Firearms Safety

Keeping Children Safe When Firearms Are in Your House

​Right before the Christmas/New Year holiday season we received an email from Ada, one of the homeschooling students of Ms. Anna Lee, about a project they had been working on related to gun safety. While performing research for their project they ran across our HCS website and found the information contained on it useful. They also found an article about gun safety that had some great information – so they passed it along to us and asked that we add it as a reference to our website. So, here's an overview of the 23 October 2024 "Kids and Gun Safety" article.

As everyone that owns firearms knows – a responsibility for safety comes with the territory; when shooting at a range, when carrying for everyday safety and when storing your firearms at home. Being safe is complicated when there are children in your house. So, what’s the best approach to making sure that we protect the people that we love. Well, in our opinion, and in the opinion of the article that Ada sent us, the best approach is to be proactive and to “Empower your child with knowledge” since gun safety starts at home. It’s important to teach gun safety to your children as soon as they are old enough. That way they know the risks and what to do if they see a firearm.
 
The article details three initial main steps to take:

1. Store firearms safely
2. Use childproof locks, a lockbox, trigger lock or safe
3. Store ammunition away from firearms in a locked container

 
In addition to these three steps, it’s important to talk to your children. As the article says, “Having an open discussion with your kids about gun safety can make a difference.” Personally, we find this to be a critical step to take since our children see “make believe” firearms every day in video games, movies and TV shows. So, they need to know the reality of the risks associated with firearms and how to act around them so that they don’t think they are toys.
 
The article advocates teaching children the following three things about what to do if they find or see a gun:

1. Don’t touch it
2. Leave the area quickly
3. Tell a grown-up

 
The last two areas that the article touches on are related to “Lockdown Drills and Emergency Preparedness” and “Reporting School Safety Concerns”; great areas to teach your children about given the tragic occurrences of the past 25 years. In addition to discussing why reporting concerns about dangerous actions is so important, the article also advocates taking the following 5 steps with respect to lockdowns:

1. Provide information about what a lockdown drill is and stress the importance of taking them seriously just like they would a fire drill
2. Teach your child to stay calm since the purpose of these drills help to keep them safe
3. Talk about any fears that they have so that they can ask any questions
4. Tell them to focus on listening to and following instructions in any emergency situation
5. Practice drills like this at home, just like they will at school, so that they have the knowledge they need

 
Finally, the article lists some other good sources for information to help answer the question “Does your child know what to do if he or she finds a gun?”:

• NRA's Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program
• National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) Project ChildSafe
• Safe Kids Worldwide
• Project Childsafe  

We’re glad that Ms. Anna Lee’s students are learning about firearms safety, and that Ada sent us the article on the topic. If you want to read the entire article that Ada and Ms. Anna Lee passed along, here’s a direct link to it: "Kids and Gun Safety”