Transcription
So right now, Minnesota and states across the country are trying to pass, or have passed, what are called safe storage laws.
Now, this morning, two major gun safety bills are on their way to the state senate after passing the house just a few hours ago. One of the bills would directly impact anyone who owns a gun here in Minnesota. The Safe Firearms bill, it's gone to the Senate after passing the house 68 to 64. This bill means firearms not being used must be kept unloaded with a locking device, or stored in a locked gun room/safe. Penalties start with a petty misdemeanor. That's for a simple unstored gun violation. But if the unstored gun is used to harm someone, that's up to five years in prison.
One Democrat joining Republicans in opposition: "My goal with this bill is to reduce the number of Minnesotans killed by guns, and I really truly do not want to take away your guns."
As the saying goes, two things can be true at the same time. First, I'm huge when it comes to gun safety and training. If you don't store your gun safely for your situation, you're an idiot. If you don't get some type of basic level training to learn how to use your gun safely, you're an idiot.
At the same time, I do not support these safe storage laws, and I'm going to give you six reasons why.
The first reason is safe storage laws are unnecessary. No gun owner wants criminals to steal their guns, or have a kid accidentally shoot themselves or someone else. These things usually happen because they're just unaware of the dangers of their current storage practices. We don't need a law to make people do it, they just need the education on it. Education that the gun community has been providing in spades for decades, like the National Shooting Sports Foundation's Project Child Safe and the NRA's award-winning Eddie Eagle Gun Safe initiative. But if the mainstream media, the anti-gun lobby, and the Democrat Party spent more time working with these programs instead of playing politics and vilifying them, more people would have this information.
The second reason I don't like safe storage laws is that safe storage laws make gun owners unsafe, not safer. I'm going to read to you an excerpt from an article written in the Washington Post titled, "I'm Glad I Had a Gun, I'm Even Happier I Didn't Use It on the Intruder." "I hung up and stood at the top of the stairs listening. I couldn't be sure the man had left, and it occurred to me that he might not be alone. So I decided to get my gun. It's a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, which I kept trigger-locked and unloaded in a case in a walk-in closet. I retrieved the key hidden nearby, but then struggled to find the trigger lock pinhole opening without eyeglasses. My nerves were jangling too, as I huddled against a shirt rack, straining to hear whether anyone was still in the house and wondering where the cops were. After I fumbled with the key some more, I finally turned on a light and unlocked a gun."
This excerpt is emblematic of how safe storage laws make it exceedingly harder to get to your gun when you need it the most. This guy got lucky in that he had the time to struggle with the gun lock. But imagine if he didn't. Imagine being killed in your own home. And when the cops arrive, they find you in your closet clutching a gun with a trigger lock on it because you were being a good, law-abiding citizen and followed the safe storage laws. Nah, I'll pass. You can keep your little safe storage laws, and I'll keep my gun on my nightstand. Thank you very much.
The third reason I'm against safe storage laws is because they punish gun owners for the acts of criminals. So let me get this straight, if a criminal breaks into my home and steals the gun on my nightstand, he uses that gun to commit a crime, I go to jail? So if a criminal breaks into my house and steals my knives and then uses it to commit a crime, will I be held liable for that too? Better yet, how about if a criminal steals my car and then uses it to commit a crime or runs someone over with it? Why not make me responsible for that as well? It's the same damn concept. Why are we punishing people for the crimes of someone else? Punish the criminals, not me. But they know criminals don't obey laws. So now what they're doing is making laws for people who aren't criminals and removing all accountability for the people who actually are criminals, which to me is insane.
The fourth reason why I'm against gun storage laws is because they're unconstitutional. Safe storage laws are unconstitutional because they block your right to immediate self-defense in your home. Remember, the Supreme Court ditched a similar law in 2008 for making guns inoperable, which directly conflicts with our core lawful purpose of self-defense. Like prior rulings protecting personal freedoms inside your home, from what you view, who you love, to how you manage your privacy, how you store your gun at home is your business, protected under the Constitution. Government overreach into our homes, for me, is a new low.
The fifth reason why I'm against safe storage laws is because all safe storage laws are unenforceable without a gun registry. How would you know what guns people had and where they had them unless there was a national database giving you all of this information? I've waxed poetic for years about how national gun registries are used to later confiscate people's guns. The same holds true for universal background checks. You can't determine if someone got a background check on a gun unless you have a national database on all the guns and where they are. I'm not for a gun registry, and as a result, I am not for safe storage laws because you can't really enforce them without a national gun registry.
And the sixth and final reason why I am against storage laws is because it assumes everyone has the same lifestyle. I don't have kids, and I don't remember the last time I had kids in my home. So I don't lock up all my guns. Some people have all types of kids of varying ages in their home, so they may feel the need to lock up their guns, and that's their prerogative. Then there are some homes where the kids were taught how to safely handle firearms, and the parents actually want their kids to have access to the guns because sometimes those kids are home alone, and they want the kids to have a way to defend themselves. This actually happens more than you think. A 13-year-old boy fends off a burglary suspect, shooting the intruder. This is a picture of Linda Ellis, a 73-year-old grandmother who was shot in the leg during an attempted robbery in her home this morning. Now, if it wasn't for her grandson's brave actions, family members tell us things would have been a lot worse. Police tell us two masked suspects forced their way into Ellis's home and demanded money. "Why would somebody come in her house and do this?" Family members tell us when they told the robbers they didn't have any cash, Ellis was shot in the leg. Ellis's grandson was home at the time. They tell us he grabbed a gun and started shooting at the intruders in self-defense. The suspects ran away. Well, a man whom investigators believe was trying to get inside homes in an East Harris County neighborhood is dead tonight, shot and killed by a teenager who was home during a break-in. That shooting has shaken the neighbors in one section of the Cloverleaf community. Investigators tell me that the man broke into a hotel room here and started attacking a pregnant mom when her young son stepped in and shot the intruder.
Look, I'm not saying you should never lock your guns up. I'm saying the government shouldn't be threatening me with prison for choosing not to. What I do in my house is none of their business, as long as I'm not hurting anyone. That said, if one of my friends tells me they're bringing their kids over, depending on the kids, I'll lock up the guns I have lying around until they leave. I'm not against the idea of safe storage, which is why I literally sell Colon the War branded gun safes on my website, like this Lifepod safe that I have here, which is a great, lightweight, portable way to keep your gun safe and stored away while you're on the go. You can keep it in your home, you can keep it in your car, wherever you might be. Hell, I recently had my truck broken into, and they stole everything in it except the gun I had in this Lifepod XT safe. Oh, they tried to break into it, and they couldn't take it because I use the security cable that comes with this case to lock the safe to my car. All of these safes are available right now on my website at shop.mrcolonthewar.com, but I'll put a link in the description section of this video.
But I want to know what you guys think. Leave a comment in the comment section. Do you think that we should have safe storage laws, I.E. mandated storage practices, but with the threat of going to jail? Or do you think safe storage laws are honestly useless and shouldn't be in practice? So leave a comment in the comment section and let me know what you think. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and push that bell, and then hit the "all" button, and make sure you share the video and like it and give us a thumbs up.