Sad. You can be certain she never took an NRA course, where reasons for, and methods to, securing firearms around children are central. If it were my relative I would gift them an NRA course. Beginner Basic Pistol, or intermediate "Personal protection in the home," are great courses.
For an adult who lives alone or with no children a gun in, or even on, a nightstand at night is not an issue when one is home. A loaded gun in or on a bed when you are in or on the bed it is not safe. If there are minors or people with known issues there are small "quick access" gun safes that are bio-metric or that can be settable push-button, that can be used. Street assaults are very quick, and firearm access time needs to be very quick. . But in a home, while police hardly ever arrive in time to interdict crime even in urban areas with quick police response times, and you are better off with a firearm, you still generally have a minute or two to react, and adding five seconds to open a bio-metric or quick access lockbox near your bed is not an issue. A firearm in the lockbox, and a small high quality flashlight on top of the lock-box are a very good idea.
8 children are shot every day in unintentional gun accidents.
You do have to be careful with those stats. Firstly most of those are above 16-years-old in the data sets where CDC uses 16-22 year old cohort, or 16-19 the CDC uses as "child." CDC had issues because even in more recent reports limited to age 19 they failed to mention over half the incidents were all in the 18 and 19 year old cohort and lots of 18 and 19 year old adults committing crimes were included in the data. The fact is actual incidents say involving toddlers pre teens and young teens are down. Lots of people don't even know US fatal gun accidents involving kids are way down, and overall US gun murder rate is also on a long term sustained decrease. Secondly, when I was at grad at John Jay we looked at those and the great majority, on the order of over 97% involving minors being shot in a home, or shooting someone else, were the result of a criminal with an illegal firearm domiciled or visiting a home. Criminals in illegal possession of a firearm are unaffected by laws mandating gun safes, and also greatly increase risk for non gun violence to children as well. In fact I would not let my kid visit any home with anyone with a criminal record living there, that is the real risk factor.