Millions of American parents wear concealed firearms every day. This natural right isn’t merely a self-defense tactic. It’s also a duty and responsibility.
If you’re a gun owner or concerned about your children, the article will give you practical tips about family defense and handling firearms.
Related Articles: 4 Essential Firearm Safety Rules Every Shooter Must Live By, Youth Gun Safety: A Smart Parent’s Guide to Keeping Kids Safe, Youth Hunting: A Smart Parent’s Guide to Safely Hunting with Kids
Gun Safety Must Come First
According to the CDC WONDER database, 125 children (0-17) were unintentionally killed by firearms in 2024.
A multi-pronged approach to adolescent gun safety is ideal. Safe storage, adequate training, demystifying guns, and ensuring your children can uneventfully coexist with firearms (in your home and in others) are all paramount to preventing injuries.
Your approach to gun safety in your home depends on your family’s specific needs and may require modification over time.
Ages 0-4
Children in the 0-4 age group are the most likely to be involved in an accidental shooting. Here are some tips to keep your younger children safe:
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Teach the “Do Not Touch” method. Similar to touching a hot stove, your young children should be taught the dangers of firearms in a way they understand. You could say, “No, that’s hot,” or other verbiage that your young child understands as dangerous.
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Firearms should be out of reach of children 4 and under. You don’t have to sacrifice home security in the name of gun safety. Make sure loaded guns are kept somewhere young children can’t access them (the same goes for other people’s homes).
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Demonstrate gun safety to model best practices (you can even use less-lethal airsoft guns or toys to teach best practices if you don’t have a firearm in your own home). Refrain from pointing guns at other people, unnecessarily pulling the trigger, or treating your firearm like a toy.
Ages 5-10
Although less likely to accidentally shoot themselves or someone else, children in the 5-10 age group still require gun safety knowledge. Here are a few age-appropriate tactics for this age group:
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Introduce more hands-on gun safety training. Using a toy gun or an unloaded firearm (ensuring you clear the chamber or cylinder), let your child teach you how to safely operate a firearm.
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Review the four rules of gun safety regularly and explain why they are important. If you feel comfortable doing so, take your child to a gun range to demonstrate why these rules are important.
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Safe storage is still the best option for this age group, especially if your child isn’t responding to education and training.
Ages 11-14
Children and adolescents aged 11-14 are the second most likely age group to be affected by a firearm-related accident. At this age, your child likely knows the difference between right and wrong, meaning these accidents can be avoided with education, discipline, and safe storage.
Here are tips for reinforcing gun safety for your preteens and younger teens:
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Practicing safe handling is essential for this age group. Allow your children to exercise gun safety often so that it becomes second nature. Doing this in a safe and controlled environment also demystifies guns.
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Teach your child how to clear the chamber or cylinder and ensure the firearm is safe to handle. This may save their life – or someone else’s, if they’re ever in a situation where another person is improperly handling a firearm.
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Continue using safe storage methods in conjunction with education to ensure your child’s safety. But beware: at this age, safe storage can provide a false sense of security. Curious teens are intelligent enough to bypass standard safety protocol.
Ages 15+
When your child (or anyone in your home) reaches this age, safe gun practices should already be their second nature. But that isn’t always the case. If a teenager is totally new to gun safety, make sure they understand every lesson they would have learned had their parent followed each tip detailed so far in this article.
However, other issues come into play for teens that may counteract everything you’ve taught them. Here are some tips to help teens and young adults safely coexist in your home with guns:
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Beware of any mental health issues that your child or other loved ones may be experiencing. Pay attention to your child, and seek professional help if necessary.
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Alerting the authorities and practicing safe storage – or removing firearms from the home altogether – may save your child and others if they’re experiencing mental health issues, idolizing violent offenders, or planning attacks.
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Regularly reinforce gun safety practices.
Gun Safety Programs
The NRA’s Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program teaches gun safety to children in pre-K through third grade by giving them four easy-to-remember steps:
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When you see a gun, stop what you’re doing.
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Don’t touch the firearm.
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Leave the area.
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Find an adult and tell them about the gun.
Project ChildSafe offers excellent guides for children and offers free resources to parents, including information on properly handling mental health-related issues in homes with guns.
Be SMART is an Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund program intended to help parents navigate raising children in a world with guns. The campaign is especially helpful for families without guns in their homes who want to educate and protect their children.
Although national programs are limited, local shooting clubs and instructors may also be available to help children learn to safely handle firearms. This is an appealing option if you do not own guns, as gun ranges and instructors offer access to them for instructional purposes.
Demystifying Firearms
Between 2009 and 2018, X victims of unintentional firearm fatalities were under 15 years of age. More than half died because they were playing with firearms. A significant number of children shot themselves (or others) by accidentally pulling a trigger or failing to check if a gun was unloaded.
In addition to firearm education, firearm demystification may save a child’s life. It doesn’t matter if you don’t own guns. You must still expose your child to firearms often and early. Doing so will ensure they feel no sense of mystique should they ever encounter a firearm. Essentially, you want your child to regard a firearm as a mundane and unremarkable object, rather than something their curiosity compels them to mishandle.
Here are some things you can do to familiarize your child with guns:
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Teach them to clear the chamber.
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Take them to the range.
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Allow them to explore firearms and talk openly about them.
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Entertain a child’s healthy curiosity about firearms. Let them examine your unloaded gun under supervision. Even if you are ardently anti-gun, you owe it to your child to give them at least some exposure to a potentially dangerous (and frequently glamorized) object they may encounter at some point during their life.
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Teach them that showing off can get people killed, and to stand up to their friends if doing so can keep others safe.
Although this may be an uncomfortable task for you as a parent, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to keep your child safe. Demystify guns so that your child (A) won’t be attracted to them, and (B) will know how to keep themself safe around them.
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