Some Suggestions For Your New Individual Right to Bear Arms

Jun 26th, 2008 | By | Category: Your Rights

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 infringed.

Enjoying your recently expanded rights under the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution? Wait, let me adjust that quote above to reflect the Roberts-court interpretation:

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 infringed.

Ahh, with those pesky commas out of the way, we can finally get down to business and discuss the meaning of your new rights–the only rights we’re likely to see expanded in our lifetimes.

If you get a firearm:

1. You have a reasonable chance of shooting yourself:
Between June 1, 1992, to May 31, 1994 about 34,485 accidentally injured themselves non-fatally with a firearm. This averages out to about 18,000 non-fatal injuries a year.

2. If you manage to not shoot yourself, you have a reasonable chance of harming yourself with the gun anyways:
Not counting those who shot themselves, about sixteen-thousand people injury themselves with firearms each year in the United States sufficiently to require a visit to the emergency room. Usually these injuries were the result of the routine handling of firearms, with 43% from recoil.

3. About half of children unintentionally shot–don’t worry, the majority of children intentionally shot are minorities–are shot in their own homes, with their parents own gun. Another 40% are shot in the house of a friend or relative. To those of you working through the math, 90% of children injured by firearms are injured by a parent, relative or friend’s gun.

4. Somewhere between 2% and 12% of children live in a home with a firearm.
Four practices, in combination, can dramatically reduce the risk of these children injuring themselves with the household’s firearm:
1. Store the gun unloaded.
2. Store the gun away from the ammo.
3. Lock up the firearm.
4. Lock up the ammo.

5. Programs that teach children gun safety–like the NRA Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program–do not decrease the chance that young children will handle or attempt to fire a handgun they stumble upon.

Have fun! Try to not to blast away too many of your children, your neighbors or yourself–even if is your Constitutional right.

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