Finally some common sense regarding firearms and children!
Via Knuckledraggin
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Wise words regarding children and firearmsSeptember 16th, 2014 |
 21 comments to Wise words regarding children and firearms |
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Brilliant 🙂
As a somewhat more serious aside, I used to take a lot of flak from my work friends for advocating that, if you were going to have a firearm in your home and a child in your home at the same time, it was essential to familiarize the child with the firearm, primarily to remove the “magic forbidden adult toy” aspect that is so irresistible to children. That meant taking them shooting, letting them hold the (unloaded) weapon and investigate it, and letting them fire it and see what it does.
Kids are natural explorers, testing the boundaries of their world, and you don’t want them discovering the workings of your handgun or rifle on their own. In addition, knowing about the loudness of the bang and the destructiveness of the weapon is a great aid in keeping children safe around firearms.
The very worst thing you can do, vis-a-vis children, with a firearm is secret it away on the top shelf of your closet or in a drawer in your nightstand. Children explore … they find all the little hidden things you think they don’t know about. A child, totally ignorant of firearms, who finds your .38 in the nightstand is in real danger, even if you have cleverly thought to hide the ammo someplace else … even if you have engaged a trigger lock and hidden the key in another drawer. Their best defense lies in familiarity.
My co-workers took that to mean that if I had an 8-year old in my house I would outfit them with a bandolier and semi-automatic rifle, like a gradeschool Rambo.
That’s true. You should always tell children about everything. One writer pointed out that he made a point of explaining death to his children, so that when he threatened them with it, they would know what he meant.
At what age should you first give your child a nuclear missile?
@Nick. Boris and Natasha were ready at 4, Rocky and Bullwinkle were somewhat later at 6.
Give them the nukes early and often, I say. Now the launch codes … for that, they will need to do some serious chores.
The word ‘should’ is in my question, meaning what is the best age? will they take good care of the missile, or just leave parts lying around the house? I think the teens would be the best age- if they take good care of their missiles, then they can be trusted to not damage the car toooo much.
You can’t trust kids with a nuclear weapon. When I bought my niece (aged 6) an ICBM for her birthday she swapped it with her friend for a Hello Kitty pencil case.
Tim, the problem is that the younger generation has no sense of values. A pencil case! Whatever happened to “Pleasure before business”?
Indeed, Julie. Kids today! When I were lad, my Dad gave me a Vickers machine gun and by golly I knew ‘ow t’use it!
That sounds fine, Tim, but the bottom of that ad (see above) talks about building teamwork. Are they trying to introduce socialism into young minds with such words? Were you turned into a red-lover by playing with your machine-gun?
That was hilarious!
@bombadil
We live on a homestead farm there are no toy guns allowed as we have real guns in the home. The best emergency response time is about 40 minutes. I am 911 this far out. I have had to deal with everything from feral hogs to the drunk guy whose friends thought it was funny to dump him in the woods. The drunk guy was easy, after a sobering cup of coffee and a plate of tender pork ribs he was able to call a real friend to pick him up. We even have wild dogs that will kill live stock and have also charged my kids. It seems city dwellers find easy to dump their unwanted pets in the sticks as well as their unwanted drunk friends. Two years ago we had a home invasion robbery just 3 miles down the road and the thugs spent 5 days at the home with a young woman before she escaped.
My 7 year old can handle a .22/.410 rifle shotgun combo safely ( with supervision of course) and she can navigate through the woods to the highway in the dark. Kids can be amazing when you do not treat them as stupid or incompetent. My little girl has quite the skill set, unfortunately we moved out here so she could grow up a little more slowly and maybe not have to learn so fast just how idiotic “average” intelligence really is. Although thinking about it she would definitely trade an ICBM for anything hello kitty, it is all about what is usefull to her and would require the least amount of chores. 😉
When I was a kid my father gave me a lugar and a mauser he’d collected from some unfriendly German tourists.
Sans ammo.
Agree with Bombadil
I told my children ( single digit ages approx 6 and 9 ) that they could handle, look at, examine, essentially ‘play with’ a firearm any time they wanted – just ask. Otherwise don’t go near them. Demonstrating the effect of firearms using gallon jugs of colored water ( no not red ! ) and large melons is very instructive.
Never had a problem. The novelty was gone along with being ‘forbidden’.
Both are now comfortable and proficient with firearms and do not tremble, wet their pants and run screaming from the scene if they see one Unlike the ADULTS somewhere in London several years ago who were apparently terrified of a SINGLE .22 round spotted
on a sidewalk !!!
Teach children rather than trying the futile exercise of protecting them or shielding them from everything you feel is ‘dangerous’.
I too had people who thought I was nuts. Usually the same panty waists who, when they find themselves in trouble, want someone with a gun to show up and ‘protect them’ because they are simply too cowardly to do it themselves !
“Mummy! Mummy! Why’s daddy running away?”
“Shut up and keep firing.”
Tim and Karl, here’s something your daughters might be interested in: a real Hello Kitty assault rifle.
WRT children in general, there’s a David Friedman quote that bears repeating: “I have long held that there are two fundamental views of children: That they are pets who can talk, or that they are small people who do not yet know very much. The wrong one is winning.”
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2010/07/breaking-walled-garden-of-childhood.html
The treatment of children & firearms is an example of this. Teaching children to be less ignorant of firearms, and of how to treat them with the appropriate respect, is an approach appropriate for small people who do not yet know very much. Hiding and locking away firearms, and keeping children ignorant of them, is the approach expected toward pets who can talk.
Thanks! But I might need to put that aside for a second whilst I try to figure out where this daughter came from. 🙂
@Schrodinger’s Dog
What the heck are you talking about? I want the hello kitty rifle for myself. The only problem would be match painting an ACOG scope for it. 🙂
Btw I don’t even know Tim and so I am unsure how we would have daughters together? I am most certain that would be mechanically impossible not to mention my wife would be quite put out if she thought I had daughters she was unaware of. 🙂
I see Karl, so Tim is not good enough for you, is he?
Oh boy is this thread getting WEIRD 😀
Not nearly as weird as your moniker, Error – well done there 😀
Heh. You guys ought to take a look at the anime series Girls und Panzer, a sports epic about tank combat for high school girls. . . .
Alisa, we are libertarians because we have some standards (which I, in high school, thought was a new disease because it was the excuse used by girls not to go on dates with me). Tim can’t be that bad-looking if he has daughters he knows nothing about, though.