Missouri state Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal has proposed Senate Bill 124 which would force parents to notify school districts if they own firearms:

According to a release from the Senator’s office Senate Bill 124 will make, “failing to prevent illegal firearm possession, it creates the offense of negligent storage of a firearm and it requires a parent or guardian enrolling a child in school to notify the school district or the governing body of a private or charter school that the parent or guardian owns a firearm.”

Parents may as well notify schools if they also have automobiles at home since more teens are killed in car crashes than by guns. We should also force parents to notify schools if they own space heaters, bicycles, and pools as these are also cited by the CDC as leading causes of death amongst children.

I’m disappointed that Senator Nadal failed to include the lead causes of death amongst youth in our schools. Of course, it’s not about protecting the lives of children, it’s about increasing the scope of government.

h/t @kfagala

Give your two cents to Nadal here.

*UPDATE: This:

Accidental gun deaths among children are fortunately much rarer than most people believe. Consider the following numbers.

In 2003, for the United States, the Centers for Disease Control reports that 28 children under age 10 died from accidental shots. With some 90 million gun owners and about 40 million children under 10, it is hard to find any item as commonly owned in American homes, as potentially as lethal, that has as low of an accidental death rate.

These deaths also have little to do with “naturally curious” children shooting other children. From 1995 to 2001 only about nine of these accidental gun deaths each year involve a child under 10 shooting another child or themselves. Overwhelmingly, the shooters are adult males with long histories of alcoholism, arrests for violent crimes, automobile crashes, and suspended or revoked driver’s licenses.

Even if gun locks can stop the few children who abuse a gun from doing so, gun locks cannot stop adults from firing their own gun. It makes a lot more sense for doctors to ask if “daddy” has a violent criminal record or a history of substance abuse, rather than ask if they own a gun.