The kid was obviously too young to leave the area and tell an adult.
Yes, this is very true, but the STOP part of the training could have begun by then.
Now every child is going to be different, and learn at different rates, and be more or less curious than their peers, and more or less well-behaved.
So it really comes down to taking personal precautions to *absolutely* prevent children from accessing guns (e.g. locking them up), *plus* a healthy dose of training - and it's never too early to begin that.
There have been studies done - mainly by anti-gun proponents - where a gun is left in a room with playing children. Usually hidden away in a toybox, or some such nonsense. Then the children are videotaped, to see what they'll do when they "discover" the gun.
Out of idle curiosity I ran the same experiment on my 5 children, putting in a (disabled) cleared gun in the room with a video camera. The gun was inoperable - no striker present - and clear - no ammo present, but very real otherwise.
They found the gun in about 30 minutes.
The older kids who were still in the room backed off, never touched it, and our *youngest* immediately left the room and told us about it. She was 3 years old at the time.
Training *works*.
But training is NO substitute for true physical precautions!
One of the greatest tragedies our "gun culture" has faced is the absolute ban on the discussion of firearms in schools. In my state, in our local school district, there is a zero tolerance policy in place for ANY conversation or gun materials (including game t-shirts, etc, which picture guns of any sort). Violation of that rule is an automatic suspension and/or expulsion.
The days of Eddie Eagle or law enforcement teaching children about gun safety in the classroom are largely gone, and likely forever.
Which means a more than
half of today's children (based on gun owner %), will have grown clear to
adulthood, without ever having received any training on firearms *whatsoever*!
They will not know the most fundamental rules of "STOP, LEAVE THE AREA, TELL AN ADULT" - and they will have no checks and balances against their own innate curiosity if (more likely WHEN) they first encounter a firearm in real life. All they will have, for their own personal experience, is TV shows, movies, and video games, to teach them.
(And we all know what that means... considering the subject material involved)
As a gun community - at large and en masse - we need to RAIL against those prohibitions on firearms discussions in schools, we need to ABSOLUTELY INSIST that gun safety training is restored in the classroom at each grade level, and we need to CONTINUALLY raise the public awareness about gun safety in all aspects of a child's education.
Programs like J.A.K.E.S. day, boy scouts, etc, are a great success but they still do not reach even a substantial minority of children. As a society, we need to have ALL children trained in elementary firearms safety from a very early age.