Regardless of Ashford's bill and its attempt to infringe the 2nd Amendment by legislating stiff penalties for accidents, which is a bare naked attempt to scare people out of having guns in their homes, or even owning them, I made my own personal decision to use a biometric gun safe to store my handgun in. When my two grandsons, 6 and 11, come over I don't want them to be able to have access to the gun, accidentally or not, if I take my eyes off of them or become distracted. Boys those age are very adventuresome.
With a biometric gun safe access to the gun is very quick. If 3 seconds is too long of a time then the only way you could have quicker access is if you carried it on your person at all times while you are in your home or in bed.
How times have changed. When I was twelve I owned a BB gun and a short time later a .20 Sheridan BlueStreak air rifle. I rode my bike to outlying rural areas, guns strapped on my back, to go hunting and target shooting. I was never stopped once. No one hysterically called the police shouting "gun!". Even when I was in HS in the late 1950s it was not uncommon to see pickup trucks with guns in gun racks in the back window. .22's, 30-30's, even .270s and 30-06's. Lots of people kept handguns in their glove compartment. That was in the suburbs called Englewood, on the South edge of Denver. Today, someone might ask "didn't they get stolen by crooks?". Some did, no doubt, but guns were widely available and affordable, there were no background checks, no waiting period, no permits necessary, so stealing wasn't necessary. Just walk into a Sporting Goods store, plunk down your money and buy anything in the store. Leave as anonymously as you arrived. It was a Constitutional Right and no one was going to challenge you. As I said before, when I was 16 or 17 I took a bus to Dave Cook's Sporting Goods store in downtown Denver and purchased two M1-Garands when they were released to surplus. Took them home on a bus. No one even raised an eyebrow or took a sideways glance. You never knew who had a small handgun in their pocket, and many did. That's why crime was so low, criminals would not risk being shot so most crimes were against property, not people. Criminals who did abuse the use of a gun were the only ones punished for it, NOT the general population of gun owners.
If you think the present struggle is about the 2nd Amendment, you are sadly mistaken. It is not only the 2nd Amendment that is being threatened, it is the ENTIRE Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Toss in the Declaration of Independence while you are at it because it states the reason why the 2nd Amendment is unalienable -- Rights are given by God, not the State. Many of the Founding Fathers were not Christians, they were Deists, so this isn't a "Christian" issue.
Most of those who are attacking the Constitution do not believe in it or God, but they have an unalienable belief in Socialism and their most fervent wish is that the US would become a Socialist State submitting to the rule of the United Nations. That cannot happen as long as the Law of our land is the Constitution. To destroy the Constitution they MUST first destroy the 2nd Amendment so that they can confiscate the guns. If you think that the current struggle is about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill you misunderstand the struggle and have put yourself on a slippery slope. You can see the slope working now. Giving in to past "be reasonable" arguments people who believed that the 2nd Amendment should not be infringed did not fight hard enough to prevent infringement. Now, we are being asked to "be reasonable" again, by submitting to further infringements. Being "reasonable" we let the Socialist take two steps toward confiscation and then, "being reasonable". the Socialists give back one step. That's how you lose money in Las Vegas, and that is how we are now on the brink of losing the 2nd Amendment WITHOUT a Constitutional amendment being offered, discussed or passed. New York Socialists say they "protected" the 2nd Amendment by not confiscating the guns. They also know that their bans and other obviously silly measures, all of which have been tried in the past and have failed miserably, will fail again. They are counting on it. The next time there is a mass shooting, and there will be another one because the media is glorifying them to encourage the insane to repeat the acts, Socialists will demand gun confiscation as "the only way to be sure people are safe because we've tried banning and it didn't work". "Be reasonable" this time and you might as well sell your gun to the next sucker who doesn't keep up on the news, because it will be confiscated.
After confiscation shootings will continue or even increase because those who don't obey laws, that's why they are called criminals, and the insane, who are not necessarily stupid, will know they won't encounter any weapons being held by law abiding citizens, but cries to re-establish the 2nd Amendment will fall on deaf ears. The reason is simple. Now, it is estimated that around 50% of Americans depend on a check from the government for their subsistence. They know that Conservatives, folks who support the 2nd Amendment, are not in favor of massive dependency on government, so they will continue to vote into office the folks who bribe them with the most "benefits". However, you have noticed that all of the Socialist elites have used, or are using guns to protect themselves or their loved ones, so they don't even believe their own arguments. They are only wanting to create a Socialist State. You can tell who they are by how they honor their own sworn oath to "protect, preserve and defend the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic". They are, by their own defining actions, domestic enemies of the Constitution.
Two rules apply:
1) Those who are powerful enough to give you everything you need are powerful enough to take everything you have.
2) Power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Those who own the guns have the power and make the rules.
Freedom in America is fighting for its life and a large segment of the population doesn't seem to care. The question is, "Do enough care?" I hope so.
By the way. If you consider the number of people being subsidized today against the massive and growing debt and then realize that the US has been funding their 24/7/365 printing of money by taking advantage of the Dollar's status as a World Reserve Currency (at one time the ONLY WRC), you'll understand that we have, in affect, been exporting our debt to other countries because they were forced to do business on the world markets by first exchanging their money into Dollars, thus buying, in effect, our debt. They got tired of that and the BRICS (Britain, Russia, India, China, South Africa) started doing business among themselves using their own currency. Now, other countries are joining them -- France, Japan and other countries. Sometime this year the Dollar will lose it status as a WRC and from that time on the only effect of the continued printing of the US Dollar will be to inflate our own economy. This will give the Socialist an excuse to institutionalize a Command & Control Economy. Welcome to the USSR, where you pretend to work and the government pretends to pay you, and you stand in long lines waiting for hours for a loaf of bread.
