Alphecca

Free Gun Locks a Sham?

That's the impression the gun grabbers give from reading this USA Today story:

A national campaign by the gun industry has provided millions of free gun locks to everyone from young mothers to hunters in an effort to keep firearms from falling into the hands of children.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms and shooting sports industry, targeted five states in August with Project ChildSafe. The stops in New York, Michigan, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska concluded the second phase of the program, which has visited all 50 states and given away roughly 28 million locks since September 2003...

[...]

Kristy Churchill believes a gun lock may have saved her child's life.

Days after her husband placed a lock on his handgun in March 2002, the couple's then 4-year-old daughter, Shelbie, found the weapon in a dresser drawer. She played with it before heading out to join a friend. "It was out of the pouch and the bullets were on the floor," Churchill, 34, of Queen Creek, Ariz., remembers. Without the lock, which the family received through an earlier form of Project ChildSafe, "she could have shot through the wall. ... I think about it every day."

Some gun control advocates view the lock giveaway as little more than a publicity ploy.

"Even the best child safety lock program is only going to prevent a very few deaths among very young children," says Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based group that supports a national ban on handguns. "The better answer for parents is just to get the guns out of the house."