Gun safety in the home with children

[MarineOne]

I've got two boys, 13 and 10, that I trust with guns more than I do most adults. The jury is still out on whether I should be happy that I've taught them well or if Darwin needs to cleanse the gene pool. Again.

Kids are curious, its in their nature. What I've done is removed the curiousity that my kids had about guns first, and then taught them gun safety. If you don't remove the curiousity then you won't be able to teach them. They go from "ooooh... gun" to "wow, that will hurt someone". Once you have that amount of attention teaching them is easy.

I started with BB guns for Christmas a few years back (this Christmas makes 4 years). My little guy got a Red Ryder and my oldest got a Crosman pump. I took them to the local shooting hole and shot up some clays. The bright orange keeps their attention and makes a good cheap target. My youngest has shot all my rifles, while my oldest just started shooting my handguns this summer. He's a big kid for being 13 (he's 5 foot 7) but handles my .45 XD almost as well as I do, and he loves my XDm 9mm.

Most of my stuff I keep locked up, with the exception of my HD weapons for the wife. The kids know not to touch anything unless they ask or if it's in a case, not to remove it from the case. The best part is they treat their BB guns just like they treat my AR-15.


Kris