Childproof
By Susan Ives

We've got this gizmo at the peaceCENTER that we call the flame-thrower. It was designed to ignite charcoal but we use it for candles. It's tricky. You have to roll your thumb across a plastic wheel and hold it there while pulling the trigger. It's childproof.

We clean our own toilet. Gandhi cleaned toilets, so we do too. To open the bowl cleaner, you have to squeeze the corrugated ridges on the cap and twist and pull at the same time. It's childproof.

We have a bottle of aspirin. When your head is bursting, you have to line up the arrow on the cap with the arrow on the bottle, then flick it up. It's childproof, too.

We don't have a gun at the peaceCENTER. But if we did, we could plop it on a table and a six-year-old could pick it up and shoot you. Guns aren't childproof. Maybe they should be.

American children are twelve times more likely to die from gun injuries than are youngsters in all other industrialized nations combined. In 1994, every day 16 children age 19 and under were killed with guns, and for every child killed, four were wounded. Every year in this country 1,500 people die accidentally from firearms. It doesn't have to be this way.

Guns, like every other consumer product sold in America, should have to meet minimum safety standards. Gun manufacturers should have to design guns with locks built in, and with other common-sense devices like loaded-chamber indicators and child-proofing.

There are more than a hundred pieces of gun legislation pending in the House and Senate. Several of them go right to the heart of the tragic combination of kids and guns.

The Children's Firearm Safety Act of 1999 would prohibit the manufacture or import of any handgun that fails a drop test, lacks a child resistant trigger to prevent a child under age five from operating it, or that lacks a magazine disconnect safety. The Children's Firearms Age Limit Act of 1999 would prohibit the sale of a semiautomatic assault weapon to a juvenile. The Children's Firearm Dealer's Responsibility Act of 1999 would revoke the license of a dealer who willfully sells a firearm to anyone under 18.

The Children's Firearm Access Prevention Act would impose criminal penalties for keeping a loaded firearm, or an unloaded firearm and ammunition, if a person reasonably should know that a juvenile is capable of gaining access to the firearm without permission. Other pending bills would provide funding for research and development of high-tech safety devices and gun safety education.

This isn't gun control: it's common sense. Make handguns childproof. Don't sell guns to kids. If you have a firearm at home, lock it up. Eighty-eight percent of Americans, including 80% of gun owners, support legislation requiring all new handguns sold in the U.S. to be childproof. Our elected representatives need to be told how we feel about kids and guns.

At the peaceCENTER, we hate using that flame-thrower. Not because it's complicated and childproof but rather because we use it to light vigil candles every time a young person in San Antonio dies violently. This year, so far, one young man has been killed with a gunshot. One flame. That's one too many.

Susan Ives works at the peaceCENTER. On Mother's Day, May 14, the San Antonio Million Mom March will start at San Fernando Cathedral at 3:30 p.m. On the short walk to Milam Park we will hear stories, tragic and uplifting, about kids and guns. Join us. For more information, call 224-HOPE, or visit www.salsa.net/peace.