Nicky, I would help provide one viewpoint for you.
When you hear about shooting accidents involving kids, what's your first response and do you think more could be done to prevent these types of incidents?
Having five children, and having just experienced the death of a close family member last week from an accidental discharge of a firearm (my 54 year old uncle; alcohol was a factor), I can say with certainty that this question has recently come to the forefront of my thoughts.
Accidental deaths involving firearms can be prevented with proper gun handling procedures. Learning proper gun handling procedures requires training - and not just training of the adults, but of all family members in the residence.
Loaded firearms should not be kept tucked away in "secret", because children are prone to curiosity. If there are loaded firearms in the house, all members of the family should be aware of them. Children should be made aware of what firearms are capable of doing from the earliest age. Not just your children, mind you, but visitors as well, who become your responsibility when they are in your residence. People who are not prepared to have gun safety dialog with their children's friends (and parents), need to make the choice to unload and lock them up while they are present, or simply not have those children come over to visit, but rather, have our children go to their houses' to visit.
While all weapons should be treated as if they are loaded, keeping weapons in a state of readiness for self-defense purposes decidedly raises the bar on safety measures which must be observed. If a weapon is kept in a loaded state for immediate use in a self defense situation, a great deal of extra caution must be observed. A weapon with an unloaded magazine takes more time, and conscious "steps", to prepare and fire, than a weapon with a round in the chamber. It also means that a baseball bat or kitchen knife is effectively more useful for defense purposes, because an unloaded / locked up weapon is useless for defense purposes, and an intruder is highly unlikely to give you the time and space required to ready yourself.
This being said, there's a large number of accidents each year from weapons which were thought to be unloaded, but were not. All weapons are always loaded (even if they aren't). It's akin to the concept of doublethink in Orwell's 1984. We train ourselves, and those we teach, to believe that all weapons are always loaded. This changes the way we perceive, and handle those objects we know as firearms.
In my house, we have a mix of ages on my five children from 5 years to 13 years. Weapons are kept well out of reach until the children are old enough to understand, and have reached a level of understanding, involving the basics of firearm safety. Some of the rules we live by are common sense - children are not left unattended at our residence for any length of time. Either my wife, or I, are always present, or if we are to go out, a babysitter who is over 18 and trained in firearms handling. It's a concession we make in our lives - there's no "just stepping out for a minute" without an adult to watch over the young ones.
At least twice a year we load up all of our children (regardless of age) and go to the shooting range for live fire. The noise of firearms discharging is quite shocking to small children, and serves to dispel a great deal of the negative curiosity. We typically will fire at things which are reactive - soda cans, and so on, and during cold-range cease fires we all go down as a group and inspect what has happened to the targets that have been shot. The one point to get across to children during these exercises is quite simply that firearms are dangerous, and they are not toys. For our small children, the number one rule is if you see a firearm, or a bullet, or something that looks like a firearm, do not touch it but come tell an adult! We make sure they understand this applies not just while they are at our house, but if they are at a friends house as well.
When my children are old enough to begin learning about firearms handling, I start taking them to the range for instruction. Both of my older boys (11 and 13) can handle weapons, but this requires close supervision. We go together on days when the range is mostly or completely empty, to avoid or reduce any potential distractions. Every step along the way is explained, and we go through procedures over, and over, and over again. A proper training regimen requires repetition of the correct procedures.
All of the deaths from accidental firearms discharges involving children, where the firearm is in a child's hand, stems from two related things - lack of training and negative curiosity. If you dispel the negative curiosity at a young age, and do some fundamental training, then "unexpected discoveries" children may make of firearms are done with respect, and not "oooh what's this".
With respect to violence for older children, and "non-accidental" shootings at school or on the street, such a conversation involves felonious criminal behavior, and is a different subject entirely from firearms safety in the home.
With respect to control measures:
Locking up weapons is not a solution or "cure". Last time I checked, even my five year old can use a key.
Keeping weapons unloaded is not a "cure". All firearms are always loaded. People that come to my house know this, and they will not pick up a firearm. If people think firearms are unloaded they may casually handle them and - if one IS loaded - there may be an accident. I would rather ALL firearms be treated as loaded, and every person know they are loaded, because then no one will idly handle them. Hence the Orwellian doublethink - all firearms are always loaded.
Restricting ownership is not a "cure". Regardless of what legislature does, firearms have been pervasive on this planet since the invention of gunpowder. They are not going away - ever - regardless of how much legislature or wishful thinking is poured out of people's hearts.
Proper training and procedures is a "cure".
My e-mail is trent [at] liberationsoft.com if you have other questions.
