Safe Storage w/Children

J

Julius Caesar

Inactive
I have 3 guns, a Ruger 10/22, and two handguns. I have a small personal combination safe, I keep the handguns and ammo in the safe and keep the 10/22 with a trigger/action lock, but the key is locked in the safe. The keys to the safe are kept out of the house.

I have a small child and possibly more on the way in the next few years. I have read a lot of horrible stories about kids accidentally getting guns and causing death or injury. Seems most/all of these tragedies occur because of a parent who keeps a gun accessible. I.e. a gun a parent thinks is hidden but really is not. Sadly, it seems like most of these tragedies were easily avoidable by simply locking the guns.

I am curious what the parents here who own guns do. I have heard on Project ChildSafe that the gun should be locked twice, and the ammo stored in a separate safe. That seems a but excessive to me, as I don't see how a child could get into a locked safe in the first place.

How sophisticated is a child? Could a child conceivable pick a lock or short circuit a safe to open it?
 
Store guns and ammo separately, problem solved. Unless you consider a gun a blunt object, then i think you need to store everything in a safe to keep your kids safe.

Now, to be serious, a few years old kid won't be able to load a gun if it wasn't taught how to do so.
 
Do as my friend did and destroy the mystique around guns. Tell your child if they want to see it, to ask and you will retrieve it from the safe for them to examine (after you teach them the three basic safety rules).
 
4V50 Gary said:
Do as my friend did and destroy the mystique around guns. Tell your child if they want to see it, to ask and you will retrieve it from the safe for them to examine (after you teach them the three basic safety rules).
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Worked with our kid also...
 
And what I did with my two boys as well; only one gun kept out of the safe and loaded, my 357 in my nightstand which the boys were drilled about not messing with without me or even telling their friends. They got to shoot it with mild 38s, and watched what a 357 could do.
 
4V50 Gary said:
Do as my friend did and destroy the mystique around guns. Tell your child if they want to see it, to ask and you will retrieve it from the safe for them to examine (after you teach them the three basic safety rules).
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I could not agree more. I have four sons and this is what I did from an early age.
When they ask, stop what your doing and satisfy their curiosity. Offer the opportunity to handle your firearms once in a while too.
I found too taking them to the club to hear and see firearms going off in real life was invaluable in teaching them "Hands off" unless Dad's with me.
My two adult's are responsible gun nuts like dad now.
 
I have a gun safe, all firearms live in it! But my Glock 19, it is always loaded, on my person. Or on the bedside table (like now!) No children at home, when Grandkids visit. Round out of the chamber, and holstered, concealed.

Just in case wrestling about gun becomes loose? Don't know how, but better safe than sorry.
 
Maybe children are different now and do what they are told and never disobey their parents. A lot of children are fascinated by firearms and will pick them up and play with them given a chance, their are plenty of tragic stories of what can happen. Telling them not to touch etc is not good enough its gun owners responsibility to make sure children do not have unsupervised access to firearms, not the child's responsibility to do what they are told. It seems that you are a responsible gun owner and keep you firearms away from unsupervised access, the steps you have in place seem reasonable.
 
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Welcome to TFL, Julius Caesar!

While kids may not be "sophisticated" enough to disable a lock, you still have to be careful. Obviously, cheap locks are more easily disabled than others and simply hiding a gun won't cut it, as you've noted. Just because we (as parents) think a gun is hidden doesn't mean a kid won't find it. It sounds like your precautions are pretty good, though.

When our daughter was little, I also took the remove the mystique route. By the time our daughter was ~5, she was "helping" me clean guns. AKA: Generally getting underfoot, but still allowing me an opportunity to teach her about guns and gun safety. The first time she handled a pistol, it was frame only, with slide and barrel removed, and we went from there. At 14, she's completely uninterested in guns (in lieu of makeup and music), but I'm confident that if she ran across one at a friend's house, she'd know how to deal with it.
 
Step-1: Remove the mystique +1
Step-2: Lock it up when you/your wife are absent (ammunition is a secondary/tertiary consideration)

Step-1 is for your kids.
Step-2 is for "their friends"
 
Teaching your kids about guns at an early age is a good idea, but based on my own childhood, I can guarantee that it does not destroy the mystique. That is why guns must be locked up if kids are around. No matter how well you train them, you cannot assume that kids will never disobey when they are not being watched. That is what kids do, they disobey from time to time as a way of learning new things and testing limits. You disobeyed when you were a kid, didn't you? Lock up your guns if kids are in the house.
 
I agree with teaching them as much as you can about guns, but I also know kids usually have to be told multiple times (especially toddlers) before they get it. Use a good quality handgun safe that is quick to access for you and safe enough to keep unwanted hands off your home defense gun.
 
Manta49 said:
Maybe children are different now and do what they are told and never disobey their parents. A lot of children are fascinated by firearms and will pick them up and play with them given a chance, their are plenty of tragic stories of what can happen. Telling them not to touch etc is not good enough its gun owners responsibility to make sure children do not have unsupervised access to firearms, not the child's responsibility to do what they are told. It seems that you are a responsible gun owner and keep you firearms away from unsupervised access, the steps you have in place seem reasonable.
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It certainly IS a child's responsibility to do as told. And if a child is raised to understand that there will be negative consequences if they DON'T do as they are told, they can learn responsibility for their actions.

Do parents have a responsibility to store guns properly? Yes, I suppose they do. Yet ... I'm well into my seventh decade wandering the face of this planet. When I was a young child, my grandfather had rifles and shotguns in his house, and two uncles who lived on the same street each had handguns in their houses. Nobody then had a "gun safe." All us cousins knew where all the guns were kept. We also understood the rules of firearms safety, and we knew we were "in for a lickin' " if we ever dared to play with any of the guns without permission and supervision.

So we didn't.

But I grew up in an age when parents spanked their children for sassing and disobeying. Today, the kids would call the cops and have Mommy or Daddy arrested for child abuse over what was routine discipline when I was young. I find it difficult to think that the modern system produces better adult citizens.
 
It certainly IS a child's responsibility to do as told. And if a child is raised to understand that there will be negative consequences if they DON'T do as they are told, they can learn responsibility for their actions.
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Try arguing that in court if a child is injured with a unsecured firearm. Its the child's fault for doing what it was told, not mine for leaving a firearm lying around.
You can argue they should do what they are told, but that doesn't mean they will so its up to the adults to make sure they do not have unsupervised access to firearms.
 
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"It certainly IS a child's responsibility to do as told."

That may be a little bit true, but kids disobey anyway. They occasionally disobey big time when not being watched. If anyone out there says you never disobeyed as a kid, I am calling you a liar right now.
 
manta49 said:
Try arguing that in court if a child is injured with a unsecured firearm. Its the child's fault for doing what it was told, not mine for leaving a firearm lying around.
You can argue they should do what they are told, but that doesn't mean they will so its up to the adults to make sure they do not have unsupervised access to firearms.
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You are conflating liability with responsibility. Nevertheless, your anti-gun bias is showing (again). You live in an anti-gun society, so you aren't really qualified to understand the nuances of how it works here in the U.S.
 
I think locking up guns in this culture is the right thing to do. In a safe is my preferred method, but a gun lock is fine.

I have a gun on me almost always. That does not change when the grandkids are here. When they stay, my loaded pistols go in a biometric safe if not on me.

Locking empty guns in one place and ammo in another is very popular with those who believe that having guns under any circumstance puts lives at risk.
 
K Mac said:
Locking empty guns in one place and ammo in another is very popular with those who believe that having guns under any circumstance puts lives at risk.
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Too true.

When my late wife and I were going through the adoption process, the adoption social worker who did our home study just about freaked out when she found out I had GUNZ!!! in the house. I assured her that they were locked up (which they were -- and are, even though the adopted daughter is now away at college and is an adult). Then she (the social worker) tried to tell me that "the law required" that the ammunition had to be locked up, too. So I had to explain to her that, no, the law did NOT require that the ammunition be locked up, and I explained that I knew this because I am a certified firearms instructor.

So she backed off -- to the position of, "Well, it's OUR requirement." (She did the same thing about a CO2 detector -- tired to claim it's required, and when I cited chapter and verse of the building code to prove that it's not required in an existing house, she fell back on the "It's our requirement" to make it happen anyway.)

So, for the ammo, I snagged one of those half-height, sheet metal office storage cabinets from a company that had vacated their old offices, put a cheap padlock on it, and put enough ammo in it to make her happy. If she had twigged to the reloading bench and how much ammo I really have stored in the basement she would have had an entire herd of cows.
 
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