I'm hesitant about your course of action. One needs to remember that you need fun in there as well for it to really stick, you're both taking too long and inadvertantly teaching the kid that the firearm isn't dangerous.

Cleaning the rifle can wait, depending on parents and selected cleaning chemicals you might not want to expose the sprog to that anyways.

I'd start immediately with full up fire with live ammo(blanks are somewhat hard to get anyways), but with the parent holding the gun. I'll note that the cases of injuries where a child is shooting at a range involved fully automatic weapons - if the gun's single shot, there's nothing else coming out of the firearm if the kid looses control of it, no matter what. Especially if the parent has control of the additional rounds(in a pocket or something).

Gradually ramp up the child's ammo budget as he or she progresses - another dozen rounds for cleaning the rifle, for example.

No, it's not actually a significant problem even for the police, but it's an even less significant problem for private citizens, yet that's who the legislators are pushing to have the systems.

Realistically speaking, it's a backdoor way to ban 'Saturday Night Specials', IE cheap handguns which actually are the prevalent firearm used in crime.

Would YOU want to carry an expensive gun that you might have to ditch on a moments notice?

I'm sorry that it lacks citation, but one of the original sponsors of the law actually proposed that. Sort of. She promised to 'Vote to repeal the law if the NRA stops opposing smart guns'.

My thought is that the NRA wants the law GONE before it stops opposing the technology, preferably via a court case that ensures that other states can't do it as well.

Fingerprint locks are not acceptable to me because of this. On the other hand, the already existing 'Magna-Trigger' and 'Maglock'(for 1911's) are semi-widely deployed. They're keyed to universal magnetic rings though, not anything serialized, making them the equivalent of bathroom dispenser locks - they won't stop or slow down anybody that came prepared to defeat them.

RFID is an option, but that would be more vulnerable to EMP*/interference. Also, the one RFID gun I remember has a 20" unlock range with the watch, which would mean that the gun would still fire in the majority of 'just disarmed the officer' cases I've read, many of which had the officer struggling with the perp for the gun when he was shot, which means that the wristwatch would be within 20" when the trigger is pulled.

Really, I think what the legislation is trying to do is make the guns more expensive in the hopes that only rich(safe) people would buy them, same idea with anti-Saturday night special laws back in the '70s. Back then they recognized that criminals overwhelmingly carried cheap small handguns, not expensive and bulky 'assault weapons', so they tried to ban 'cheap'. A 1911 was in no danger, but a .280 was.

*Honestly, I don't think this is that good of an excuse. Good EMP is actually hard to do.

Honestly, I think that the officers that install 'MagSafe' type safeties on their firearms are being responsible. I posted earlier that ~5% of officers shot are shot with their own weapon taken from them in the same incident. Yet nearly all police departments will campaign long and hard against being included in laws like New Jersey's that would mandate 'smart guns'.

Personally, I think that the requirement to trigger being forced to buy smart guns should be all the police departments in the state going to them voluntarily. If they move away from them, the requirement goes away as well.

'No firearm safety feature that is not present on all police firearms shall be required on a private citizen's' - Something like this.

As a shooter I have one problem with this: I wear gloves when shooting. How's it working through that?

This boils down to NJ's law being my ONLY reason for being opposed to the law. Unlike for civilians, there are open statistics for police officers being shot with their own firearms. In fact, the percent is 5% of officers shot are shot with their own weapon. One in twenty.

There exists devices already that can prevent this that use magnetic rings called 'MagSafe' - but anybody with a ring can fire the gun. I read a tragic report where the officer was killed, but the criminal tried taking the cop's gun, but discarded it, unfired, when the system worked to prevent him from using it to shoot at MORE police officers. Obviously you can't deploy the system to EVERY firearm, because then a criminal will know to get the ring(and they'll be all over the place), buy why not for 'all police weapons'?

Yet every police department in a jurisdiction considering laws such as New Jersey's will campaign long and hard to exempt themselves from the requirement, when they're at the highest risk for being shot with their own weapon. Why aren't they clamoring for the technology? It's not reliable enough.

As a responsible gun owner, I have 1 additional modification to make to this statement: Use a single shot .22 caliber rifle for the young and new ones. They can trade up to a pump/bolt type action when they demonstrate that they can handle the single shot smoothly. IE safe operation without hesitation.

How about that there's so many more private vehicles on the road they're still more likely to cause issues? It also depends on the commercial/private vehicle in question. Ever heard about the crazies with a 100+ mile daily commute of several hours?

Also, I did an awful lot of daily inspections on vehicles that averaged about two dozen miles a week. Small densely built bases where we just walked unless we needed the GOV to haul a bunch of stuff, equipment, supplies, whatever.

We're back to my point: I believe that given today's technology and development levels that a mechanical inspection every oil change is 'good enough'. If a cabbie is driving 300 miles a day, that's an inspection around every two weeks. For a private vehicle it'd be about once every four months*. Other than that it's noting down stuff that's not working right and fixing it. Notice that the alignment is off? Note it down and have it fixed during the next maintenance period.

*Keeping in mind that quite a few vehicles today are on 5k oil changes, not 3k.

Citizen, please report to the clinic for the mandatory installation of your permanently mounted helmet(it'll save lives!), automatically inflating life vest(it'll save lives!) while our safety inspectors go through your home to remove dangers such as all your knives, the stove(it can cause burns!), bathtubs(big falling AND drowning hazard!), etc...

The problem with your line is that nearly everything is dangerous to some limit or other. If you don't set a downward limit on something and do it for 'just one life!' the result is no freedom. I'll say it outright: Freedom is worth lives.

That's only true if you include 'fired the gun' in the definition. Most cases merely showing the firearm is enough to convince the criminal to leave.

As uncqual said - most accidents today are caused by driver error, not mechanical malfunction. A pre-trip inspection, unless you're checking the driver, is looking for mechanical issues.

My point is that back when mechanical taxi-cabs started taking over from the horse-drawn ones, a daily detailed inspection of the mechanical parts made perfect sense. The equipment wasn't all that reliable back then.

Get into the '60s and you still had a lot of problems, but you were to the point that doing many inspections was no longer daily for consumer type vehicles, but 'once and oil change'. Today the oil changes have extended to 5k miles.

To make it more clear, I have basically 3 inspection lists. Daily drive in my own vehicle is 'lights work, tires aren't flat'. Each fill up I check the fluids. Every oil change the belts and brakes(among other things) get looked at.

Important part here is 'seemed'. I used to have a GOV license, vehicle checks were part of that.

And most of the lists were less stringent than what I do when I take my motorcycle out.

As uncqual said - if the daily checks were so important for the safety of the vehicle they would logically be required for private citizen vehicles as well. Because there are plenty of failures that can cause a vehicle to be hazards for others, and many of the safety checks aren't actually beneficial for the passengers.

Police officers 'in the line of duty' are heavily shielded by their respective departments, so I doubt that even a small claims court motion would succeed without involving the department.

Still, I'd have them be a named party, thus generally requiring the officer AND police representative to show up to make their case. If it's tossed out(which I figure it will be), then go to a full court.

I've reviewed the literature and found a much better article going in Dominion Power's hijinks.

Personally, my 'solution' would be simple - disallow them purchasing 'renewable energy credits'. In order for it to count it has to be a renewable energy source IN THE STATE AND ON THE GRID.

Oh, and the charging for solar installs is only for 10kw-20kw systems. Keep it at 10kW and you don't have to pay anything. But yeah, massively stupid.

I mean, I live in Alaska and I keep looking at Solar panels. Really the only thing holding me back is that I'd rather put a new roof on first, and I think that the inverters need to come down in price and up in warranty before I pull the lever. Please note that this is because I can't 'break even' even assuming I do most of the install myself with our crappy isolation levels. Go to a spot further south with equally high electricity costs and it'd be a stupidly easy decision.