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During last weekend’s NRA Annual Meeting in Houston, I gave a presentation on home defense concepts. One of the the suggestions I offered was keeping a gun – locked securely in a quick-access safe – in your child’s room. Just in case. As you may have heard, my tip was picked up by members of the anti-gun media (yes, that’s redundant) and has been spun as advice that gun owners store their firearms in their children’s room . . .

It’s interesting that out of everything these reporters saw and heard at the NRA meetings, the idea of taking steps to protect our homes and families… and especially our kids… is what they decided to demonize. It really is telling about the anti-gunners’ agenda. The obvious plan: hit the emotional high notes, ignore the logic and context of the concepts being covered and play to people’s worst nightmares.

When I talked about kids being in danger at the seminar, I was offering solutions to help people make kids safer. When they talk about kids being in danger, they aren’t proposing anything to help…in fact, they specifically downplay (or ignore) the safety issues that I brought up. As David Byrne might say, same as it ever was.

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82 COMMENTS

    • He wasn’t even advocating that the guns be accessible to the children! That’s how much of the media has been portraying it, though. As though the message was to give kids their own guns and let them keep the guns in their room. They willfully distorted the message, which is basically to keep a locked safe with a firearm in your kid’s room (ideally out of their reach even), because that’s where you’re likely to run to immediately in the event of a break-in or other emergency. But… I’ve seen comments like “more of the NRA pushing guns on kids to indoctrinate them young” and all of that crap…. likening to the tobacco industry, etc…

      • I am glad I was indoctrinated at five years old. It’s been a lot of fun to shoot over the years and some of my nest memories are shooting with my dad or grandpa.

        My only problem was I was a FUD. Why did anyone need a semi auto rifle? My parents were also of the same mind. That all changed in 2000 when I fired an M-16 A2. My parents even get it with semi auto rifles now and I think my dad might want one. Maybe I’ll build one for him.

  2. At 10 years old I hadtwo guns in my room/closet. A 10/22 and a 20Ga

    At any rate I like your thinking on it for home defense.

  3. Didn’t realize that was you, Rob.

    Well played, sir. Well played indeed. You may not have intended to troll the media, but you trolled them hard nonetheless.

    • +1

      I’ve never owned a quick-access / biometric / electronic safe but I’ve seen too many youtube videos of GunVaults popping open with just a knock, like the Fonz starting a jukebox.

    • Home carry’s all great and all, but Im not sure about you, but I can’t sleep with a gun in a holster in my bed.

      The idea is to keep a gun in the kid’s room so you can rush to their room to them in the night if you are experiencing a burglary. This way you can hurry there and not have to rush to collect your stuff before you go.

      Keep a working normally safe queen in there if you have to.

  5. The gun-grabber: the kind of suck sub-human who takes pride in being unable to defend their children.

    • I wouldn’t say sub-human…just willfully ignorant. Most of the antis haven’t thought it through and don’t want to.

      But it does boggle the mind that so many people seem to take pride in their defenselessness. Especially when it comes to children. Any parent who takes armed defense (of any kind, not just guns) off the table deserves no respect.

        • It really is. I know a few that have stated that they would “protect their family with their bodies and die if need be” rather than have a gun. These are people that have zero chance of defending aginst a stiff breeze, nevermind a physical threat.

          I ask them what the bad guy does to thier wife & children after they’re dead. Wouldn’t they rather be able to protect their family and live? They shrug it off saying that the chances of it happening ar so slight that its more dangerous to simply have a gun in the house.

          Makes no sense.

        • This protecting the children with your body thingee… didn’t seem like it worked out so well for the principal, or the school psychologist, at Newtown.
          School shootings, home invasions (much more common) and other violent criminal acts don’t happen often statistically, but when they do the outcome can be horrendous unless the victim is prepared and alert. Better the offenders body on the floor than yours.

  7. The longer this goes on the more people that wake up to o’s “final solution”. Time is not on their side, Randy

      • Remember the passage of Obamacare. That “died” several times before it was pushed through. They will keep trying and keep cajoling and keep wheedling until they see another moment of opportunity. Then they’ll leap again.

        • Another moment of opportunity is the key phrase. I’ll wager the NSA or some other secret Gov three letter agency is currently completing the online programming of the next sicko shooter.

  8. I have kept a gun in at least one room in every floor of my house,even the bathroom …..don’t want to be caught with my pants down, so to speak

    • Serious questions: Do you keep the gun under the bathroom sink or somewhere else? And you’re not worried about rust from repeated shower steamings (despite the open window or vent)?

      • My bathroom vanity has two drawers, and I don’t have that much stuff. So the stuff goes in one drawer, and the other is empty.

        • Thanks – and obviously you haven’t had rust problems. (I need a new vanity, I guess.)

        • I haven’t seen any rust issues, but I clean my carry gun at least once a month to get the dust out, and so I clean that one at the same time. It’s usually been to the range by then anyway. Maybe I don’t wipe the oil off it quite as thoroughly as I do my carry gun, just to be safe.

        • Why not get a 3d printed gun for under the sink? I see a new market coming on. Toilet tank guns.

        • “Toilet tank guns.”

          …That would work! With the right nail, some waterproof grease on the case head, and a sheet of cellophane across the muzzle it wouldn’t rust at all.

          And can you imagine the advantage of psychological shock? A home intruder’s brain would freeze full of “wtF!?!??” when he saw you flip the top off the commode and draw down on him with a porcelain-white printed gun.

        • There are stainless steel revolvers that wouldn’t (shouldn’t) rust. I would think that they would be ideal for the bathroom….. and then there is always the s/s “marine” pump shotguns made by Mossberg and others.

        • “I don’t want my brother coming out of that bathroom with just his dick in his hand.” – Sonny Corleone

      • I have a stainless revolver in my bathroom under a drawer. I have no children and if I have guests I remove it to the safe.

  9. Today I heard this cultural conflict called a “Cold Civil War”.

    (As a note, the last one was won by embracing and promoting our values too.)

  10. I think most of us understood the strategy and it makes perfect sense, least to me it does. Of course those not willing to think, heard it differently because as you know all guns are evil and bad. I mean just the other day a 22LR youth model went on a spree shooting in down town Chicago. All by itself even..

  12. I certainly understand the logic and I get the fact that it is not the safety issue that the MSM wants to spin it into, but given the current environment we are in right now, I’m not sure how wise it is to give the wolves anything to chew on.

    The problem is that we all assume logic will prevail, people will wake up to what the MSM and anti-gun pols have been feeding them and reject them wholeheartedly. I’m not sure that it going to happen. Humans suck at risk assessment and to the average person, they fear a gunman killing kids much more than they fear a drunk driver which is statistically more likely to take a child’s life.

    People are being fed a steady diet of this crap from media outlets and their elected leaders, so why do we expect to them to figure things out for themselves. Sure, they may wake up momentarily when there is a report of a terrorist in the neighborhood, but a few weeks later, they are back to their original position with guns.

    I think that barring some extremely potent leadership either from a pro-gun group that does not yet exist or some really smart pro-gun politicians, the anti-s are going to continue to control the conversation and people are not going to view Rob’s comments in the right context. They will see it as some crazy guy advocating storing guns in their kids room and that will simply not fly. Me – I keep my my guns in my bedroom. That seems to work well enough and keeps the peace at home.

    • The potential problem with keeping your guns in your bedroom is as Rob pointed out: This way or that way? Many older houses, like the one I grew up in, have the living areas at one end, and the bedrooms down the hall at the other. Most new houses, like the one my parents now live in, have the master suite at one end, and the other two (children/spare) bedrooms at the other, with the kitchen and living areas in between. If you’re in the living room, and you hear glass breaking in the direction of your child’s room, are you really going to want to run away from them to get your gun before returning to the far end of the house? That’s the point Rob was making.

      • Matt – I get what you are saying, but we are back to risk assessment again. While I don’t dispute the fact that bad guys break into houses when people are home on a semi-regular basis, I think that humans overstate the risk that it may happen to their house.

        In every neighborhood that I have lived in (several states including both East Coast and Texas), home invasions/ break-ins while people were home were so rare as to be statistically irrelevant. In the rare cases of break-ins while residents were home, the break-ins happened after everyone was in bed, so having a gun safe in the bedroom would have been better anyway as that would be where I am. Most modern houses have a bathroom in the Master bedroom, so it is very unlikely that I wold be wandering the house when said break-in occurred.

        For those folks who live in areas where break-ins are more likely, having a gun in a safe anywhere in the house is not as good an idea as having a gun strapped to your hip. For folks in risky areas, home carry is probably the better bet.

        As I noted, tactically speaking, there is nothing wrong with Pincus’s advice. I just think that the emotional response overwhelms the reason one for many people and stirring the pot is just not a good idea.

        As for the “just fuck ‘em” crowd, got some bad news for you. If we, as gun owners don’t take control of the message and do it damn soon, we WILL get restrictions. Remember that Assault Weapons Bans and Mag Capacity limits have already passed legal muster – they were the law of the land for 10 years. They can be again if we screw this up. We need to convince the “silent majority” that owning big scary guns and standard capacity mags is not a bad thing. Right now, we don’t control the message in the media and have lukewarm support from our elected representatives now. Remember that none of the anti-gun bills were killed by majority votes in the Senate. Pro-gun Senators are still in the minority.

        Sure, we have the House to fall back on, but with people as pissed as they are about Congress, one never knows what might happen in the 2014 elections. Lose that house as well and we can almost certainly kiss our rights goodbye.

    • Jim Barrett said – “but given the current environment we are in right now, I’m not sure how wise it is to give the wolves anything to chew on.”

      Feed ’em poison. Tiptoeing around trying not offend the “silent majority” is what got us here. What if maybe we”re the “silent majority” but no one knows it ’cause we mealy mouth everything we say?

      They are willfully impervious to facts, logic, or reason – so why should we attempt to shape any part of our conversation for their consumption. Maybe it’s time to put a little scare and shock – or better yet “Shock and Awe” in the conversation! Time for a little blowback.

    • I agree with Jim. His statement was poorly considered, especially in the context of recent events. I don’t care how nuanced your message is, advocating gun storage in a child’s bedroom the week after headlines of a kid shooting his sister because of the same, just isn’t smart strategy, unless your strategy is to give the gun grabbers another incendiary headline.

      Also, people who trust any mass market ‘quick access gun safe’ to secure a gun against anything except the most casual attempt are kidding themselves. If you haven’t seen the videos from Marc Tobias, he shows a three year old opening several popular safes.

      • HOLY CRAP! That video left me shaking my head. Definitely need to be carefull as to what safe is going to offer any kind of security.

    • One of Rob’s points was if you need to fort up in a room. If your main bedroom is the fort, you have to go to your children’s room to get the kids, then move back to you bedroom. Why not make the kids room the fort.

      And the gun was not to be available to the kids. Rob commented if you are worried about your kids getting into a secure safe in the kids room but think the one in your room is safe you need to rethink what you are doing.

      Hopefully that is accurate Rob.

    • How paranoid and contrite should we be?

      I was teaching a Home Defense seminar at the NRA Annual Convention. If that isn’t the “right place” to put out solid advice, then the other side has won.

      They can twist and chew on whatever they want… I won’t stop putting out information that might save lives.

      Meanwhile, I am also willing to step into their world and explain/correct. As you can see HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtJdv55LwOw .

      We can’t cower.

      -RJP

      • I sincerely hope you were doing a series of interviews that day, and didn’t just put on the suit and tie for that guy, because I’d feel like that whole interview was a total waste of time. He evaded your points, he threw up his own smokescreen of FUD, and what the hell was with that question at the end of the interview? You don’t define the terminology, it’s people in the media like him that do shit like that. Why would he even ask you that?

  14. Growing up, my room had the second largest closet space next to my parents’ closet. A locked safe was kept in my room holding important documents, jewelry, and the family’s guns, except for the pistol my father kept in his nightstand.

    And guess what? Zero issues with it… my parents taught me at an early age to respect firearms, as well as what do to in an emergency (God forbid) my mother and father were incapacitated and I needed to defend my little sister…

  15. It’s hilarious to see the anti-gunners going after Rob Pincus in his area of expertise. It’d be like me criticizing Tom Brady’s technique when throwing a football. Well almost…because I’ve actually held a football.

  16. If the anti-gunners aren’t freaking out, then you haven’t spoken the truth.

    I didn’t even have to watch the video to know the very reasonable idea you were proposing. But the anti-gunners wouldn’t be able to understand it even they watched it a hundred times.

  17. I never grew up with a gun in the house (odd since I live near Dallas) but I can see why its a sound idea to some and a bad idea to others. They key is how much you trust your kids and how your kids react to such things.

    • No, it’s how much you’ve taught your kids.

      This goes back to last week’s media-horror at guns designed for children. Buy your kid a Cricket rifle (single shot, .22LR bolt action; some models have a press-closed key lock in the bottom of the chamber you can engage by just grabbing the rifle). Mommy and daddy control access to the gun, they control access to the ammunition, and they control the key to unlock the chamber. You tell the child “this is *your* gun; just for you. Only you get to use it. you can only see it in mommy and daddy’s supervision, but you can see it any time you want for as long as you want – just ask”. Then every time it’s brought out, you go through the Four Rules. Any time it’s going to be shot, you go through the Four Rules step by step: “what’s behind your target, is it a safe shot? Okay, here’s your bullet. Front sight, back sight, breathing control…”

      You *TEACH*.

      No child is going to be automatically safe around a firearm. If you “trust” them with one, it’s because of something *else* you’ve taught them about responsibility spilling over onto this. Your child’s mind and their preparedness for life is what you make it.

      • 10-4

        Can’t remember my first BB gun. .22 on my tenth Bday. 12 gauge side-by-side on my 12th. Dad set up a shooting range in our basement! Taught safety, responsibility, and marksmanship my entire life!

        We (My entire family.) knew and respected firearms. Had a house full.

        And NOBODY died!

        Isn’t that amazing?

  18. For the record, as a boy I figured out how to get into every hidden/locked box in my house by the time I was 12. Combinations, keys, whatever.

    It turns out that I had no nefarious motive for doing so other than curiosity, the challenge, and wanting to know I could do it in the event of an emergency.

    By then I knew basic gun safety however. And I wasn’t psychotic.

    I’ve come clean with my parents as an adult and apologized, and while it was too long ago for them to be mad, kind of gave them a brief panic attack after the fact.

    So while I can’t refute your logic at all, (it’s a great idea in theory and I do like it a lot) I feel that when I have kids approaching pre-teen years when they’ll be able to be left at home, with my particular DNA in them, I’m not going to be able to do this. I’m going to invest in the best safe lock I can get, put that behind a security door in my closet with a cipher lock on it, and keep my “house gun” on my person when it’s not locked up in that safe. Sounds extreme, but I remember being that age and those expeditions vividly and in my group of friends (the “gifted kids”) I was not unique.

  19. Did anyone read the comments following that anti-gun article? Wow. The ignorance displayed is truly disheartening. The usual statist emotional rhetoric.

  20. My daughters and I were tricked by the l-media at the air gun range during the meeting. The reporter had a “NRA Media” badge and seemed very enthusiastic about what the girls were doing. On the back of the badge it said who he was with and I caught that after I spoke with him.
    I am glad we went and we learned a lot and enjoyed the exhibit hall. My favorite part was when the RO asked my youngest “were you aiming for that squirrel?” She proceeded to plink it four more times with the air pistol. This being the third time she’s ever been shooting. Even when these particular media types twist your story, they still sound stupid. I guess they must be the types that love just listening to themselves and what they think/ wish they heard.

  21. There is a major difference between those who value Mr. Pincus’ suggestions and the gun-grabbers and their allies in the mainstream media: We were taught gun safety, with parents generally starting very young. I remember my father relentlessly drilling me on the basics of gun safety when I was a child. He gave me a BB gun when I turned five and my first rifle and shotgun when I turned ten. By that time, I could have told you the four basic rules of gun safety as readily as I could have told you the pledge of allegiance.

    My parents kept loaded guns in several parts of our house, secured but easily accessible in an emergency. They weren’t worried that my sister and I would try to treat them as toys because we had been thoroughly and carefully trained.

  22. In my opinion you can either trust a person with a firearm or you can’t. It doesn’t matter if they are a child or an adult. There are mature adults and immature adults, mature children and immature children. Either let them have access to a gun or don’t. It’s all about the individual.

  23. Does anyone here have that under-the-bed quick-access rifle/shotgun case?

    Do you like it? What’s good? Bad?

    Thinking of buy, but don’t like the keypad (prefer biometric — and no damn beeps!)

  24. ummmm….. victims are supposed to be polite, and give in… up to 10 years worth evidently, if events play out as they may in the recent kidnapping of 3 women.

  25. Rob,
    Sound bites and lies used to demonize people who advocate sensible education for our youth and offspring. To be expected. Essayons brother, Essayons…

  26. I thought this was great advice. I’ve pondered, while sitting in traffic, “do I go get the kid and then go for the gun or grab the gun 1st?”.

    Problem solved.

  27. Train your kids as early as much as possible and as early as possible. Once they are more than proven to be safe and are known to also be a good shot, give them the passcode to that safe in their room.

    Sure it might scare some libruls, but it might also save their life. Or yours. Children have killed home invaders before. Also, the only ones to ever accidentally kill themselves were the ones that never received good instruction.

    Don’t kidproof your guns, gunproof your kids. And then badguyproof your kids as well.

    • “Don’t kidproof your guns, gunproof your kids…”

      Yazu, yazu. What I meant. And if that ain’t copyrighted, I’m stealing it.

  28. Anyone who takes the media’s professional advice on anything is setting themselves up for a fall. At least a practicing amateur has done what they proclaim is right, the media just speculates from cheap seats and sometimes skips the show.

    I was reading a child development book which talked about baby proofing your home. They said don’t do a lot. You must prepare your children to know boundaries and be able to go other places where danger is present. They said this “baby proofing” from all dangers began in the 1970s where the belief was children need no boundaries because it restricts their development. That has since been proven wrong but has a multibillion dollar industry attached to it. Now I am not saying leaving dangers everywhere but gunproof your children, not babyproof your guns. Practice safety. Your adult guests may be the most in danger, not your kids.

    To this day I have not had to put cabinet locks in my kitchen or move the stuff from under the sink with my toddlers.

  29. When I was a baby grandma and grandpa used to let me sleep in grandpa’s gun room. Guess what…I slept like a baby.

  30. Kind funny story… When I was a kid (16 or so) my mom and dad remodeled their bedroom and needed to move all the stuff out of it for a few months. Dad moved the gun case into my room. That was not a safe, but a cabinet with no lock, and a drawer on the bottom full of ammo and cleaning supplies (he kept the pistol beside the bed). Within was my great grandfather’s 30/40 Krag. Playing with the action on that silky smooth old bolt got me interested in engineering.

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