Just Because It's Called a "Safe" Doesn't Make It Safe

This is a good news, bad news item.  Mostly, though, it falls on the bad news side.

At the current meeting of the gun manufacturer-owned NRA Convention, there was a seminar being held, and its leader Rob Pincus was discussing home defense, and the best place to keep a gun in the home.  "How about putting a quick-access safe in your kids' room," he asks.

(Hold on, we haven't gotten to the good news, bad news part yet.)

Mr. Pincus at least had the presence of mind to know that his suggestion might be seen as...well, reprehensible in some quarters.  So, he added, "We have an emotional push back to that. Here’s my position on this. If you’re worried that your kid is going to try to break into the safe that is in their bedroom, with a gun in it, you have bigger problems than home defense."

His quip got laughs from his NRA audience.  No doubt Mr. Pincus hadn't considered the possibility that someone might forget to close their safe.  Or lock it.  Because neither of those could ever happen.  Or, if a safe is in your kids' room, you have to bring the gun in, and maybe you'll get distracted by something your kids do, and forget to put the gun in the safe, and leave it out by mistake.  Or...worse...when you bring the gun into your children's bedroom, the gun accidentally goes off.

Here's the good news.  Rob Pincus is not an official of the NRA far-right radical outlier group.  So, people can blame the organization for his ghastly thoughtlessness.

The bad news is that Rob Pincus was there, not as a regular gun owner with lunatic opinions, but because he's a gun safety instructor and firearms educator!  It's his actual profession.  On his Facebook page, he writes that he owns a training compnay and manages the Personal Defense Network.  His latest book, he says, "addresses training for unexpected defensive events."  Swell.  One wonders if a guy who doesn't consider how a gun in a child's room can cause an unexpected problem might not be the expert you want to consult about...well, anything. 

Then, again, maybe Rob Pincus doesn't consider a gun in a child's room to be an "unexpected" problem, since the concept of a problem with a gun in a child's room is pretty emphatically expected.