They must be. At 12 years old I was toting my very own Remington 700 deer hunting where my stand was approximately 100 yards from dadsix’s stand. I’d passed the safety course with flying colors (two questions wrong, both on legal details of trapping) and had been instructed on my own rifle’s operation.
The state of PA and dadsix found this arrangement perfectly acceptable.
I am a certified 4-H shotgun instructor. As such, I work with kids from ages 9 to 18 in the skill, handling, maintenance and operation of shotguns, as well as the actual shooting discipline. The first thing we teach is safety. The second thing we teach is mechanics and maintenance. The third thing we teach is — safety. You get the idea.
I began teaching my children about firearms when they were 3 or so. One of the pieces of advice I received was to take all of the “mystery” out of the firearms. Whenever one of my children would ask me about a particular firearm, I would take the time to take it out, show them all of the pertinent points about it, and even possibly disassemble and clean it all at the same time. In addition, this gave me time to explain the deadly nature of the device, which they understood all too well when I would come home with dead game procured with the assistance of the particular firearm. To this day, they don’t have any desire to get in the gun cabinet without supervision, and my children are now 13, 10 and 5 (girl/boy/girl). I am also quite comfortable with leaving one firearm, a 9mm revolver (Ruger SP-101, for those curious) loaded and accessible as a defense firearm. In fairness, this firearm is my concealed carry piece and it is stored on a VERY tall shelf next to my bed at night, so the 5-yr-old cannot reach it.
All of that said, the person in the OP is an idiot, or worse, for not teaching proper safety and handling and hatred. Those things simply don’t mix with deadly hardware laying around…
I see what you’re saying in the first section of the above quote - I tried to express myself more clearly in my second post, but perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I’d have liked.
My point was, I found it interesting that almost all of the concern was focused on the fact that the guns unlocked & almost none was focused on what the child is being taught to use the guns for. That is, this seems to be a discussion about what constitutes proper handling of firearms at what age rather than a discussion of the fact that the child is being taught how to kill - possibly murder - fellow humans, & I find that odd.
And for the record, I’m not trying to cast aspersions on any posters; just making an observation.
As for the age of fourteen being too young in a lot of places… I don’t pretend to know a lot about firearms for either self/home defense or for hunting. I have, however, worked with kids from the 12-16 age group & I feel that perhaps the age limit should be raised. Maybe my feelings would differ if I lived in an area where hunting is more prevalent.
<hijack>Cheers to GrizzRich! What a cute story - you should be a proud papa.</hijack>
Snicks
Hey, it’s all good… a rifle only explodes in one direction, not all directions. 