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[quote=Anonymous]Chances are very good many of your kid’s friends are living in homes where a gun is located.  As they age, many of their friends will own guns to shoot and hunt.  It is absolutely fine to discuss gun ownership and storage with anyone.  No parent will object.  Yes, even still, it is important to talk to your kids about gun safety starting young (5 or 6).  At that age, if you do not have a gun in your house, conversations with people they know while you are present, is a good start.

As kids get older conversations need to continue.  The emphasis is that guns are a fact of American life, but they are never cool.  They are always dangerous tools that must be handled correctly always.  Continued conversations with older folks they know are good.  My two youngest were Boy Scouts and gun safety was part of their camping experience for years.  That was good.  But there are other ways to get similar training.  The key is that you want your kids to treat every gun as potentially dangerous.  There is no safe gun for a 6 year old.  For a 20 year old they should know how to treat a gun and always assume it is loaded.

I have a friend who tells the story of being at a friend of his home and looking at a rifle hung on a wall in the family room as decoration.  It was very old and belonged to a long deceased family member.  This was in an area where everyone hunted and fished, and not the only gun in this house. With permission he took it down from the wall, and by his own long standing training he checked to see if it was loaded.  It was.

His experience would not be unique.  Every gun. Every time must be assumed to be loaded until you know for sure it is not.  Even decorator pieces hanging on a wall.

A word for Scouts as an aside.  My 17 year old son went deer hunting for the first time with his cousins and uncle.  They have a couple blinds set up near wood lots on the family farm.  We have a 22 that the kids shoot in the summer at targets, and he has done shooting with Scouts over the years.  The cousins and uncle had him shoot one of grandpas old deer rifles at a target they use for practice.  At 100 yds he was 5 for 5 in the bullseye (which they all could do too) They said he would be fine.  That really would all be due to his experience with Scouts over the years.

The next day hunting the morning session had no shot opportunities.  The late afternoon session had more deer but nothing worth getting until about 5 when a 8 point came out.  Not big enough generally for them as they have gotten picky in order to build the buck population but it was his first time so his cousins said to get it if he could. He said he finally got a good shot opportunity at 150 yards and dropped it where it stood with a shot through the heart.  He is now “Bullseye” as even his uncles said they have always had to track a deer for some distance after shooting one.  They rarely drop where they are shot.

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