“TODDLER SHOOTS PLAYMATE WITH FATHER’S GUN”. It’s a headline we shudder to see, but we see it, or another like it, far too often. Yet tragedies involving young children and the guns they find at home are completely preventable. Not by hiding the weapon (children are capable of seeking out and finding, or simply stumbling into, just about anything their parents try to hide). Not by locking the guns up (all it takes is forgetting to secure the lock just once). Not by teaching children stay away from guns (curiosity can easily erase parental warnings and over whelm a toddler’s underdeveloped sense of right and wrong). But by keeping guns out of the home – period.
Toddler are impulsive and incurably inquisitive, perfectly capable of pulling a trigger on a gun, but not capable of comprehending the possible consequences of the seemingly innocent action. Keeping a gun in the home, whether you think your toddler can get to it or not, is leaving open the very real possibility of tragedy. The American Academy of Pediatrics and numbers of safety organizations strongly urge : “Don’t do it”
If you must keep a gun at home, keep it locked up, inaccessible, and unloaded; store the bullets in a separate location (even very young children have figured out how to load a gun – usually by watching the process on TV). And buy a trigger lock or other device to prevent accidental discharge.
