Educating Your Children on Guns: Here is How
Educating your child on guns is a difficult event if you don’t know how to go about it. However, parents play a pivotal role in their children’s safety. Much like other early childhood education, repetition is the key. Here are a few ideas to teach kids proper gun care and promote the safety of your entire family.
Image/Pete Souza-White House
Real Life vs. Pretend
Children often get their ideas of guns based off video games, movies and television shows. These sources give them the impression that guns aren’t real. Children can see the same actor in other films or restart a video game. Therefore, it is important for parents to show the harm that guns do if used improperly. Demonstrate the destructive power of guns by shooting something at close range or showing them the wounds from a recently hunted animal. By doing this, children start to understand that guns can harm others.
Don’t Keep Guns Forbidden
If you are planning to use guns with your children in the future either at the range or hunting, don’t keep them forbidden and locked away in a case. All this does is create intrigue for your kids, which leads them to get into the guns without proper safety ideas. Instead, try showing them the gun and let them handle it with your permission. Once they are familiar and safe with firearms, then you can start to entrust them with something such as a pellet gun or BB gun. Then the next step after that is finding firearms that suit their hobbies or interests.
Use the NRA Safety Guide
The National Rifle Association is very helpful when it comes to educating your family on gun safety. Eddie the Eagle is their official spokesperson for gun safety and his appearance captures the imagination of children while providing them with three simple safety rules. Those rules include: always keeping the gun pointed in a safe direction, always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot and always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use. By making your children repeat these steps to you, you can ensure they get the idea and retain it.
Take Hunting Safety Classes
Most states have set up safety classes that hunters take before they can get their license. Even if it is not required, it is to your benefit to take your children to classes. Stress the importance of these classes. For example, since the law passed in 1987, Missouri has seen a 70 percent drop in accidental deaths, which shows how integral these classes are.
Prepare Shooting gear
First of all, keeping all your shooting kits in a single place. Hence, range bag is the best option to keep all your shooting kits together. You can go anywhere by taking the bag and practice till get skilled. The range bag will help you to keep all of your range items like ammunition, ear and eye protection, and hearing protection, spotting scope, having your kits in shooting range will boost the confidence. Check Backpackreviewed.com if you are looking for the best range bag review.
Lead By Example
Kids are very impressionable. Therefore, it becomes your responsibility as a parent to lead by example. Conduct yourself in a matter that shows the importance of gun safety in all facets.
Whether or not you choose to own a gun is entirely up to you. If you do decide to keep a gun, make sure your children know proper safety rules. The well-being of your family depends on it.
Guest Author: Lolita Di
NRA’s “We Are America” campaign
