Too soon?
So, Junior now makes the shape of a handgun with her fingers, points it, and says: Pow, pow, pow. We asked her where she picked that up and she said Little Johnny* says Pow, pow, pow. Little Johnny is a kid in her class at school. The Mrs. asks her what the teacher says when Little Johnny says Pow, pow, pow. And Junior says She says don’t say pow, pow, pow. I’m taking it all in. And I finally pipe up and say Junior, we don’t point our weapons at people. The wife shoots me a glance and says let’s not go there yet.
She’ll be three this month. My thinking is go ahead and start, err, planting the seed about gun handling. At the same time, she’s a kid and needs to have some fun. Is it too soon to say things like that? I have no intention of enforcing said rule with toys and fingers but just want to lay the foundation.
* name changed, for obvious reasons.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:52 am
I didn’t start that early. The first gun handling lessons I gave was a few weeks before our first range session.
Also, the first thing I had him shoot was a .38 revolver. It was loud and powerful, but not painfully so.
I just wanted to impress on him the difference between real and toy guns. Now he happily shoots his .22 rifle and observes all safety rules, no problem.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Kids are smarter than we think. I’m a little bit into swords and fencing. My genuine sharp and heavy Samurai sword and two practice swords for Japanese fencing decorate my daughter’s basement playroom. She has always known that they’re not toys she can play with.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:52 am
To tell the whole truth: The guns are empty and locked in their cases and inside a locked cabinet and the ammunition is in the garage.
June 4th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
nk sez:
> The guns are empty and locked in their cases and inside
> a locked cabinet and the ammunition is in the garage.
What was your address again? 🙂
(…then again, the katana might be pretty effective for home defense. I wonder which is more psychologically effective against an intruder – that, or the CLA-CLACK of chambering a round in a pump shotgun?)
June 4th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
[…] Say Uncle wants to know: How soon is too soon to start teaching the ankle biters about weapon safety? Spread It Around: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
June 4th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
My nephews (2 and 4) have an old bb gun rifle that they play with – it doesn’t work – and the first time (and every other time from then on) that they point it at another human we always so “We don’t shoot people”. Then we point at the wall where the deer heads are proudly displayed by grandpa and say those you can shoot. The 4 year old understands, after enough repetition….we are still working on the 2 year old.
Its never to early…the early you start, the more ingrained the behavior. My sister and I were raised with guns in the house, not locked up, but we knew we did not play with them, we could play with our toy guns or whatever. It was never a question to us because it had been that way since before we could remember.
June 4th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Don’t you warn her against running with scissors and knives, or playing with electrical sockets, or pulling the dog’s ears, or running up and down the stairs? Same thing. No need to go further. Just add, if asked, “You’ll hurt someone.”
June 4th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Can’t wait too long. I’ve commented before, my dad – who is a good man – was about four degrees shy of being the dude from Ruby Ridge. At four years old he took me out to shoot his .45. About the same age for all of my siblings.
Anyway, the reason you can’t wait to long because your kid’s friend’s house my be like mine was. Which had at least one loaded rifle in every room, an ammo room (but it was only like 4’x4′) and a small cache of handguns and rifles (approx 250-300).
When he first took us out to shoot, usually the target was a wooden box or a watermelon he’d make us shoot it, then he’d ask us what we thought would happen if a bullet struck a person.
You can’t always know how whacked out the houses your kids are visiting might be.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
A fingerr is always loaded. Never point your finger at anything you are not prepared to destroy. Never curl your other fingers until your finger is pointed at your target. Always be sure of what your finger is pointed at and what is behind it.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
I started both my kids at around age five. I used a .22 handgun (’cause they were too small for a youth model rifle) and I held it up for them as they held it. I drew the proper sight picture on a piece of paper. Guns hold no particular fascination for them, because they’re completely “de-mystified”. They now see gun incidents depicted on TV and will criticize them as fake, etc., or ask, “Was that a Garand, Dad?”. I take them out to shoot once in a while and let them shoot ’till they’re bored. (I won’t talk to you about gun storage, partly because of all the big, sharp knives lying around our kitchen, the axe and the hatchet, the hot tub, the gasoline cans in the garage [to say nothing of the car] and the toxic chemicals we keep around for killing bugs and for cleaning. Though for a while we kept kiddy locks on our kitchen cabinets.)
I considered toy guns as training instruments: All handling rules apply. My daughter’s toy 1911 (a gift from the grandparents) had no rear sight notch, so I got out a file and gave it one. Now it has the same sight picture as the real thing. Fingers alone are OK, but still I tell them to knock it off. The reason being that conditioning is a big part of proper handling.
This is what scares the antis so terribly that they go insane with hatred: Kids who actually know things and can consider issues without emotion overwhelming them are a threat to the carefully spun cocoon in which they live and hold their world view.
Be prepared for when their teachers at school practice “position discrimination” against them. Nip that BS in the bud, and fast.
Later on, a big part of “child safely” will be logistics & communication: Where are you going, who else will be there, do you have your cell phone, when will you be home and how can your cohorts be reached? Oh, and what caliber are you carrying tonight, young lady? How many times do I have to tell you—that little .32 is nice, but its too small!