Children and Guns—Part I

This is part of a four-part blog series addressing Children and Guns. Part I – want to ensure your kid never commits a crime? Give him a gun. Part II addresses myths of gun safety – what you must know in order to truly protect your children. Part III addresses when it is safe to educate your child on firearms. Part IV explores what’s really responsible for the death of our nation’s children. If you enjoy what you read, please comment and share on your blog or Twitter. Thank you.

I have been shooting firearms for about 8 years now. As a woman who’s convinced this is the best method of self-defense, I regularly communicate with other women on this topic and frequently hear 3 primary reasons why women are fearful of owning a firearm. The most common reason is the safety of their children. Rather than seeing a firearm as a method of defending their children, they see it as a willful danger that they bring TO their children. Rather than simply telling them that such wasn’t the case and they were simply falling for the mainstream media story of the day, I decided to do some very, very specific research on what really happens in this nation when it comes to children being around guns. Frankly, my research astounded even me. So much so that while I intended to write one article about it, I realized that there was far too much information to cover in just one. So I’m breaking it up into a 4 part series as follows:

Part I—Want to Ensure Your Kid Never Commits a Gun Crime? GIVE Him a Gun.
Part II—The Myth of Gun Safety. What you must know in order to truly protect your children.
Part III—When is it Safe to Educate Your Children on Guns?
Part IV—What’s Really Responsible for the Deaths of Our Nation’s Children?

Part I—Ensure your child never commits a gun crime by actually giving him a gun? Sounds crazy, but it’s true. Of course you would NEVER hear the media spout off such a statement, but in a GOVERNMENT study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile and Delinquency Prevention revealed the following bit of valuable information.

Fact: Children who get guns from their parents don't commit gun crimes (0 percent) while children who get guns illegally are quite likely to do so (21 percent).

Fact: Children who get guns from parents are less likely to commit any kind of street crime (14 percent) than children who have no gun in the house (24 percent) – and are dramatically less likely to do so than children who acquire an illegal gun (74 percent.)

Fact: Children who get guns from parents are less likely to use banned drugs (13 percent) than children who get illegal guns (41 percent.)

Fact: Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use (than boys who own illegal guns) and are even slightly less delinquent than non-owners of guns.

This study covered a period of 3 years (1993-1995).

When you take the mystery out of a gun, you take the mischief out of the child.

Presenting a firearm in an appropriate manner, as a tool of critical self-defense, along with the appropriate safety rules, means that you don’t have to worry so much about your life being turned upside down by your child living a life of a gang-banger criminal. Why? Legal gun owners tend to take their right of owning a gun very seriously. As such, they do not want to do anything that will compromise that right. They are typically a very law-abiding people. Bringing your child into that culture will enable them to associate with other like-minded, law-abiding people that you can count on being an example to them even when you’re not around.

Now, let’s talk about the other aspect of gun ownership… a sound knowledge of appropriate safety rules. Whether your child has a gun or not, this should be taught to them ad nauseam until they truly get it. Every single “accidental shooting” that has EVER occurred has done so as a result of a violation of one of these gun safety rules.

First rule: Always keep your firearm pointed in a safe direction.
Second Rule: Always keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot
Third Rule: Always treat a firearm as if it is loaded
Fourth Rule: Always protect your firearm from unauthorized use.

Learn for yourself and teach these rules to the children in your life to ensure their safety and to foster a respect for firearms. It is also important that you teach these rules in this particular order as well. One leads to the other.

Stay tuned for Children and Guns – Part II.

Copyright 2009 Kellene Bishop. All rights reserved. You are welcome to repost this information so long as it is credited to Kellene Bishop.