In the ongoing discussion over gun rights and control measures, the discourse often pits guns as a component of violence and crime against guns as a means of hunting, recreation and self-protection.

One side points to the devastating number of shooting deaths that occur each year in the United States. The other points to the security of keeping a gun handy in the bedside table or in the glove compartment.

But any discussion of gun safety should also include a topic that we might all agree is so horrible as to demand action: that little children with access to guns too often accidentally kill themselves or other people.

As Post and Courier reporter Jennifer Hawes described in a report last week, a tragic number of South Carolina children arrive at the emergency room with a bullet in their brain or a gunshot wound to the face. Or they pull the trigger while “playing” and kill a sibling or a parent, to be haunted by the accident for life.

But even though 12 children under age 12 and one adult in South Carolina died in

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