According to research by the USA Today Network and the Associated Press in a series of stories published Friday, close to 200 children nationwide were killed in accidental shootings in the first six months of 2016.

Gun industry lobbyists have their talking points to explain away most of them. But no spokesman, no matter how cold-hearted can explain away this one: Since the beginning of 2014, more than 80 toddlers across the United States accidentally and fatally shot themselves.

There can be no Second Amendment argument, no self-defense explanation, no safety education statistic that can explain away babies shooting themselves.

We love our guns. Do we love them more than our children?

We can have both. We can keep our children safe by keeping our firearms secure. Boy Scouts are taught that neither safeties nor good intentions make a firearm safe.

Only rigid, unfailing, practiced procedures and behaviors make a firearm safe. And the first one of those must be keeping firearms out of the hands of those who don’t and can’t comprehend the life-ending cataclysm packed into a rifle or pistol cartridge.

Michigan must follow the lead of the half-dozen other states that hold firearm owners criminally liable when their guns fall into the hands of children. Child access prevention laws allow prosecutors to charge adults when children harm themselves or others with grownups’ guns.

Researchers say Florida’s access law has made that state safer for children. Pollsters say more than two thirds of Americans favor laws that hold adults criminally liable for not locking their firearms away from children.

Such laws have been proposed in Lansing. A pair of bills introduced in December 2015 – not the first ones – languished in committee while those 200 children died in accidental shootings in the first six months of 2016.

Don’t expect roll-call votes on Senate Bill 0666 and House Bill 5195 any time soon. The opposition from the NRA and its allies is too well organized and too lucrative.

Expect action, though, on a bill introduced last month by Lee Chatfield, a Republican from Cheboygan County. His bill would prohibit government employees from asking children if their parents leave guns unsecured. That’s why the NRA gives Chatfield an A-plus rating.

– The Port Huron Times Herald