Safety / safety - nothing's perfect
if one gun I own were to be found by children ... I would probably prefer it be the Springfield XD-45.
Note: I have a young niece, but no kids of my own, and won't until I'm out of grad school in a couple of years
So I've thought about it but can't relate any horror stories.
Why the XD-45 would be the "least worst" gun to have a young child find, compared to a few others:
- Revolver is too intuitive. Even I could figure out how to swing open the barrel [EDIT: should be "cylinder" -- oh, the shame!], that the bullet-things go in the empty-hole places, etc, and I don't have the creative genius of a rampant 3-year-old. And while the double-action pull of my S&W 625 is would be pretty hard to manage with tiny hands, cocking the hammer makes pulling the trigger something well past "easy," and the shape / leverage of the hammerspur makes cocking it (just through playful manipulation) a breeze.
- Though my other autopistols (various calibers) all have either a conventional safety or a decocker, if they have a round in the chamber and have been cocked, it would take only a curious flicking or tugging of parts to make them ready to fire. Not that it would be a child's first move, but I could easily imagine one pulling back the hammer from the half-cock (decocked) position; might take two hands, but not that much strength. If they had *no* round in the chamber, I suspect most kids would not figure out (or be able to) chamber a round by racking the slide, and that most autopistols are therefore semi-resistant to them. When I first picked up my XD a few weeks ago, I know *I* had a heck of a time pulling it back! (Loosened sufficiently after a box of ammo through it, but still definitely a decent tug is required, and not sized for toddler hands.) Upshot: the external safety on most autopistols works pretty well at preventing adults from shooting when they don't want to; I doubt it would stop a kid from figuring out how to make that stupid trigger pull all the way back, after they've pulled, pushed and torqued every protuberance on the gun (found that little red dot on the safety), stuck fingers down the barrel, etc. Look, it fits! I know one misconception I had as a 4- or 5-year-old kid is that there was some *other* step to make a gun fire other than pulling the trigger, a "secret button" or something along those lines; that would have been a dangerous belief to test with most handguns, because there isn't!
- Grip safety. I may be wrong (I sure am not offering consulting!
), but I think this is the thing that would make it hard for a kid to shoot. Maybe not an 8 or 10 year-old, but a small-handed, curious, non-firearms aware burglar / lockpick who managed to get hands on a gun in my house would have a time getting hands around the grip-safety and depressing the trigger at the same time.
Partly, of course, most questions of safety have to do with how a gun is stored. If the gun is for home defense, I know some posters on this board have explained that their tradeoff (which sounds like a decent one) is to keep ammo convenient by separate; Yes, that raises the hackles of some of the other posters ("What good is it if it's not cocked, locked, and hurling lead at a bad guy?!"), but if I had kids in the house, I might prefer it. I bet too that if I had kids in the house I'd probably keep a self-defense pistol un-cocked, if loaded. Mel Tappan would have disapproved, but we all have choices and preferences. I think the sound of an autopistol being racked would be pretty unnerving if I heard it from the other side of the barrel!
Obviously, if you're carrying concealed, it's a different picture. But if your gun is for shooting at a range or collecting, and therefore not kept handy for personal defense purposes (another way to raise hackles*
), I'd suggest that the gun and its ammo ought both be locked securely, and perhaps in separate places.
And overall, once they're past the few-years-old stage, kids' awareness is what matters. A friend of mine has a young daughter; she knows that she's not to touch the loaded revolver atop the kitchen cabinets, and is of a temperment that makes this a workable arrangement. Some kids don't inspire as much confidence; they might be "good kids" but have a bad combination of curiosity, strength, and deviousness.
timothy
* Hey, just what *are* hackles, anyhow?
