The reality in the US is that guns are everywhere. People should be exposed to them early in a controlled environment. The kids who play with guns they find in a closet are usually the kids for whom guns are more mysterious.
Giving a kid their own gun (obviously they shouldn’t have access to it without their parents) is a great way to demystify them. If they can ask their parents to show them a gun anytime then there’s nothing special about them and the kids don’t go hunting for them when parents aren’t around.
And every adult should know how to safely handle a firearm even if they have no interest in owning one. Guns exist and you may need to secure one some day.
Guess I should be glad I don’t live in that hellhole of a messed up country then. I wholeheartedly disagree with everything you said except the first sentence, so maybe we should just be glad we live on opposite sites of the planet.
What a bunch of crap, the kids who play with guns they find in a closet are usually the kids who find guns in a closet. simple as that.
So many sentences and anecdotes to describe “gun safety”. You know what gun safety really is?
Do not fucking keep a gun in a closet.
And if it is not you but grandpa who keeps them, Keep the children away from him. The sooner you all stop normalising this bullshit and do something about it, the sooner America will start moving away from schools shootings etc.
You can’t be with your kid at all times in all places, and you can’t always control their environment. Teaching them to be responsible around firearms in a place where they may come across them is important.
Simply telling them they’re bad is no different than abstainance-only sex education.
Wtf is this comparison with sex this is the second time I see it in this thread sex doesn’t kill you and I am not sure I want to know how you expose safely your kids to both firearms and…sex?!?
Maybe compare it with something else that is dangerous and you don’t need to keep in your home. People might keep in their homes but as a parent you should try to be aware and make sure it doesn’t happen. I don’t know maybe hard drugs?
So what do you do to prepare your kids to that, is simply telling them they are bad not enough? Do you make sure they are prepared and familiar to be around hard drugs?
It’s like sex because it’s something that they’ll come across when they aren’t with you. But unlike guns, sex isn’t instantly deadly if done wrong. So teaching about sex can be more conceptual and when the time comes they can stumble their way through it until they figure it out.
With guns, they shouldn’t go in blind because they’ll kill themselves or someone else. So they should be taught how to safely handle and disarm a weapon.
So not like sex at all, and you don’t handle it like sex at all either? Great comparison.
Now how about you look after your kids so they don’t “stumble” upon a fucking gun, the same way you’d do with a crack pipe:
If you keep that kind of shit at home (guns or crack pipes), take rid of it
If grandpa does, not allowed to have the kids at home until they get their act clean
The neighbours, school friends? How about we talk to them and make sure there are no guns (or crack pipes) lying around at their place. If there are any, probably a good idea for little Timmy not to go play in that house.
The point is you can’t control every environment a kid is exposed to. No gun will ever be accessible to a child in my house. Growing up, my Dad had guns, but he kept them secured and until I was an adult he didn’t have ammunition in the house. He just bought it on the way to the range or the hunt.
But he didn’t know what was at other houses. He also didn’t always know where I was at. So he taught me about guns early and instilled responsibility around firearms as being paramount.
Simply teaching kids that guns are bad and nothing else has been proven to be ineffective in the same way that abstinence-only sex education and DARE are bad at preventing STDs and drug use. It’s a failed approach because it doesn’t remove the attraction brought on by the mystery.
And even though firearms in my family are kept in safes, if someone were to ask me if I had guns my answer would be “no.” Public knowledge that I have guns in my house is a great way to attract a burglar.
Mate I think you just described the US’ problem with guns, it’s unwillingness to accept it has a problem, and it’s stubbornness around you know how to handle it anyway.
Carry on, keep guns in your house, teach to your kids it’s normal to have deadly weapons where someone lives and normalise the concept, accept they might stumble upon some and don’t take responsibility for where your kids are or what they do.
The rest of the world has resolved this problem a long time ago but what would we know?
You can be 100% anti-gun and tell your kids to never touch a gun and ban them from visiting people who you know own guns, and they’ll still be exposed to them.
There’s more than 100 guns per square mile in the US. They’re everywhere. If all firearms were made 100 percent illegal and the knowledge of how to make them was magically erased from the world there would still be tens of millions of them floating about centuries from now.
In that context, it’s important to know about them regardless of how evil you, me, society, or anything else considers them to be.
If you live on a lake, you don’t just tell kids they will drown if they go near the water. You teach them to fucking swim.
The reality in the US is that guns are everywhere. People should be exposed to them early in a controlled environment. The kids who play with guns they find in a closet are usually the kids for whom guns are more mysterious.
Giving a kid their own gun (obviously they shouldn’t have access to it without their parents) is a great way to demystify them. If they can ask their parents to show them a gun anytime then there’s nothing special about them and the kids don’t go hunting for them when parents aren’t around.
And every adult should know how to safely handle a firearm even if they have no interest in owning one. Guns exist and you may need to secure one some day.
Guess I should be glad I don’t live in that hellhole of a messed up country then. I wholeheartedly disagree with everything you said except the first sentence, so maybe we should just be glad we live on opposite sites of the planet.
That’s the thing. You don’t live here, so you can afford to be entirely ignorant about firearm safety.
If you lived here and thought nobody should learn about gun safety I’d call you wildly irresponsible.
Or maybe, just maybe, you should try and change the place you live in if it requires kids to be taught about gun safety.
What a bunch of crap, the kids who play with guns they find in a closet are usually the kids who find guns in a closet. simple as that.
So many sentences and anecdotes to describe “gun safety”. You know what gun safety really is? Do not fucking keep a gun in a closet.
And if it is not you but grandpa who keeps them, Keep the children away from him. The sooner you all stop normalising this bullshit and do something about it, the sooner America will start moving away from schools shootings etc.
You can’t be with your kid at all times in all places, and you can’t always control their environment. Teaching them to be responsible around firearms in a place where they may come across them is important.
Simply telling them they’re bad is no different than abstainance-only sex education.
Wtf is this comparison with sex this is the second time I see it in this thread sex doesn’t kill you and I am not sure I want to know how you expose safely your kids to both firearms and…sex?!?
Maybe compare it with something else that is dangerous and you don’t need to keep in your home. People might keep in their homes but as a parent you should try to be aware and make sure it doesn’t happen. I don’t know maybe hard drugs? So what do you do to prepare your kids to that, is simply telling them they are bad not enough? Do you make sure they are prepared and familiar to be around hard drugs?
It’s like sex because it’s something that they’ll come across when they aren’t with you. But unlike guns, sex isn’t instantly deadly if done wrong. So teaching about sex can be more conceptual and when the time comes they can stumble their way through it until they figure it out.
With guns, they shouldn’t go in blind because they’ll kill themselves or someone else. So they should be taught how to safely handle and disarm a weapon.
So not like sex at all, and you don’t handle it like sex at all either? Great comparison.
Now how about you look after your kids so they don’t “stumble” upon a fucking gun, the same way you’d do with a crack pipe:
Please go ahead and teach kids about sex btw
The point is you can’t control every environment a kid is exposed to. No gun will ever be accessible to a child in my house. Growing up, my Dad had guns, but he kept them secured and until I was an adult he didn’t have ammunition in the house. He just bought it on the way to the range or the hunt.
But he didn’t know what was at other houses. He also didn’t always know where I was at. So he taught me about guns early and instilled responsibility around firearms as being paramount.
Simply teaching kids that guns are bad and nothing else has been proven to be ineffective in the same way that abstinence-only sex education and DARE are bad at preventing STDs and drug use. It’s a failed approach because it doesn’t remove the attraction brought on by the mystery.
And even though firearms in my family are kept in safes, if someone were to ask me if I had guns my answer would be “no.” Public knowledge that I have guns in my house is a great way to attract a burglar.
Mate I think you just described the US’ problem with guns, it’s unwillingness to accept it has a problem, and it’s stubbornness around you know how to handle it anyway.
Carry on, keep guns in your house, teach to your kids it’s normal to have deadly weapons where someone lives and normalise the concept, accept they might stumble upon some and don’t take responsibility for where your kids are or what they do.
The rest of the world has resolved this problem a long time ago but what would we know?
You can be 100% anti-gun and tell your kids to never touch a gun and ban them from visiting people who you know own guns, and they’ll still be exposed to them.
There’s more than 100 guns per square mile in the US. They’re everywhere. If all firearms were made 100 percent illegal and the knowledge of how to make them was magically erased from the world there would still be tens of millions of them floating about centuries from now.
In that context, it’s important to know about them regardless of how evil you, me, society, or anything else considers them to be.
If you live on a lake, you don’t just tell kids they will drown if they go near the water. You teach them to fucking swim.