Unsafe : Guns & Minnesota Child Care

The issue of  transparency, and accountability relating to safety questions, when it comes to children, and to firearms in their environment is one that the NRA would like to prevent people from legally being able to ask.  In Florida, there was for example, an NRA supported ALEC promoted law that pediatricians couldn't ask about firearms.  That law was overturned in September 2011.
It should be legal for child care providers to be required to provide information on their firearm ownership in homes where they care for children in Minnesota.
Here's why, from the Time magazine article on the court overturning of the Florida law.
Gunshot wounds account for one in 25 admissions to pediatric trauma centers in the U.S., which is why Florida pediatricians recoiled when a precedent-setting law went into effect in June, making the state the first in the country to prohibit doctors from asking their patients about gun safety in the home.
In August, the Florida chapters of three professional physicians’ organizations, along with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, sued on the grounds that the law — a “physician gag law,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) called it — violated doctors’ freedom of speech. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Miami agreed and temporarily blocked the law. It seems likely that the decision will become permanent.
“Despite the State’s insistence that the right to ‘keep arms’ is the primary constitutional right at issue in this litigation, a plain reading of the statute reveals that this law in no way affects such rights,” wrote U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke. “A practitioner who counsels a patient on firearm safety, even when entirely irrelevant to medical care or safety, does not affect nor interfere with the patient’s right to continue to own, possess, or use firearms.”
Florida’s Republican-controlled state legislature, with support from Gov. Rick Scott, had argued that it was a violation of privacy for pediatricians to ask parents if they kept guns in their home. Noting that the law relied on anecdotal evidence and not research or statistics, Judge Cooke wrote in the ruling [PDF] that “information regarding firearm ownership is not sacrosanct.”
“The law was crazy,” says Louis St. Petery, a pediatric cardiologist in Tallahassee and executive vice president of the Florida Pediatric Society. “The NRA [National Rifle Association] argued that we were out to rid the state of firearms, but that’s a distortion. Our issues as pediatricians are all about safety.”
Which is why pediatricians have to be so nosy. They ask all sorts of personal questions, delving into family diets and discipline and urging caution around swimming pools and street crossings. They remind parents to make their kids wear helmets when biking and stay in booster seats even when big kids complain they’re too babyish. They also ask whether parents keep guns at home and whether they’re stored safely — with the ammunition and the firearm kept separately in locked cabinets, the key tucked away from children.
the same Time magazine article noted:
"U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 200,000 homes in Florida have improperly stored weapons. "...and...."eight U.S. children die of gunshot wounds each day"
What penalty did Florida try to impose for just ASKING about firearms in homes?
continuing from the Times magazine article:
"...[Republican lawmakers]  initially recommended a five-year prison sentence and $5 million fine for offending doctors. They eventually settled on potential loss of a doctor’s medical license and up to a $10,000 fine, while allowing for exceptional situations that could warrant physician questioning, such as a suicidal teen."
Given this event in gun-crazy Florida, getting answers to questions about firearms in day care providing homes seems to me to be a pretty fair and reasonable parental right.  I'd bet that trying to make that a legal right as a condition of doing business would be shut down hard by our current right wing extremist majority, ALEC owned, NRA run  legislature here in Minnesota too.

I have a problem with people who are providing a service - child care - NOT being required to reveal an important safety aspect about their premises that could be of significant concern to a parent contracting with them for child care.   I'm not suggesting all clients would want to take their kids elsewhere if there were firearms in the home; some of those parents may own or even carry firearms themselves, including parents who are in law enforcement.
But the opportunity to ask how the firearms are secured, for their child's safety and their own peace of mind seems a fair premise for doing business.  People who lawfully own firearms - and I would include providing documentation by child care providers to parents that those firearms are owned and were acquired legally - should be allowed to do so, in the context of full and fair disclosure.  It's not like firearms and children aren't a problem in this country - there is a HUGE problem.

We have, per the CDC, the highest rate of children killed by firearms in comparison to the 25 other countries considered comparable economically and developmentally.

As of 2008, the American Academy of Childhood and Adolescent Psychiatry noted:
Children and Guns

Adopted by Council on October 28, 2000 Updated May, 2008To be reivewed May, 2013
Children and adolescents have easy access to guns. Over 5% of high school students indicated that they carried a gun in the past month, and it is estimated that approximately one million children bring guns to school each year. Many students who carry guns do so because they are afraid or influenced by peer pressure.
The United States has the highest rates of firearm-related deaths among industrialized countries, including homicide, suicide and unintentional deaths; young people are often the victims. Gun violence accounts for over 3,000 deaths and over 15,000 injuries each year among children and adolescents. The rate of firearm-related homicides for U.S. children younger than 15 years of age is nearly 16 times greater than the rates in 25 other industrialized countries combined.
And the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, on their web page notes:

Where and when:

• Most unintentional firearm-related deaths among children occur in or around the home; 50 percent at the home of the victim, and 40 percent at the home of a friend or relative.
• The presence of a firearm in the home increases the risk of unintentional firearm-related death among children (especially if the firearm is loaded and kept unlocked).
• Most unintentional firearm-related child deaths involve guns that were loaded and accessible, and occur when children play with the gun.
• More than one-half of firearm owners keep their firearms loaded and ready for use some of the time.
• Most unintentional shootings among children occur in the late afternoon, on the weekend, during summer months, and during the holiday season, when children are most likely to be unsupervised.
• Rural areas have higher incidences of unintentional firearm-related injuries, as well as higher rates of firearm ownership.

Who:

• Approximately 3.3 million children in the US live in households with firearms that are, at times, kept loaded and unlocked.
• Boys are more likely to suffer unintentional firearm-injuries or die from an unintentional shooting than girls. Nearly 80 percent of children ages 14 and under who die from unintentional shootings are boys.
• As many as 75 percent to 80 percent of first and second graders know where their parents' gun is kept.
• Some 3-year-olds are strong enough to pull the trigger of many handguns.

With that background, read this from the STrib:

Child-care providers can keep guns in home

• Article by: BRAD SCHRADE and JEREMY , O LSON
• Updated: July 14, 2012 - 10:19 PM

Laws limit accessibility, but the penalties are uneven.

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• Child-care providers operating out of their homes have been cited for gun-related violations at least 20 times since 2006, according to records reviewed by the Star Tribune.

The tally is another measure of the regulatory gap in Minnesota between home-based and center-based care.

At a home in Bloomington last June, for example, children witnessed a relative of the provider wield a gun during a violent argument; a St. Paul day care provider pulled a gun in 2008 and threatened a person at her home; a child at a Duluth home reportedly used a gun in 2006 to make threats toward another child.

At Minnesota's 1,500 licensed child-care centers, guns are banned. Violators can face felony prosecution, with up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The last known gun incident at center-based care occurred in 2004, according to the state Department of Human Services (DHS).
At home-based day care, by contrast, guns are restricted during business hours and must be unloaded and locked away. Penalties are uneven. Some providers who leave guns accessible in their homes are given correction orders but no fines.

In addition, parents who depend on licensed in-home providers are often in the dark about the presence of firearms because state law does not require providers to disclose whether they have guns in their homes.

"There are people who ... very strongly defend that right to have a gun in their home," said DHS Inspector General Jerry Kerber. "From our perspective, if they are going to have a gun in their home while they are providing child care, they absolutely must do it in a safe manner."
Several incidents uncovered by a Star Tribune investigation involved family members or acquaintances of the day care provider. In a 2008 incident at a Lakeville home, someone living at the provider's home set off an improvised explosive device that partially tore off two of the person's fingers. When police arrived at the home after the 4 a.m. blast, they discovered bomb-making materials and a shotgun.

Many of the violations involve providers who leave guns accessible to children. In 2010, a day care provider in Hector, Minn., left a gun propped against the wall of a bedroom where children slept. A provider in a Bloomington home was cited in 2008 and again in 2010 for leaving guns accessible to children in her garage.

Three states -- Michigan, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania -- require in-home providers to notify parents if there are guns in the house, according to a 2008 study by the National Association for Regulatory Administration.

Kerber said his agency will review Minnesota's disclosure policies after questions were raised by the Star Tribune.

Staff writer Glenn Howatt contributed to this story.