My kid is 3 Should I sell my guns?

Great Debates
1

I’m not sure where is best for this, but seeing as it’s a question relating to guns and small children, Great Debates seems like the best place.

I live in rural Pa, on 5 acres. Up until May I lived on a farm and I’ve acquired quite a gun collection.

I have a variety of high powered rifles, target rifles, practice rifles, shotguns, bows and razor tipped arrows and a handgun.

Everything stays locked in the gun cabinet except for the handgun, which is kept loaded and unchambered in a good location.

I’m comfortable with this at the moment. My daughter cannot get in the cabinet, and the handgun is innacessible to her. If she did get her hands on the gun, she is not strong or dextrous enough to work the slide and chamber a round.

My dad was a Recon Marine, my grandfather a NYC cop. I grew up with guns.

My daughter likes to help me clean them, as I helped my father.

I remember my youth though. My dad was very careful, and diligent. Nevertheless, by the time I was 9 years old, I had acquired access to his gun cabinet. I did it by watching him open the safe. I got a general gist of the combination, and kept trying idly until one day I had unsupervised access to his gun cabinet.

I did some very stupid things, both by myself and with friends. I got away with all of them though. No accidents occured.

One day my father noticed that the guns were altered from their positions…

…and he got rid of them all. Every one.

He wasn’t even mad at me. He was disapointed at what I had done, and had hoped for better, but, I was a young boy, and maybe his hopes weren’t the most realistic.
Now I have my doubts. I don’t hunt much any more, so I really don’t my guns. Some though are heirlooms from my grandfather.

I guess the subject for debate is is it possible to have guns safely in the home with children, or will they always circumvent your best attempts at security?

Can a parent really keep a weapon isolated from their child in the home safely, or is it irresponsible?

Should I make a huge effort and investment in security and keep my guns, wondering if it’s enough, or should I get rid of them?

2

Well, you could keep the guns and ditch the ammo.

3

My suggestion is not to get rid of them, but instead, take away their mystery. Take her with you whenever you go shooting. My stepdaughter had already been shooting with her natural father several times before I ever met her (at age 3). She thinks guns are cool, but isn’t eager to get into them, because they aren’t these strange, mysterious things that she’s fascinated with. She thinks they’re fun, but it’s not taboo, you know?

I also went shooting with my father from age 4 on up, and I think being around them is always a good thing for a child, as long as the supervising adult teaches them to be responsible and safe.

To make it short, I think getting rid of all the guns would be a gross overreaction. The right thing for you dad to do (IMO) would have been to burn your ass, then as you gradually become able to sit down again, talk to you and explain two things: 1. why it’s vitally important not to touch the guns without supervision and permission, and 2. that if it happens again, what you got today will seem like a picnic on a warm summer day. Kids don’t live by reason alone. Sometimes a good, healthy dose of Dad’s belt is an important dietary supplement. :slight_smile:

4

Oh, one other thing. From my earliest memory, there was always a pistol readily accessible, loaded and ready to fire in our house. My father made sure that my mother and I knew where it was, in case it was necessary.

He also made sure I knew that if I ever touched it under any circumstances other than a dire life-or-death emergency or with his permission and supervision, then a burglar was the least of my fears.

So a combination of reason (explaining why not to touch), familiarity (letting me shoot to take away the mystery), and fear (of punishment, since my dad invariably found out about EVERYthing I ever did - it didn’t occur to me until about 20 years later that he was ASA for 4 years and it was his job to spot lies and irregularities. :smiley: ) kept me from messing with the guns when I wasn’t supposed to.

Oh, one more ingredient to add to the mix: pride. I felt like I was finally a man, since my dad took me shooting with him and his brothers, and that was something THE GROWNUPS did together, and now I got to go too! So I wanted him to think I was worthy and didn’t want to ruin it.

5

I think Joe’s suggestion of demystifying the guns is a good one (not sure I’d recommend “ready” family accessibility for the pistol, though!), but only you can decide if that’s adequate or if getting rid of the guns is the appropriate route. Obviously your own father made the effort to educate you, but he still felt the right thing for your safety was to ditch the guns. You may have a different situation with your daughter. (Hard to tell. Not to be chauvinistic, but I think it’s probable she’ll be less likely than a boy would be to “adventure” with guns.) (When she discovers makeup, though…)

Do you lock the ammo in a different location? Would you consider individual trigger locks? Partial dismantling during storage (without ruining the display, of course)?

If nothing else, you should probably put Joe Cool on your “notification” list if you sell… :wink:

6

I think Joe_Cool has some good points. Taking away the mystery sounds like a good idea. Teaching kids, at the proper age, about guns and gun safety is probably the best thing you can do.

At the same time I think that keeping the ammo in a different location from the guns might be a good idea. Maybe you could buy a safe and put it in your bedroom or somewhere else that your daughter doesn’t have access to and store the ammo in it. You can get a decent safe for about 100 bucks, or at least that was the price when I went safe shopping with my Dad last year. (Note, my parents had a safe in the house when I was growing up and I never did find out where they had it)

I don’t think keeping guns in the house with a child around is irresponsible as long as you take the proper safety precautions.

As far as the loaded but unchambered gun you keep in a "good location’, that is going to be the problem. Maybe you could keep the gun in it’s place but bring the clip or ammo with you when you are not around. It’s the unsecured loaded guns that are going to be a problem. Kids will find them.

I believe, but don’t have a cite, that most of the gun deaths with children are when the parents toss the gun in a sock drawer or something similar and think the gun is safe. The kid then finds the gun and sad things happen.

My .05 cents.

Slee

7

I’m all in favor in demystifying. In fact, why not, when she’s six or so, buy her a BB gun. I did so with my son. Even got a Masterlock trigger lock for it. You have never met a safer BB gunner. If you listen, you can hear him say “Safety Off” followed “Safety On.” His BB gun and his gun safety knowlege is a point of pride for him. My shotguns are simply my guns, not anything of particular interest to him. He knows, from watching me or my wife shooting one that he’s not quite big enough for it. Of course my ammunition is stored at his grandparents house, with my guns with cable locks through the receiver.

8

Scylla - I would get rid of the guns. It seems as if you have some serious doubts about the safety of your child (or you wouldn’t have posted this), so why risk it?

How can you say with absolute certainty that your child “cannot get into the cabinet” and that “the handgun is inaccessible”? Remember how clever you were as a kid? Don’t underestimate the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the little guys (and gals), esp. when they get together in a group.

There is conflicting evidence to the number of accidental deaths of kids in America: libs say 12 a day, conservs say 21 a year. I honestly don’t know. But one is really too many.

If you feel you must have a gun in your house to protect yourself and your family I would definitely get a gun lock. There is considerable evidence that locks lower the risk of accidents, and you can get one with keys for you and your wife (and any other adults in the household).

You clearly adore your child. I think your dad did the right thing when he had his doubts.

Joe_Cool - Striking children with a belt (or other weapon) is against the law. Please don’t promote child abuse here.

9

Child deaths due to accidental shooting is actually pretty darn low. I’m not really sure about injuries due to accidental shoothings though. I suppose so long as you have a firearm in the house there is always a risk of an accident no matter how important safety is to you. Personally I think getting rid of all your firearms is an overreaction given that there are many steps you could take to prevent an accident.

  1. You could get a gun safe.

  2. You could get rid of all the ammo for firearms you don’t use often and/or store them in a seperate area.

  3. You can disable the firearms by removing various parts and storing them in a seperate location.

    Given the millions of people who grew up with firearms in their home without incident I don’t see how anyone could call the average gun owning parent irresponsible.

Marc

10

I imagine that varies from state to state. It isn’t illegal in every state to use a belt, a paddle, or a switch to administer corporal punishment to your child. Unless of course you’ve got some information about federal law the rest of us don’t.

Marc

11

Your dad really impresses me. No hesitation on his part once he learned his precautions failed.

12

Scylla,

Sounds like your dad “demystified” them for you, and you know what you did. And it isn’t just curiousity. I was also someone who went out shooting at a young age. When I was a teenager, I was depressed (still go through it). Its probably a good thing my dad had gotten rid of everything but the pellet gun.

Could you ever forgive yourself if anything happened? The other thing to keep in mind is even if you trust your kid - you have to trust the boyfriend she is going to have in twelve years, the girlfriends at the slumber party when she is ten. My problem with kids and guns is that I can teach my kid. And I can trust you as a responsible gun owner to teach your kid. But there is always that little shit Timmy, who talks your kid into showing him your guns and shoots my kid.

I wouldn’t sell them. But I would remove them from the house. Perhaps have a friend or relative keep them. Keep them in a locker at a gun club, or a storage locker. At least don’t keep the ammo in the house.

(BTW, one of my co-workers passed away recently. Shot himself in the chest cleaning his gun after deer hunting. I didn’t know him, but apparently, the guy wasn’t an idiot.)

13

I’d get a trigger lock for the hand gun, and, if you don’t feel safe with the other guns in your house (I probably wouldn’t, I know that), you could either put them in storage, or give them to a childless friend to hang onto, or something like that. Don’t sell them, necessarily, especially if they’re heirlooms. There’s plenty of ways to keep them completely away from your child without selling them.

14

Dangerosa, as I said, demystifying is only a single step in the process of teaching gun safety. You also have to be a parent. Make sure the kid knows how to handle a gun safely. Make sure the kid knows not to touch the guns. Make sure you’ve spent the last few years raising your kid to be obedient. And make sure your kid knows the consequences for disobedience in this case are dire.

And trigger locks are a great idea for guns you have in storage, but not for the loaded but not chambered home defense weapon. There it makes the gun utterly useless to you (which is why gun control advocates are so in favor of them).

And Leander, spanking your kids is against the law? Is this new in the PATRIOT act or something?

ahem

Cite, please?

15

leander, it’s called discipline, (weather by belt or hand) not child abuse. Not spanking a child when necessary is child abuse. Those are the children that get their asses kicked in school.

Teaching your child about guns is the safest way to protect them. Curiosity killed the cat.
Maybe the killer who breaks into your house will wait (if you ask nicely) until you unlock your gun safe, or even wait till you load your gun.
There are many safe ways to keep a gun. Getting rid of them is extreme.

16

Yes my dad did teach me and demystify them for me. I still got into the safe and played with the guns with my friends.

The thing I’m considering is getting a safety deposit box, and keeping the bolts to the rifles in the box at the bank. Get the ammo out of the house as well. If I do that, though, I’ll probably never use the guns again. It will be too inconveniant to run to the bank if I want to shoot a groundhog.

The home defense gun is another concern. Is it ever truly safe? And, the safer I make it, the harder it is to get if I need it. It’s all a big trade off and I’m not sure what the best route is for me to take.
Thanks for the ideas guys. You’re helping me work this out.

17

I just did a Google search on “home defense” —lots of rather vehement individuals… “Home security” yields a lot of hits on alarm and surveillance systems and passive security devices (bars, locks, etc.). Don’t know how helpful any of those will be.

Have you considered asking for guidance from the local PD?

18

I decided to not mess around and just ask the smartest people I know of.

So I asked here.

19

Honestly, I’d be more worried about the hunting broadheads than the guns. You can make a gun safe by unloading it and removing the firing pin - but there’s nothing you can do to make the edge on those arrows safe. And the thing that most attracted me to my father’s gun case as a child wasn’t the guns themselves - it was the nice, shiny bayonet that went with his WW II Japanese rifle.

Since you say you don’t use your guns much any more, why not simply get rid of the ammunition, and also remove the firing pins from the weapons you don’t shoot regularly? They’d still be fine for display purposes - but there’d be no way for your daughter to shoot them. If you still like to hunt, keep the firing pin in the gun/guns you hunt with - but only buy ammunition during the hunting season (discarding it when the season’s over), and during the hunting season store it somewhere other than in the house with the guns.

The biggest issue is whether to keep a handgun for personal protection. Your daughter isn’t strong enough or dextrous enough to chamber a round now - but that will obviously change as she grows older. And while she’ll become more sensible at the same time, and the risk of accidents will rtherefore decrease, there’s the risk of teen depression/suicide to consider as well. I’d suggest asking yourself seriously whether you really need a home defense weapon - if the answer is “yes”, then buy the best gun safe you can afford to store it in, and consider storing the magazine in a separate location. True, it will slow you down if you ever need to use the gun, but not necessarily by much, and it will greatly decrease the chance of your daughter ever accidentally discharging the weapon.

And whatever you decide, start teaching your daughter gun safety! Even if you decide to get rid of all of YOUR weapons, she might one day come across a loaded gun at a friend’s house…
And you need to do something to counteract all the “gun UN-safety” messages she’ll be passively picking up from TV and movies, as she watches actors time and again routinely violating the most basic rules of safe gun handling.

20

Or, try using gun cabinet with a key lock rather then a combination lock. Then you can just keep the key in the safe deposit box. Or give it to a friend. Or hide it so well that it would be impossible to find.