s a Schuetzenfest (shooting festival) in town, you’ll find rifles slung on hat racks in restaurants, and you’ll see men and women of all ages walking, biking and taking the tram with rifles over their shoulders, to and from the range. They stroll right past the police station and no one bats an eye.

The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom,” Machiavelli wrote in 1532.

The Swiss militia model inspired the rebellious American colonists. John Adams praised the democratic Swiss cantons, where every man was entitled to vote on.laws and to bear arms. Patrick Henry lauded the Swiss for maintaining their independence without “a mighty and splendid President” or a standing army. The Swiss influence is clear in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be in-fringed.”
Source: Where Kids And Guns Do Mix

Prosecuting parents for the criminal gun use of their kids is like prosecuting the owner of a swimming pool for a drowning. It is the actor who is responsible for his actions. If a 15-year-old rapes a girl, we don’t prosecute the father for not teaching him not to rape. If a criminal teenager grabs a gun, it is he or she who is responsible.

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