At Slate today, Dahlia Lithwick argues that we should more harshly prosecute parents who leave firearms out for their children to find and use. In and of itself, I’m not against this idea. But I’m not at all sold on Lithwick’s reasoning. If the argument is that people who behave negligently should be punished, fine. If it’s that by changing the law they will be discouraged from making the mistake in the first instance . . . well, I see no reason to suspect that will happen. Lithwick writes:
Studies show that while most parents and grandparents and friends believe their weapons are safely hidden, children as young as 3 know where to find them and how to use them. We can’t make our children stupider. But we can encourage parents to make sure their guns are secured. Cruel as it may sound to prosecute a parent dealing with the fallout from an accidental shooting, holding adults accountable for failing to lock up their weapons would at the very least create an incentive for them to be less careless.
Really? Is the prospect of jail time really more of an “incentive” to be careful than your own child’s safety? I imagine I can count on one hand the parents for whom this is the case.
As it happens, Lithwick seems to understand this, acknowledging later on that the existing “child access prevention”
laws are almost never enforced, in part because they are vague, and in part because prosecutors have no heart to punish parents who have already suffered unimaginable pain when their child killed another child, often their own.
If parents are suffering “unimaginable pain” when they screw up, we aren’t going to need another law to act as a deterrent. As a punishment? Maybe.