My kid is 3 Should I sell my guns?

Great Debates
21

Just chiming in on the “familiarize her with them at an appropriate age” thing. Also trigger locks and removing firing pins sounds like the best way to go. Can’t you store the pins in a lock-box in your house? They have pretty good sized ones in Wal-Mart for about $40.

My father practically had an arsenal in his closet. (About 10-15 rifles and shotguns.) I never even knew they were there until I was about 10 years old. My father showed me one day how to take the pellet gun apart, clean it, and load it. By then I wasn’t interested in things like that, so I promptly forgot everything, and never touched the gun. (I saw my father shoot quite a bit of squirrels when I was young, and I thought it was horrible.) If you teach her the proper respect for guns at an age when she will understand it, it probably won’t be a problem.

On an interesting side note, when I was in high school we had to take “Hunter Safety” in P.E. because our gym had been destroyed in a hurricane. We had to carry a big rubber shotgun around a course, and demonstrate proper safety the whole time. I refused to do it, because I had no desire to cart around a big gun. My parents had to call the school and complain when the teacher told me I would fail if I didn’t do it. It’s amazing, the things that happened pre-Columbine, isn’t it?

22

Well, first off, how secure is this gun “cabinet”? A wooden cabinet with a glass/plexiglass display? Sturdy? Flimsy? Lockable? Look at it like a little kid who wants to get at them without getting caught (IOW, think like you did at nine y/o) and assess it’s vulnerabilities.

If it doesn’t fit the bill, then perhaps a gun safe, w/ a key and combination lock. There are even sturdy, lightweight (compared to a safe, anyway) gun cabinets with decent locks on them available for about $200

Whether you keep the current cabinet or upgrade to a real safe, I like the idea of removing the bolts and/or firing pins and keeping them in a separate lockbox, as well as using up/discarding any excess ammo. I’ve never seen a gun fire without a firing pin or a bullet. If it ever happens, y’all 'll let me know?

The self defense handgun: there are small-ish handgun safes with keypad combinations available. Most have a four or five digit keypad and combination, so I suppose, with effort, a young’un could eventually crack the code and get at it. IME, little girls are much less likely than little boys to be interested in that sort of thing. But, for every rule, there is an exception.

Perhaps you might reexamine your risk/exposure to armed assailants/intruders in the home; check with the local and county police for some info on “hot” home intrusions in your area, and the target profiles (such as large, expensive homes).

Armed with knowledge and facts, then reconsider your need for a readily-available self defense hadgun in the home. If you decide you really don’t need it, put it away or get rid of it.

23

Without going into my actual opinion on guns (they’re strong and tend to get people upset with me and I, frankly, don’t need that hassle right now) I’ll just leave you with my $.02

Accidents happen no matter how careful you are. But then again, accidents happen with power outlets as well (BELIEVE me, I know) and numerous other things around the house. My feeling is, why have another possible way your child can hurt herself.

As a compromise, do you have a relative nearby who can store them for you so you can use them when you need them? Or can they be stored at a gun club (I don’t really know if this is possible)?

24

Right there with you Scylla. There was nothing, NOTHING, my parents had that I didn’t know about and I, even though I was accounted a very responsible and well-behaved child, still did some stuff I’m suprised I lived through. I can’t imagine how we would have reacted if there were a gun around. Guns when I was growing up were things our friends who lived on farms had. Could have been a consequence of growing up in the city, but I’m not sure. Our thing was bows. Each of the boys had a bow, I still have mine to this day. We practiced the aiming and shooting with those and field point wooden arrows. A local college had a shooting range and we’d go there if we were in the mood for some real contesting, otherwise it was a large cardboard box stuffed full of newspaper we kept in the shed and hauled out for target practice.

Now that I’m a parent I find myself in such a situation. I don’t have guns, but I do have several swords. I have an epee for fencing and a katana. My wife has a broadsword, but we’re not real concerned about that one because it’s a prop and doesn’t have a blade. My epee is made of high-carbon steel. Armor piercing quality. It’s an Angel Sword made by a local craftsman. The katana doesn’t have quite the lineage the epee does, but I keep the katana extremely sharp. Now the children have shown zero interest in them so far, but I don’t think that will hold. I’m going to have to do some demystifying, and I think it’ll be time to get them some practice swords of their own. I’ll use a practice sword too and hopefully we can keep them from trying to experiment with the others. Even if they do I have less worries about a bladed weapon than I would about a firearm. Still they’re getting locked up at the first sign of one of the kids playing with them. If I have to get an off-site storage facility(like a safe deposit box or self-storage unit) then I will.

As far as family protection, I agree with some of the other posters. A good alarm system and a properly-secured home will do more to safeguard your family than a pistol and it doesn’t rely on you staggering through the dark half-asleep to find its components when you might need it the most. I trust my alarm system to react reliably in the case of a break-in more than I trust my ability to stumble to my closet and arm myself to face an unknown, possibly armed, intruder.

Enjoy,
Steven

25

Here might be my recommendation. I doubt your dad has kids in the house anymore, if you have your own now. (But, it is possible of course).

You might ask to store them at his place during the years you are really concerned about.

Another thing, you remember what you did as a kid. I suspect you would take rather stronger precautions than your dad did with you.

I have no problem keeping guns in my house. I pretty much always have a pistol and shotgun loaded. But, that is my house. This is your house. Do what you are comfortable with.

The first step to avoiding an accident is being aware that it is possible, you seem to be right on to that idea.

26

Just my $0.02.
Get them out of the house. Store the heirlooms (or any you want to keep) in a safe deposit box, gun club etc., and sell the rest. Teach your daughter gun safety, but keep them out of the house anyway. Kids are stupid and even though your daughter may be sensible, her friends may not.

(Like my 18 year old patient who was killed by his 15 year old friend fooling around with a gun).

27

I too grew up in a family where there were guns in the house (four girls, no boys). I think my father had a rather reasonable approach:

When we were young (your daughter’s age), we rarely saw the guns at all. Dad kept every last one of them locked up and unloaded. Mainly because little kids are mischevious and often don’t have good impulse control–sometimes they just can’t seem to fight their curiosity, even if they know they’ll get busted for messing with them.

When we were teenagers, Dad started leaving loaded handguns around the house. He told us where they were, and taught us how to use them. He wanted us to know where they were in case we ever needed to use them to defend ourselves. However, we knew that we would face ungodly punishment if we ever touched them in a situation that was not Life or Death.

At all ages, there was a very strict rule that we were not to talk to our friends about the fact that Dad had guns in the house. Once they were accessible, we were told that we had to make sure that our house guests did not discover them (though they weren’t kept in obvious places). I know Dad did this because he knew that kids can’t always control what their mischevious friends might do, and that it was better not to present the temptation. I think he was right on about this.

I don’t think you have to get rid of the guns. I do, however, think that you should make sure your daughter never, ever learns how to open the lock on the gun cabinet until she’s of a responsible age (probably older than 12). I never knew the combination to my dad’s gun safe–he wouldn’t tell us what it was. Still don’t know (though it’s moot now because of the loaded guns around the house).

As for the loaded gun that you don’t lock up–kids can usually find these. You’re probably right that she couldn’t fire it now. But within the next couple of years, I think you need to rethink this plan and add another layer of safety. If there are ever older kids who are allowed to roam your house unsupervised, you should consider another layer of safety now. I would at least consider not leaving any loaded guns around the house until your kids are over age 12 or so. This, of course, depends on your particular situation.

I do hope that you will instill respect for the power of the guns in your daughter. I think that sometimes growing up around weapons leads to a comfort level that then leads to a somewhat lax attitude about the need for safety measures and caution. This started to happen to my dad after awhile, even though he had always been one of the most incredibly cautious gun owners I’ve ever known. He made one mistake and came very near to shooting my sister. (He was cleaning the gun, forgot to check it, there was a round in the chamber, it fired. The bullet missed Sis by less than a foot.) Fortunately, this reminder didn’t have more tragic consequences. I still believe in private gun ownership, but this episode caused me to feel that gun owners need to be meticulous and unflinching in their handling of guns and their attitudes towards them, and need to be just as unflinching when they instill these things in their children.

28

Same here. I don’t think I even realized my parents had guns until I was 12 or so. The guns and ammo were kept in seperate, locked areas of the house, which didn’t present a problem since they were rarely used for anything so quick access wasn’t an issue for my parents.

29

I think you already know what you are going to do and just want some support. You are getting it here.

I do wonder about the much more often reasons for children’s accidental deaths that are all over your house and property. some of them are even your forgetful self at various times. If the gun safety is so focused on that it is 100%, what about the 352 other things that happen more often than gun deaths that you are regulating to the background?

No matter what is going on around you, never stop flying the airplane.

30

Locked safe and unloaded.

A couple of issues.

Your child’s safety. Yes, only a few kids are killed each year by playing with Dad’s guns, but an unlocked gun, even unloaded but with ammo accessible, is still a risk. You’d be surprised what a curious child can accomplish. Only a few people are killed by home invaders too. Two low probability events. You can protect against the latter by other means already discussed (alarms, etc); you can protect against the former by keeping the gun unloaded and locked up in a safe.

Your responsibility to keep your gun from being stolen. Most homicides are committed with stolen weapons or weapons bought on the black or nonlicensed market. I do not have figures for this, but my guess is that a fair number of these stolen guns used for murder are these easy to get at handguns stored unlocked putatively for home defense. If your gun gets stolen because you failed to secure it, then ethically (if not legally) you are culpable for the crime committed with it.

No reason you can’t keep your family heirlooms, and maybe pass them onto her when she is an adult. Teach her about guns and gun safety. How to hunt under supervision. Teach her about bow hunting too. But store them all safely unloaded and locked with a key that you keep with you. Or off site.

Just my non-gun-owner but kids doc perspective. FWIW.

31

That’s the thing. Nothing is ever truly safe. You can’t isolate your kids and protect them from every danger. Accidents do happen. Highly skilled professional drivers can fall asleep at the wheel or crash while they change the radio station. Professional pilots can make errors and crash. People trained in gun safety can shoot somebody accidentally. Unfortunately, that’s life.

I’m of the opinion that you can’t put your children in a sterile box, fenced off from all risks, and be happy that they’re perfectly safe. First, they need responsibility, and they need risk. The real world, as you know, is full of danger and risk. Kids need to learn how to exercise judgement, and they need to learn obedience, and they need to learn to weigh risks.

I honestly believe that getting rid of your guns because of the likelihood that your daughter will someday figure out how to get to them is an extreme overreaction. Kids will always figure out how to get into things. That’s what we’re designed for - figuring out solutions to problems. That is what humans do best. You learned to get into your dad’s safe, and your kids will likely have learned/inherited that spark from you.

But the correct (IMO, of course) course is to be a parent to your children, not a warden. Our job as fathers is to teach our kids how not to hurt themselves, how to weigh risks, how to obey legitimate authority, how to survive and become productive members of society. And that’s the solution to all of life’s problems: You don’t want your kids to use drugs. Do you move to a better neighborhood, or do you parent them? You don’t want them to drink and drive. So do you refuse to teach them to drive, or do you raise them properly?

Based on probability of future injury to your daughter, I think it would be much more reasonable to turn off your gas and electricity than to get rid of your guns.

32

P.S.

I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to push the “You can’t get rid of them” angle. I’m working from the assumption that if you have several guns, it’s because you want them, not because they were there when you moved in. :slight_smile:

If you decide that you don’t really need them, don’t really want them, or are not confident that you can keep your daughter from playing with them, then by all means, out the door with the lot of 'em!

33

It seems the professional and responsible thing to do is to get the guns out of the house.

Scylla, brave and valiant slayer of Groundhogs once said:

34

Check out a “pistol vault” for the home defense weapon, lock the others in a safe.

unclviny

35

There is no such thing as “inaccessible”.

There are only “locked up” or “ready to the hands of a child”.

Children are not capable of truly understanding the consequences of mishandling a gun–at least not until they are 12 or 13, and sometimes not even then. Death, their own or that of another person, is just not real to them.

Lock up your guns now.

There are thumbprint scanner gun safes available. They will open by running your thumb over the scanner window. Get one, & program it to open for your spouce & yourself only.

BTW–you need one rifle, one shotgun, one pistol, & one set of bows & arrows.

Guns are not ju-ju totems. They are not magic charms. Accumulating a huge arsenal will not make you any safer, as you can only use one at a time. Movie shoot-em-ups notwithstanding. :rolleyes:

36

My husband is a gun guy. When my son and I moved in with him, I told my son that if he ever had a curious,obsessive feeling to mess with the guns, tell me or hubby and hubby would show him all about it.

Well, one of our guns was stolen when my son was around 13. I was so terrified that it was him who took it that I took him to the police department for questioning! (It wasn’t him). One of our guns is still floating around out there somewhere, which is a lousy feeling indeed. We have a safe for the remaining guns. It is combination and key locked. We no longer have young kids living in the house, but my niece comes over and I’m glad it’s all locked up, although I’d be happier if we melted them all down and made lawn furniture with the metal.

37

Scylla, I agree with Joe_Cool, just familiarize her with them so that they’re not such a huge unknown and make good use of a gun safe (and that includes “don’t let her watch you dial the combo”), and add one of those quick-release safes for your pistol. You need to secure your guns and educate her about them, but you have to bear in mind that there are a lot of other dangerous things around a house (much less a farm). If you decide to sell your guns off, don’t just assume your house is safe but make sure you’ve got things like cleaning supplies, knives, arrows, etc. secured and remember that more kids drown in swimming pools than from gun accidents - put up some kind of fence around any pools or ponds that you might have, or maybe just make a backyard. A young kid is far more likely to get killed or hurt by wandering off into something dangerous in the woods than by breaking into your safe.

Oh, and since DSeid is up to his old tricks…

Ahh, the usual Dseid line of BS. When are you going to come up with a cite for that claim of yours about the source of guns used in crimes (this isn’t the first time you’ve been asked)? Are you just going to keep repeating it but call it a ‘guess’ from now on? Continuing to repeat an obviously false claim that you’ve been called on before is just wrong.

Demonstrating your raw hatred for anyone who values their own life again? How is one person ethically responsible for someone else committing a criminal act again (I expect you to dodge again, you ran off last time you started posting this nonsense)? What does “secured” mean? Does “secured” mean the same thing for a gun as for other objects potentially useful in crimes, and if not why not? I don’t really expect answers from you since you bailed out last time you got called on your line of nonsense, but at least other people can see the gaping holes in your position.

38

Joe Cool:
do you have kids?

If they misbehave do you hit them with your belt?
Scylla,
Get rid of the ones you dont need, get rid of the Ammo and get the ones you want to keep for sentimentality disarmed so they can never be fired again.

If you want to keep the handgun, make sure it is not accessible or easily fireable.

But you are a smart man and you will make the right decision.

39

Yes, and the judges, parole board members, and police are criminally responsible for repeat offenders. Dontcha know.

Scylla, that thumb-print scanner sounds like the way to go if you can afford it. I’d never heard of these before. Either that or a key lock.

40

Check out some of the stuff they got at gunsandammo.com, Scylla. Something like this is probably what you want for secure, but quick access. And a good combo with key safe is all you’re going to need for the rest of your toys and ammo.