Now that Mayor Bloomberg has dumped $50m into his new NRA-fighting gun control group, ye olde Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence is living in the shadow of Everytown. No matter. All for one, and one gun for no one. Or something like that. Anyway, I’m not entirely against the theme of this campaign. If you’re worried about unsecured firearms at your kids’ friends home, ask about unsecured firearms. First amendment and all that. HOWEVER, here’s the real trick to keeping your kids safe around someone else’s firearms: teach them what to do when they encounter a gun. My take: muzzle control is everything. Obviously . . .
your sprogs should be instructed to tell their friends not to touch the weapon and immediately tell an adult (thank you, big creepy eagle). And they shouldn’t handle the firearm. But we’re not talking unsupervised toddlers here, mostly. We’re trying to keep tweens and teens alive.
It’s entirely unrealistic to think that a teen – for whom looking cool is the prime directive – is going to run to someone’s Mummy or Daddy when their friend or friends bring out [what the parents thought was] a secured firearm. “C’mon dude. It’s unloaded!” Your child should know enough about guns to demand muzzle discipline, to take control of the gun and make sure it’s unloaded.
Seriously. ‘Cause there are plenty of places your kids may encounter a firearm other than in a friend’s home, where the parents may be out anyway. Not to put tto fine a point on it, The Four Rules of Gun Safety aren’t just for parentally supervised gun time. They’re forever.
Of course, both of the Brady Campaign’s donors would have an apoplectic fit if the gun control group recommended that parents should teach their kids how to handle guns safely. So it’s up to us to spread the message. So the better question to ask is, do your kids know the four rules of gun safety?