Well, let’s put aside the SF claim. I worked my way through college as a Salesman in a gunstore and an armed security guard. And now I am a “bureaucrat with a badge” hardly SF, 
but I agree completely with his basic point.
I can’t help but think of this thread.
My uncles were hunters, but as far as I knew, they kept their guns locked up. Because no matter how well-behaved a child is, they’re going to get into mischief. I was a good kid, and so were my cousins, but we used to get into trouble and mayhem frequently-for no reason at all. Boredom, curiosity, too much sugar/caffeine or just because.
Kids aren’t perfect. They do stupid shit all the time. I was taught to look both ways when crossing the street-but that didn’t stop my friends and I from playing chicken on the main drag down the street. I was taught not to play with matches, yet I did that too.
If you think you can trust your kids 100 percent, then you’re incredibly naive and haven’t been around kids too much, just as some of us haven’t been around guns.
Martin Hyde I’m not arguing that my children are precious and perfect and therefore nothing is ever their fault.
Or that gun owners are (or should be) inviting kids to go play in their bedrooms. Of course not.
Of course you’d demand that your friend’s kids stay within sight and obey you. Absolutely. None of us is stupid here, nobody wants to deliberately expose some little kid to a loaded weapon.
What I’ve seen in studies, though, is that accidents happen (all kinds of accidents, not just those involving guns and fatalities) when the normal, safe routine is interrupted by something unexpected.
Like with what you described, everybody’s watching the game, kids are under control, all is cool.
But then, say one of the kids starts to choke on a piece of food. They’re eating too fast and get excited. It’s happened to mine and I’ve seen it happen to my friends’ kids, too.
What happens when a little kid chokes is they throw up all over the place.
Now, if you’re sitting there watching the game and all of a sudden some kid is choking and barfing on your microfiber couch, you can’t tell me you’re going to keep an eagle eye on the other kid, too. Hell no. You’ll be looking for towels and cussing. The kid will be crying. It’s bedlam.
THAT is why parents child-proof their homes.
I’m reminded of a time - not with guns - but with medicine.
I didn’t have kids. I didn’t have a childproof home. I left my meds open out on my bathroom counter - much easier for me.
Brainiac4 had friends over to game. One of them brought her children. And proceeded to game. I was reading in my room.
They got into my meds. (Turned out to be nothing to worry about) But I don’t think she’s forgiven me yet - for not watching her kids nor for not having a childproof house - and her kids are now teenagers.
Honestly, we had three people at fault. Brainiac4 who didn’t say to the woman “hey, you can’t bring small children to game.” Me for not making it PERFECTLY clear I was not the babysitter - and for not taking better care of my meds. And also her, for not watching her own children in a house she knew nothing about. (Had she asked I would have said “house isn’t childproof”).
I’d argue there was exactly one person at fault, and it wasn’t you or Brainiac4.
My coworker grew up with guns around the house. He started hunting at a very young age and all that.
When he was twenty or so, he shot his hand off with a shotgun. Dozens of surgeries later, he has a hand with pretty good functionality except it can’t bend at the wrist and he can’t use his thumb.
My point? Even adults make mistakes. Kids make more mistakes.
I’m startled how many people are pulling the “But not MY kid” trick. I wonder how many times cops and lawyers and judges hear that.
I don’t know.
As a parent, I watch my own kids - but I do expect people to be aware that I have kids - in the plural - and to let me know if there is anything unusual in their home. i.e. 'oh, if your kids go into the basement, you should know I’ve been cleaning my extensive collection of very sharp knives and I’ve been refinishing some furniture down there - there is an open bucket of stripper." Or “I keep a loaded handgun in the nightstand” or “don’t let them unsupervised in the bathroom, my meds are out.”
Guns are weird, because people can view gun ownership as something very private and because outsiders can so easily judge. In some ways its similar to me asking when my son does a sleepover if you have any porn in your house and if you keep it away from your children. Now, I don’t care if you have porn. And if you think its appropriate for your nine year old to flip through Playboy - its just nude women. But at the same time, a lot of parents haven’t prepped their nine year olds for the whole “first exposure to porn” experience - much like non-gun owners may not have taught their kids gun safety and the kids only exposure to guns have been toy guns. Its rude to ask, but it can be a parenting nightmare not to ask. And if you do ask, you are put in a position of having to judge whether the accommodations in the house are something you are comfortable with - with the easily interpretation if you aren’t being “and you are a bad parent/person” even if you don’t intend that to be what is said.
I couldn’t let my kids play at Crafter Man’s house, not because I disapprove of the way he handles his guns but because MY kids haven’t had much gun exposure - the vast majority of it has been toys (they’ve shot pellet guns, they’ve seen real rifles) and because my kids are curious and do touch. He seems convinced that he has never left a round in a chamber, but that isn’t a risk I can take knowing my kids would touch - I can’t trust his follow through. That really sounds judgmental, but we are talking about the possibility that my kid picks up a gun and kills someone - that’s a risk that needs a number of checks - Crafter Man has a few in his home, but he has one I don’t have - kids familiar with guns.
It’s essential to keep loaded guns within arms’ reach, in every room of the house. You can never tell which door or window the Commies* are going to break in when they launch their assault on your compound, so it pays to always be prepared.
- Or the Feds, or the nigras, or the Ay-rabs, or the Jew-run “One World Government” IRS agents who call you a tax evader even though you’ve declared your plot of land to be a sovereign nation… I’m not sure exactly which sort of “militia” Crafter_man belongs to.
I was fairly certain that Crafter Man was part of a relatively sane militia–that is, the kind that confines their activism to “we’re allowed to have guns and train as irregulars, so we’ll do that”.
That having been said, as someone who’s planning on having both kids and guns in the medium term, I’ve given this a lot of thought myself, and I think the best answer to the OP’s question is the one already stated: “My kids don’t know anything about gun safety, so for my own peace of mind could you tell me how you childproof yours?”
Me personally, my deadly weapons (All of the “pointy” variety rather than the “Shooty”) are kept in a cabinet with a catproof lock (those little bastards are worse than toddlers sometimes). When I have kids, I’ll upgrade that. Personally I prefer combo locks, since I don’t want to have the possibility of my keys being borrowed to get in there (I know I stole my parent’s keys when I was a kid.).
In short, on the larger debate I vote with the majority of gun-owning parents–train, sure, but lock that stuff up. Kids are unpredictable.
[QUOTE=JXJoh
I always thought that the general rule is that SF guys don’t advertise the fact. They don’t need to.[/QUOTE]
And you were right to a degree but I was called on my competence to to opine on a subject .
I would not advise anyone of my background IRL but on here I’m just a user name.
Mind you it never ceases to amaze me that members of the public whos only contact or knowledge of S.F. is through quite often innacurate media or book accounts,or "their Uncle knew someone once who knew someone in S.F."etc. feel that they are more fully informed then those who are actually in or have been in S.F.
And on that basis feel that they are qualified to comment on how I or my colleagues should act,speak or behave generally.
Somebody once told me that S.A.S. soldiers wives never knew that their husbands were in the Reg.
I kid you not.
I am not talking about what I always thought,or what I was always told,or what I was always under the impression of, but what I actually KNOW from personal experience.
I didn’t want to hijack the thread, so I dropped this issue. Given your unwillingness to do more than portentiously mutter “I was there, trust me,” it’d be a courtesy for you to do so as well. The more you dance around it, the less credible I find you.
Quite happy to drop it myself if you’ll stop making snide remarks about my character and then expecting me to let them stand unchallenged.
Adios.
Speaking of credibility, you make dark insinuations about his character, call that “dropping the issue”, then cast more assertions when he dares to answer you? This isn’t dropping the issue, this is trying to rig the argument so that you can get the last word.
–cough-- Getting back to the O.P.'er.
You will learn everything you need to know about whether or not your child should sleep over in the first 90 seconds after you broach this subject.
Take a lot of the posts in this thread. People go from defensive to arrogant to outraged to furious to belligerent when anyone dares suggest that it might be a wee tad unsafe to have 10 young children scampering around while a full armed militia trains in the side yard.
You see, this is your child you are talking about. The gun-owners feelings are completely irrelevant. As a responsible parent, you really have no vested interest in their egos. Your sole concern is the safety of your child.
Every gun is a loaded gun. Rule #1, right? Assume that the guns you see in the large glass case are loaded. Ask yourself: " Am I comfortable allowing my child to sleep in a house with other children where there are loaded guns?"
That is the only question you need to ask. If this other child’s parents respect your rights as a parent, and your interest in your own child’s safety and are interested in promoting the friendship, why they should have no problem at all removing the firearms and locking them in the trunk of the car for your child’s overnight visit.
Let us know
While I think Cartooniverse swings too far the other way, I would agree with his basic premise–that is, politely ask the parents your child is visiting about whatever security measures they’re taking, and judge based on your comfort at the answers you receive. If necessary, you can ask if they’ll change some of their security temporarily due to your children’s non-exposure and lack of training, although that might be less preferable than simply saying you’re not comfortable with the arrangement and seeing if they offer to make changes to make you feel safer.
Most households which have hunting weapons (as opposed to personal defense weapons) that I’ve been in would probably even go so far as to move the guns to a separate locked room if the cabinet is convenient for that. The trunk of a car might be a bit much.
Since most guns lack opposable thumbs, the locked trunk isn’t as necessary as making sure they can’t get at you by placing them on the other side of a smooth, round doorknob. This, I think, it what **Cartooniverse **is trying to say.
He’s right, of course. Just locking them in a safe (as Houdini has shown) is insufficient. Those things are built to keep people out, not to keep guns in. Their overwhelming evil allows them to manipulate the mechanism from the inside, jump out and run around the house killing everyone. This is exactly why the number of accidental firearms deaths among children is so high.
Thank goodness he stopped in as the voice of rationality and reason to bring this thread back to earth.
I’d think it’s reasonable to answer a question regarding how the gun cabinet locks, or to say ‘It does not.’ and thus allow fessie to determine whether or not she wants her kids to spend the night in their house.
It’s not reasonable to start making demands as to how other people have to set up their home in order to ‘respect [her] as a parent.’ It’s their home, and they are under no obligation to modify the inner workings of it to satisfy the parent of a kid who wants to have a sleepover with their kid. It doesn’t make them assholes to say ‘If you don’t agree with the way that we do things, then perhaps your kids shouldn’t stay over here.’
Well said. I would only argue that it’s not entirely unreasonable to ASK, but with the understanding that your last sentence is a valid answer to any polite request for a temporary modification of household procedures.
Here’s a first. A reasonable discourse between myself and Catsix about guns where we agree to a degree. Nice. 
I didn’t mean that the parent in the OP should demand or insist. It is not his home, as you said. However, the hosting parents with the gun case would then get to balance the desire to allow the children to socialize with their desire to control how their guns are displayed or not displayed.
It surely isn’t the OP’ers place to insist. Then again, it isn’t the gun owner’s place to demand that the Op’er put their own sense of safety and what “feels right” aside. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.
And, if it is a real sticking point, perhaps the respectful thing to do is make sure there are no sleep-overs for a while longer. Keep it to daytime visits or a dinner over and play time afterwards, with no overnights.
*Personally, I’d rather have a nagaika. The weapon of a Russian Cossack. Not as clumsy or random as a gun, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
So’s a table saw. So just because it’s a “tool” doesn’t mean it’s automatically something less dangerous.
I think it’s more that people are thinking you’re insanely naive, because in life, there is no such thing as 100% safe. Whether we’re talking guns, tools, matches, cars, etc. The only things in life that are 100% are death and taxes.
I’m not saying your kids are untrustworthy, or bad.* I’m sure you’ve told them NOT to touch, unless Mom or Dad say it’s okay. But kids are kids. I was a good, kid, and my parents trusted me. Didn’t stop me from occassionally pulling stupid shit.
And that’s NOT because of fear of guns-it’s just “the way things are”.
*Although, you might want to watch out, if Barbie catches Ken in bed with Midge. Then it’s ON. 