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Health & Fitness

Ladies, Here are Some Do's and Don'ts for First-Time Gun Purchases

Don't be frightened into making a decision that could cause more harm than good.

Ladies buy guns mostly for self-protection. Men buy guns mostly for hunting and target practice. Rachel Madow is an exception. She has a gun for target practice that she keeps at a gun range. She never takes it home, and secures it in a locker, for safety reasons.

What safety reasons? Ladies, if you are thinking about buying a gun to protect yourself, there are some Do’s and Don’ts to consider.

#1 Don’t – Don’t kill any of your neighbors. There are high-powered guns and cop-killer bullets that were never designed for self-defense. The guy at the gun store may not be thinking about your neighbor’s safety, so ask.

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If that gun goes off while it is being cleaned or in self-defense, the last thing you want to do is kill your neighbor. Ladies, if you do encounter a burglar in your house and put a hole in him, you don’t want that bullet to make a hole in the side of your house, then make a hole in side of your neighbor’s house.

#2 Don’t – Don’t kill any of your family. You know that a gun looks like a toy and that a kid would love to play with it. Get a trigger-lock or gun safe. On the other hand, remember how your kids found their Christmas presents in the attic above the garage below that piece of plywood?

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Kids are by nature curious. They will find your gun in your sock drawer. They will deduce what is in that small safe in your closet. They might even find the key to the trigger lock or gun safe. If you use a combination lock, they might find that piece of paper with the combination or your file in the computer where you have it hidden. Kids are taking their parents, supposedly secure, guns to school every day.

Half of gun deaths are suicides. Know a kid that didn’t have a moment of depression in his life? Know an adult that didn’t have a moment of depression?

#3 Don’t – Don’t kill any strangers. Hear about the bad guy who robbed a house and found a gun and took it? The next house he robbed, he accidentally discovered a homeowner in the garage who picked up a hammer and was going to protect his lawnmower. The burglar took out the gun he stole from you and shot an innocent person. Bad guys can buy guns on the black market, which may have been stolen or they can steal a gun from you. Don’t be an accomplice in anyone’s death.

#4 Don’t – Don’t kill yourself. I remember the article about the New England clergyman who was frightened by conservative media into buying a gun for self-defense. He was cleaning it when it accidentally went off and killed him. Having a gun around the house is not like having a set of golf clubs. There are dangers.

#1 Do – Get informed. If you were told that gun owners were at greater risk of harm than non-gun owners, would you buy a gun in the first place or would you get rid of the one you own? The good news is that you can use your search engine and start reading articles and reviewing data.

The bad news is that information is hard to find. In an article by the nonpartisan group “Parents Against Gun Violence” it says that “pro-gun members of Congress successfully gutted any funding into firearm injury prevention starting in 1996 and continuing through today.”

Also, in Dec. 19, 2012 AJC in an article “CDC: Politics affected gun violence research,” it says “At one time, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control was at the forefront in that debate, dedicated to addressing gun violence as a matter of public health. But gun rights advocates cried foul, accusing the CDC of practicing politics rather than science, and Congress agreed, stripping the agency of funding for gun-related research.”

For a big screen TV or a car you could use Consumer Reports. For most first-time gun buyers, gun magazines may as well be written in Chinese

Is your best form of security a cell phone next to your bed with “911” on your speed dial and an adequately staffed quality police force, probably?

Bob Ott was the only commissioner to vote against a long-overdue pay raise for the police recently.

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