Crocodator
Plinker
This story is a tragedy. A whole family was shattered, and it sounds from the affidavit like there were signs of this behavior in the past.
When I started learning about and then buying guns, we did all of this (4 young kids in the house):
1. All of the kids, even the ones too young to shoot yet, learn the basic rules of gun safety. They can quote and explain them back whenever asked. No one in the house (adults included) gets to shoot without being able to do this forward and backward.
2. Ammo is kept locked and secured in a different room from all firearms unless at the range
3. All of the kids are safely shown firearms. We talk about them, we look at them together, and every conversation begins and ends with "you never touch a gun without Daddy's help"
4. We stopped buying "toy guns"
That last one may seem strange, but I had a hard time aligning the message of "guns are serious business and should always be treated with respect" with the plethora of toy guns that my boys used to have. Guns can't be both toys and potentially dangerous tools, and kids have a harder time separating the two. I will say that the boys are much happier to be able to go out and shoot a real gun safely than they used to be playing with plastic toy guns. We do still have enough Nerf guns to arm a platoon though - they were different enough from anything that really goes bang that I was okay with it. I probably shouldn't ever buy a Beretta Nano so I don't confuse them though . . .
When I started learning about and then buying guns, we did all of this (4 young kids in the house):
1. All of the kids, even the ones too young to shoot yet, learn the basic rules of gun safety. They can quote and explain them back whenever asked. No one in the house (adults included) gets to shoot without being able to do this forward and backward.
2. Ammo is kept locked and secured in a different room from all firearms unless at the range
3. All of the kids are safely shown firearms. We talk about them, we look at them together, and every conversation begins and ends with "you never touch a gun without Daddy's help"
4. We stopped buying "toy guns"
That last one may seem strange, but I had a hard time aligning the message of "guns are serious business and should always be treated with respect" with the plethora of toy guns that my boys used to have. Guns can't be both toys and potentially dangerous tools, and kids have a harder time separating the two. I will say that the boys are much happier to be able to go out and shoot a real gun safely than they used to be playing with plastic toy guns. We do still have enough Nerf guns to arm a platoon though - they were different enough from anything that really goes bang that I was okay with it. I probably shouldn't ever buy a Beretta Nano so I don't confuse them though . . .
