
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 19, 1995                   TAG: 9507200002
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GUN OWNERSHIP

NOW THAT any law-abiding citizen who cares to pack a handgun can easily get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Virginia, more people are doing just that. They may feel safer (never mind that the motorist they just cut off may be both angry and armed).

They should be concerned, though, about the safety of their children.

Granted, most people who obtain guns legally have perfectly legal intentions for their use - hunting, target practice, collecting and personal safety. But how quickly and tragically the best intentions can turn deadly with a gun. A flash of anger can turn murderous, a moment of carelessness into an accident from which there may be no recovery for the victim or the anguished shooter.

Responsible gun owners know, of course, to keep weapons away from children. Yet kids have a way of rooting out the forbidden. And generally responsible adults are subject to occasional lapses of memory or caution.

So if the inherent danger of having a weapon that can kill quickly and easily is outweighed by a perceived danger - or by the simple desire to hold and shoot a gun - would it not be wise for parents to seek, to demand even, guns that are not easy for children to use?

A free-lance writer who is a smoker wrote in The Washington Post earlier this year that cigarette lighters now are being made childproof because of the numbers of deaths in fires started by children. Why not design childproof guns, she asked.

Indeed, why not? In 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that an estimated 1.2 million children of elementary-school age were latchkey kids in households where there were guns.

Manufacturers package medicines and poisonous household cleaners in childproof containers. Parents install childproof latches on cupboards and drawers. If parents feel compelled to keep a gun in their household, can it not in some way be made childproof for the child old enough to foil the safety latch on the drawer or tall enough to reach a high shelf, but not mature or experienced enough to hold in his or her hands the power to kill - easily?

by CNB