Obviously if you are leaving a loaded gun in the back of a pickup truck within reach of a toddler, you haven't been paying attention to gun safety rules enough.

Obviously if you are leaving a loaded gun in the back of a pickup truck within reach of a toddler, you haven't been paying attention to gun safety rules enough. :) Unfortunately, I don't think "gun rights advocate" these days means someone who is properly versed on gun safety. Too often, "gun rights advocates" is more a philosophical or political position -- wrapped in Dirty Harry-esque tails, paranoia about governments taking over, a way to display masochism, etc. Guns are a tool, but a potentially dangerous one. And any statistics I find (one reference for instance: http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNSTAT.html http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNSTAT.ht...) suggest that the United States' safety record with guns is pretty horrible compared to everyone else (eg compared to other rich countries, we have a higher incidence rate of injuries, deaths, and gun-oriented suicides than any other). While no amount of legislation is going to prevent complete idiots from being idiots, perhaps properly drawn up safety oriented regulations may help drive home the point to everyone who is not an idiot. Safety regulations seem acceptable in most other places in life, even when there has been some freedom-oriented resistance. (Think of seat belt laws, for instance -- despite the resistance from some, they have ended up being very effective at reducing traffic fatalities and injuries.) Maybe some gun safety legislation is indeed misguided, but I have to roll my eyes when some gun rights advocates act like something like, say, a safe gun storage law is a Hidden Agenda To Facilitate Governments Disarming the American Public or something. I don't think that's the intention. Safety laws can be good; safety laws can be misguided... but if a safety law is misguided, I want to hear technical reasons why from the firearms crowd, not conspiracy diatribe.