Joe Nocera in the New York Times continues to bring the reality of gun violence in America to light, especially the violence involving children.

For nearly two months, my assistant, Jennifer Mascia, and I have been publishing a daily blog in which we aggregate articles about shootings from the previous day. Of all the stories we link to, the ones I find hardest to read are those about young children who accidentally shoot themselves or another child. They just break my heart. Yet Jennifer and I find new examples almost every day.

Nocera goes on to wonder how anyone could be so stupid/careless as to leave a loaded firearm somewhere where a child can reach it. But the world is full of stupidity and carelessness. So how about childproofing guns?

And it turns out there is biometric technology available already that would render a gun unusable to anyone but it’s owner, by responding only when the gun “recognizes” the owners’ hand.

Why aren’t these lifesaving technologies in widespread use? No surprise here, either: The usual irrational opposition from the National Rifle Association and gun absolutists, who claim, absurdly, that a gun that only can be fired by its owner somehow violates the Second Amendment. Pro-gun bloggers were furious when they saw James Bond, in “Skyfall,” proudly showing off his new biometrically protected weapon. They were convinced it was a Hollywood plot to undermine their rights.

Nocera goes on to say that there are efforts to market and promote these technologies, but he is skeptical it will make much difference unless such safety features are legally mandatory. But the problem is, these efforts are mostly coming from do-gooder liberal gun control types. I agree with Steve M — “As far as I can tell, the gun community doesn’t want safety and doesn’t want to be responsible — not if we gun-grabbing liberals are the ones who seem to be defining safety and responsibility.”

So, yeah, if libruhls are fer it, they’re agin it. Having four-year-olds blow their heads off on a weekly basis is the price of freedom.

In other gun craziness news — earlier this week there was a New York Times story about the reluctance of courts to take guns away from those who have threatened to shoot current and ex intimate partners. The story includes a horrific example of a woman who got an order of protection against an ex-husband who had threatened to put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger.

The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks of his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What it did not require him to do was surrender his guns.

About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was lying in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their two children in tow. Armed with a small semiautomatic rifle bought several months before, he stepped out of his car and thrust the muzzle into her chest. He directed her inside the house, yelling that he was going to kill her.

“I remember thinking, ‘Cops, I need the cops,’ ” she later wrote in a statement to the police. “He’s going to kill me in my own house. I’m going to die!”

Ms. Holten, however, managed to dial 911 on her cellphone and slip it under a blanket on the couch. The dispatcher heard Ms. Holten begging for her life and quickly directed officers to the scene. As they mounted the stairs with their guns drawn, Mr. Holten surrendered. They found Ms. Holten cowering, hysterical, on the floor.

You’ve got to be pretty twisted to think Mr. Holten’s right to own firearms trumps his ex-wife’s right to not be terrorized by Mr. Holten. Yes, the gun rights absolutists are sick and twisted. And armed.

See also:

The N.R.A.’s blind defense of individuals’ gun rights has left a catastrophic toll. Stricter laws could help stem killings in domestic-violence cases. But legislatures would have to place prudent safety measures over Second Amendment absolutism. There is evidence that it would work: a study in the journal Injury Prevention in 2010 examined so-called intimate-partner homicides in 46 of the country’s largest cities from 1979 to 2003 and found that where state laws restricted gun access to people under domestic-violence restraining orders, the risk of such killings was reduced by 19 percent.

I’m wondering if there are any statistics showing that domestic violence perps tend to be gun absolutists, and vice versa?