Naturally Healthy Parenting The parent's guide to a healthy family
While the best way to keep your children safe from guns is to not keep guns near your children, for some people like those in the military or police officers, it’s necessary for you to keep your equipment close to you, which means storing your firearms at your home.
If this is something you’re doing, your top priority should be how to ensure that your children don’t gain access to your firearms and wind up hurting themselves or others. To help you in doing this, here are three tips for keeping your firearms safe at home.
Teach Your Children Gun Safety
As someone who has to handle firearms on a regular basis, you should be very much aware of safe handling procedures. With this knowledge, you can then teach your children gun safety so that they know what they should and shouldn’t do if they do ever encounter a firearm, yours or otherwise.
As part of this, ProjectChildSafe.org advises that you get a free firearm safety kit that you can use to teach your kids what they should do if they encounter a gun. Teaching the basics of a gun not being a toy and to never touch or play with a gun can go a long way toward your children understanding how to take a firearm seriously and not get in a situation that could become dangerous.
Keep Everything Under Lock and Key
Once you feel confident that your children know what to do and not do when they are around a gun, you should then do your best to ensure that your children never get in a situation when they have to put this new knowledge to the test. To best do this, you should ensure that you always properly store your firearm at all times.
According to Dr. Amy W. Anzilotti, a contributor to KidsHealth.org, any gun you bring into your home should always be stored unloaded and kept under lock and key. In addition to keeping your firearm locked up, you should also keep any keys you use in a hidden area that your kids will be unlikely to find.
Store Firearms and Ammunition Separately
Storing your actual firearm isn’t enough. You also need to safely store any ammunition you have as well.
To safely do this, Dr. Judy Schaechter, a contributor to HealthyChildren.org, advises that you store your firearm and your ammunition in different locations. By doing this, you’ll be able to know that even if your kids or someone else gains access to your firearms, they won’t be able to use it since the ammunition is somewhere else.
If you keep a firearm in your home due to your job, consider using the tips mentioned above to keep your children safe from playing with this equipment.
