Owning a firearm is one way to protect yourself and your family in the event of a break-in. When you have children, however, it’s extremely important to make sure your guns are stored safely and securely. Here are some helpful gun storage safety tips for responsible gun owners who have children living in the home.
Making sure that your guns are locked up when not in use is a critical gun safety measure when you have children in the home. Many young people have a fascination with firearms. They see them used in movies and video games and some kids have played with toy guns. That’s why unattended children who find a gun have a tendency to want to pick it up and play with it. For too many children, this type of curiosity can end with devastating results.
Along with locking up firearms, parents should keep ammunition locked away as well. Don’t store the guns and ammunition together. That way, if a child should ever gain access to the firearm they will be less likely to be able to use it as they still won’t have access to the ammunition. This leads to our next point.
If your gun and ammunition safes or lock boxes are secured with keys, keep the keys hidden in a secret place. Never tell your children the location of those keys. If your safes are secured with an access code, don’t tell your kids what the code is and don’t make it something that would be easy enough for them to guess. Whether you own AR-15 rifles, pistols, or some other type of firearms, it’s vital to keep them away from your children when you’re not around to supervise them.
If you choose to keep guns in your home, talk to your children early and often about gun safety, including how guns should be safely stored. Warn them never to pick up a gun if they happen to find one that has somehow not been properly stored inside your home or anywhere else. Instruct them to, instead, come and tell you immediately.
Building healthy respect in children for the potential danger of firearms is one of the keys to gun safety. Even if parents who take the time to teach their children all about gun safety rules, they should still keep their firearms locked up. Kids sometimes make unwise choices. It’s up to parents to help make sure that those choices don’t end in tragedy.
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