Kellene is starting a 4 part series on children and guns. I’ll update this as she posts each part:
- Part 1 – Want to Ensure Your Kid Never Commits a Gun Crime? GIVE Him a Gun. (how about giving her a gun too?)
- Part 2 — The Myth of Gun Safety.
- Part 3 — When Is It Safe to Educate Your Children on Guns?
- Part 4 — What’s Really Responsible for the Deaths of Our Nation’s Children?
Kathy Jackson also has a great section on her website about kids and guns.
I ran into this last week during a beginners pistol class. One student asked about how to deal with kids and guns; he had a 3 year old and an 8 year old. He told me his first thought was to keep the gun a secret and not tell the kids. In my opinion the better thing to do is to tell the kids. Make no bones about the gun, make no mystery about the gun. Make the gun a plain and boring thing; even better, take your kid shooting and teach them about gun safety and how to property use a gun. I’ve said before that we find education to be the right answer for keeping our kids safe from so many things, yet somehow we think ignorance about guns is the right approach. I fail to follow that logic. I think we ought to be consistent here: educate your kids as much as possible about guns. That will keep them safe. Of course, for this one student, I said this really only applies to the 8 year old. For the 3 year old, you’re just going to have to take steps (e.g. a GunVault or better, get your CHL and just carry the gun on your hip all the time). But when the younger child is old enough, teach them too.
Updated: Kellene just posted part 2, added the link above.
Updated 2: Part 3 was just added. Kellene makes a good distinction here. There’s teaching your children about the notion of guns and being safe with them, then there’s teaching your children how to use them. I’ve blogged on this before, here and here.
Updated 3: Part 4 added. I don’t totally agree with her take here because I do think you can draw the line between toy guns and real guns, between playing and “for real”. However, I do agree that the mindset needs to be there no matter the gun, toy or real. Even when they are playing, they can still understand and apply correct behaviors (e.g. minding the trigger finger). There can and still should be parental supervision. Even if they are playing and violate something you can and should take the time to correct them. Mindset matters a great deal, and if you can provide your children with the right mindset, with the right knowledge and skills and ability to make the right decisions, that’s going to serve your children best.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Yes, give him and/or her a gun 🙂 Education is the key. When children respect a firearm, they’re not going to be playing with it. There’s a terrible video I saw online of a teenager wielding a gun in a bedroom and then he shoots it, all cool, and then freaks out when it actually fires a bullet – he didn’t even know it was armed. But if he’d been playing by the book and rule #3 to treat all firearms like they’re loaded, this wouldn’t have happened.
I think I know exactly the video you’re talking about.
Every time I take one of my kids to the range, I have them recite the rules in the car on the way there. I prefer Jeff Cooper’s “final version“, but as long as the rule set you’re using covers all the bases, that’s the key thing. Heck, when my kids are playing with their Nerf Blasters, I see them being properly disciplined (e.g. finger off the trigger and up along the side). I even see them doing it when they’re using bottles of Windex or whatever to clean around the house! A trigger is a trigger.
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